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1996 Taxable Year
As noted above, respondent did not issue a notice of
deficiency for the 1996 taxable year. Petitioner does not
dispute the tax deficiency portion of the underlying tax
liability. Rather, through his testimony and as stated on his
petition, petitioner is seeking to avoid the addition to tax and
the interest that has accrued.
Petitioner contends that the addition to tax assessed must
be eliminated because his failure to file was due to reasonable
cause. Petitioner does not offer any convincing explanation that
his failure to file was due to reasonable cause and not willful
neglect. The taxpayers obtained an extension of time to file
their return to August 15, 1997, but they did not file their
return until 19 months later. Petitioner testified that in 1995,
he had “an incident of Bells Palsy which caused a paralysis of
the right side of the face, which did not resume to near normal
until about two and a half years later.” Yet, petitioner offers
no substantiating evidence of such illness and, more importantly,
has not provided any showing that such illness prevented either
the petitioner or his wife from filing the return on time.
Moreover, a review of the 1996 tax return shows that despite
petitioner’s illness, petitioner earned $88,701.79 in wages as a
banker working for Citicorp and that he and his wife received an
additional $18,967 in capital gains from their stock transactions
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Last modified: May 25, 2011