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sentences to the “scope of review” issue. Specifically, the
Court of Appeals stated that the “record review” provisions of
the APA do not apply to the Tax Court.5 The Court of Appeals
provided the following citation in support of that statement:
“See 5 U.S.C. � 504(a)(1) (APA does not apply where ‘a matter
[is] subject to a subsequent trial of the law and the facts de
novo in a court’).” APA section 554, to which the Court of
Appeals presumably was referring, provides rules governing agency
adjudications “required by statute to be determined on the record
after opportunity for an agency hearing”–-i.e., formal agency
adjudications. APA section 554(a)(1) simply provides that,
notwithstanding the general scope of APA section 554, that
section (as opposed to the entire APA) does not apply if the
matter is subject to a subsequent trial de novo. In other words,
the agency adjudication of such a matter need not conform to the
“formal” procedural rules set forth in APA section 554. As
section 6330 administrative adjudications are not “required by
statute to be determined on the record”, it follows that APA
section 554, including the “de novo” exception of APA section
554(a)(1), is altogether inapplicable to section 6330
proceedings.
5 As noted earlier, see supra note 3, the record rule
predates, and is not codified in, the APA. See also Ewing v.
Commissioner, 122 T.C. at 60 n.8 and accompanying text (Halpern
and Holmes, JJ., dissenting).
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