-9-
at this holding, we examined both the decision letter and the
timeliness of the taxpayer’s request in order to decide whether
Appeals had made a valid determination.
Respondent’s reliance on Craig is misplaced. In Craig,
Appeals did not issue a notice of determination. Instead,
Appeals issued a decision letter that, on its face, did not
establish a basis for our jurisdiction. As a result, in order to
ascertain whether Appeals had made the determination required by
section 6330, we examined both the decision letter and the
timeliness of the taxpayer’s request for a section 6330 hearing
to arrive at our conclusion that the Appeals decision letter
contained the determination required by section 6330. Craig does
not stand for the proposition that we may look behind a facially
valid notice of determination in response to the Commissioner’s
contention that the notice of determination was erroneously
issued. See Lunsford v. Commissioner, supra.
In Lunsford, we were presented with the issue of whether a
facially valid notice of determination was sufficient to confer
jurisdiction over a section 6330 proceeding in which no section
6330 hearing had been held before the notice of determination had
been issued. The taxpayer in Lunsford had timely requested a
section 6330 hearing, but no administrative hearing of any kind
had been conducted. Id. at 161. Appeals nevertheless issued a
notice of determination, and the taxpayer filed a timely
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