Harold A. Lange - Page 13

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          petitioner affirms the veracity, accuracy, and completeness of              
          the return, as declared in the jurat.  Following Williams and               
          Sloan, we therefore hold that the 2000 Form 1040 is not a valid             
          return, as the jurat has been vitiated by an accompanying                   
          statement.  The declarations in the protest document produce just           
          the kind of "guessing game" about the document's import that we             
          refused to require the Commissioner to undertake in Sloan and               
          Williams.6                                                                  
               Moreover, as was the case in Williams, the 2000 Form 1040              
          herein would also fail at least two parts of the four-part test             
          of a valid return enunciated in Beard v. Commissioner, 82 T.C. at           
          777.  First, because the jurat has been vitiated, the 2000 Form             
          1040 has not been executed under penalties of perjury.  Second,             
          we conclude that the 2000 Form 1040 does not represent an honest            
          and reasonable attempt to satisfy the requirements of the tax               
          law.  Petitioner's contention in the protest document that he is            
          not an "individual" as that term is used in sections 1 and 3 is             
          frivolous.  While items of income are reported and taxable income           
          is purportedly computed, the entries on the lines for "tax" and             
          "total tax" are blank and $0, respectively.  Inexplicably, after            
          reporting both "total tax" and "total payments" as $0, petitioner           


               6 We note that the 2000 Form 1040 was considered by three              
          units of respondent before respondent concluded that the document           
          could not serve as the basis for assessing any Federal income tax           
          liability for petitioner for 2000.                                          





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