The Golsen Rule and Parties' Ability to Stipulate Appellate Venue from Tax Court Decisions (5/21/24; 5/24/24)

Readers of this blog are (or should be) familiar with the Tax Court’s Golsen rule requiring the Tax Court to apply directly in point precedent of the Circuit to which an appeal may be taken in the case. See On the Tax Court's Golsen Rule (Federal Tax Procedure Blog 12/3/23; 12/5/23), here; for an interesting discussion of the Golsen this rule with respect to a Tax Court precedent which had been reversed by one Court of Appeals so that the Tax Court precedent would not apply to appeals to that Circuit but remained as Tax Court precedent for application in other Circuits that had not yet addressed the issue, see Tax Court Again Declines to Reconsider Its Holding that the Preparer's Fraud without the Taxpayer's Fraud Invokes Unlimited Statute of Limitations (Federal Tax Procedure Blog 1/25/24; 2/5/24), here.

Section 7482(b) here, titled “Courts of Review,” prescribes venue for appeals. For individuals, under § 7482(b)(1), the default venue is in the Court of Appeals with jurisdiction over the “legal residence of the taxpayer.” For example, if A resides in Houston, TX, appeal venue is in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Under § 7482(b)(2), the parties may stipulate venue in another Circuit (including, of course, the Circuit in which the taxpayer resides, even though the stipulation is meaningless).

These rules are why the Tax Court is careful to note the residence of the individual taxpayer early in the findings of fact and, if the parties have stipulated to a different appellate venue, state the stipulation. (In most cases, there is no stipulation, so the Tax Court usually does not state that there is no stipulation, and addresses the issue in the opinion only if there is a stipulation.) Not only does the finding get the facts into the opinion as to appellate venue, it assists the Court in applying its Golsen rule.

In Anderson v. Commissioner, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 11966  (10th Cir. 5/17/24) (Nonprecedential), CA10 here and GS [to come], an opinion otherwise not noteworthy for this blog, the Court said (slip op. 6 n. 2) that “The parties stipulated to review in the Tenth Circuit. See 26 U.S.C. § 7482(b)(2).” That was a repeat of the same finding in the Tax Court. Anderson v. Commissioner, 2023 TC Memo 42, *2. (“The parties have stipulated that venue for any appeal in this case is the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. See § 7482(b)(2).”) Today’s blog is about the § 7482(b)(2) provision for stipulating appellate venue.

Appeals from the Tax Court (12/2/13)

I write today to point readers to the excellent blog Procedurally Taxing blog entry:  Keith Fogg, Appellate Venue in Tax Court cases – Taking Care in Applying Golsen in non-deficiency cases (11/26/13), here.  I strongly recommend that readers of this blog link to it and read it.

Inspired by the posting, I have revised my Federal Tax Procedure text to include the points that some Tax Court appeals are exclusively to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and that, at least as to those appeals for now, the application of the Golsen rule will mean that the District of Columbia Court of Appeals will set uniform national law on the issues, meaning that certiorari to the Supreme Court will be based exclusively on importance of the issue and not on conflict among the circuits.  (That is overbroad, but a sufficient generalization for now.)

The concept of a single court of appeals, variously formulated, for tax cases has been around for many years, with many proponents and opponents.  It is a long history which is suggested by the following quote from an article (in a footnote, no less):  Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Peter W. Huber, The Intercircuit Committee, 100 Harv. L. Rev. 1417, 1429 n. 61 (1987):

There may be a few discrete bodies of law so arcane and complex that no other solution will do. The Federal Circuit now satisfies the need for early appellate declaration of national law in certain areas, notably, patent disputes. See 28 U.S.C. § 1295 (1982) (assigning to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit exclusive jurisdiction over enumerated matters, including appeals from the district courts in patent cases, appeals from the Merit Systems Protection Board, appeals from the agency boards of contract appeals, and appeals from the district courts in certain cases against the United States); see also S. REP. NO. 275, 97th Cong., 2d Sess. 3, 4, reprinted in 1982 U.S. CODE CONG. & ADMIN. NEWS 11, 13, 14. Congress believed that the federal judicial system lacked sufficient capacity "to provide reasonably quick and definitive answers to legal questions of nationwide significance." Id. at 13. It therefore established the Federal Circuit to adjudicate definitively in areas where the legislators found "special need for nationwide uniformity." Id. at 14. 

A single court of tax appeals could promote uniformity and coherence in another federal law domain populated by specialist advocates and rarely benefited by the labors of generalist judges, including those on the Supreme Court. See H. FRIENDLY, FEDERAL JURISDICTION: A GENERAL VIEW 161-71 (1973); Ginsburg, Making Tax Law Through the Judicial Process, 70 A.B.A. J. 74 (1984); Griswold, The Need for a Court of Tax Appeals, 57 HARV. L. REV. 1153 (1944).