- 23 -
in part and vacating in part T.C. Memo. 2004-93; see Commissioner
v. Ewing, 439 F.3d at 1009, 1013 (9th Cir. 2006). Given such a
plain reading, it is improper for the Court to resort to the
legislative history of section 6015(e)(1) to change that reading.
In accordance with deeply ingrained principles of statutory
construction, the Court must apply section 6015(e)(1) according
to its terms,4 see Commissioner v. Soliman, 506 U.S. 168, 174
(1993); Garcia v. United States, 469 U.S. 70, 76 n.3 (1984);
Venture Funding, Ltd. v. Commissioner, 110 T.C. 236, 241-242
(1998), affd. without published opinion 198 F.3d 248 (6th Cir.
1999), and must not resort to the legislative history of the
statute to find ambiguities in its terms so as to apply those
terms inconsistently with their plain meaning, see Commissioner
v. Ewing, 439 F.3d at 1013. See Ewing v. Commissioner, 118 T.C.
at 511-514 (Laro, J., dissenting) (discussing the plain meaning
of the terms in section 6015(e)(1) vis-a-vis the reading given
those terms by the Court’s opinion in that case). Accordingly,
unless the Court finds that all three of the referenced
requirements have been met, section 6015(e)(1) does not allow the
4 Although the legislative history to a statute may
sometimes override the statute’s plain meaning interpretation and
lead to a different result where the statute’s history contains
unequivocal evidence of a clear legislative intent, see Consumer
Prod. Safety Commn. v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U.S. 102, 108
(1980); see also Allen v. Commissioner, 118 T.C. 1, 17 (2002),
the legislative history underlying sec. 6015(e)(1) supports the
conclusions set forth in this concurring opinion. See Ewing v.
Commissioner, 118 T.C. at 522-526 (Laro, J., dissenting).
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