Tax News

CCH (cch.taxgroup.com) reports:

The Tax Court lacked jurisdiction to consider an individual's request for deficiency redeterminations and innocent spouse relief with respect to adjustments related to his participation in a partnership with his former wife. A joint notice of deficiency was sent to the couple after a TEFRA partnership proceeding was brought in the federal district court by a non-tax matters partner. Because the adjustments set forth in the notice of deficiency were attributable to partnership items that were the subject of that on-going proceeding, the notice of deficiency was invalid. Accordingly, the Tax Court lacked jurisdiction to redetermine the deficiency.
In addition, the taxpayer's request for innocent spouse relief was not a valid stand-alone petition for relief. The request was premature because a deficiency had not been asserted against him. The parties' attempts to settle their tax liabilities, the issuance of an FPAA and the invalid notice of deficiency taken together did not demonstrate that the IRS asserted a deficiency. The taxpayer's entitlement to relief was an affected item that could be determined only after the partnership-level proceeding concluded. Thus, the taxpayer could not seek relief until the underlying partnership-level proceeding was final and the IRS issued either a notice of computational adjustment or a valid affected items notice of deficiency to the taxpayer.
P.D. Adkison, 129 TC No. 13, Dec. 57,144
Other References:
Code Sec. 6015
CCH Reference - 2007FED ¶35,192.66
Code Sec. 6230
CCH Reference - 2007FED ¶32,769.30
Tax Research Consultant
CCH Reference - TRC PART: 60,312