Cite as: 516 U. S. 235 (1996)
Thomas, J., dissenting
irrational, nor would giving a taxpayer an incentive to submit his return before the Service calculates his tax obligation, locates him, and sends him a deficiency notice. Thus, for example, Congress might well have provided that if the notice of deficiency is sent prior to the taxpayer's filing his return, the taxpayer will have only a 2-year look-back period in any forum.
What would not make much sense to me, however, would be deliberately to adopt this scheme only in Tax Court proceedings—i. e., to punish only the taxpayer whose cash reserves make it impossible for him to provide the Government a still larger loan in any amount it demands while the taxpayer pursues relief in the district court or Court of Federal Claims, the taxpayer who is too unsophisticated to realize that a suit in district court could preserve his right to a re-fund, and the taxpayer whose expected refund is too small in relation to attorney's fees and other costs to justify a suit in district court. Obviously Congress could constitutionally have adopted such a strange scheme, but I will not simply presume that it has done so. Indeed, the Commissioner does not suggest any reason why Congress would have intended to do this; rather, it merely notes that there are many (generally unrelated) differences between Tax Court and district court proceedings and insists that the plain language of �� 6511 and 6512(b)(3)(B) mandates this result.
As noted previously, the harder step for me is the antecedent one of determining that � 6511 itself permits a refund in these circumstances, because it does not appear to me that either � 6511 or � 6512(b) was written with delinquent filers in mind. Once that hurdle is cleared, however, it makes no sense to bar the taxpayer's recovery in the Tax Court alone, when the language of � 6512(b)(3)(B) does not mandate this result and when there is no reason to think that Congress intended it.
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