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judicial review of the determination made by the Appeals Office
with respect to the Commissioner’s proposed levy, we held that
the taxpayer had a statutory right under section 7521(a)(1) to
audio record his section 6330 hearing. Id. at 17-19. However,
we did not specifically address when an interview qualifies as
“in-person” in Keene, presumably because that aspect of the
taxpayer’s argument was not contested by the Commissioner and
could not reasonably be disputed on the facts of the case. That
issue is now before us.
2. The Meaning of “In-Person” in Section 7521(a)
As we acknowledged in Keene, section 7521(a) does not define
the term “in-person interview”. Although we held in Keene that a
face-to-face section 6330 hearing qualified as an “in-person
interview” within the meaning of section 7521(a), we did not
decide whether other kinds of section 6330 hearings, such as the
telephone hearing involved in this case, also qualified as an
“in-person interview”.
Where a term is not defined by statute, it is appropriate to
accord the term its “ordinary meaning”. Nw. Forest Res. Council
v. Glickman, 82 F.3d 825, 833 (9th Cir. 1996); Keene v.
Commissioner, 121 T.C. at 14. “And when there is no indication
Congress intended a specific legal meaning for the term, courts
may look to sources such as dictionaries for a definition.”
Keene v. Commissioner, supra at 14-15; see also Muscarello v.
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