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Commissioner (or anyone else for that matter) must actually have
determined a deficiency. The pertinent language of section
6015(e)(1) as amended requires only that a deficiency must have
been asserted by someone, but it does not specify by whom or how
or when.
Because section 6015(e) as amended does not use the magic
words “determine a deficiency” or specify that the deficiency
must actually be asserted by the Commissioner, section 6015(e)(1)
as amended screams out for interpretation. If Congress had
intended to limit the right to petition this Court in section
6015 cases only to those taxpayers who had received a notice of
deficiency, it is beyond debate that Congress knew how to say so
clearly and unequivocally. The fact that Congress did not refer
to “an individual against whom a deficiency has been determined”
or to “an individual against whom the Commissioner has determined
a deficiency” is compelling evidence that Congress did not
intend, when it amended section 6015(e)(1), to limit the right to
petition this Court in section 6015 cases to those taxpayers to
whom the Commissioner had mailed a notice of deficiency.
This case illustrates why recourse to the legislative
history is warranted now and was warranted in Ewing I.
Petitioner filed a joint return for 1999 with his wife. On that
return, there is an understatement of tax attributable to the
erroneous items (unreported embezzlement income) of petitioner’s
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