Referral to Procedurally Taxing Blog on Tax Court Delays (10/31/22)

I refer readers to It is Time To Take Remedial Steps To Improve The Timeliness of Tax Court Dispositions (Procedurally Taxing Blog 10/31/22), here.  The subject is concern that, at various key points in the litigation process in the Tax Court, there are bottlenecks that result in some cases being delayed beyond what seems appropriate, given the important role the Tax Court serves in our ubiquitous tax system. It is perhaps hyperbole to state the common phrase that justice delayed is justice denied. Our litigation system involves delays, but that does not justify unnecessarily long delays of the type the authors have observed in some Tax Court litigation.

The post is signed by several persons who observe and write on tax system, focusing on procedure.  They are:

Leslie Book
Keith Fogg
Steve Olsen
Nina Olson
Jack Townsend

I encourage readers having creative ideas on how to make the system more timely make comments on the PT blog entry linked above or perhaps even offering a submission to the PT Blog Team for a Guest Blog.

To me, the most shocking point made in the PT blog is that the Tax Court (really through such management as the Tax Court has) does not track these bottlenecks. I have worked on databases for over 30 years now. I believe that most, if  not all, of the key data to track the bottlenecks is already in the Tax Court’s database system. I project that Tax Court management could easily establish some type of computer routine to extract key management information on cases and judges that are bottlenecks in the system.

Finally, although I suspect that most readers of this blog already make the Procedurally Taxing Blog part of their regular reading on tax procedure.  If not, I highly recommend it.