US v. Wright, F81-048 CIVIL.
| Decision Date | 24 February 1986 |
| Docket Number | No. F81-048 CIVIL.,F81-048 CIVIL. |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Donald R. WRIGHT, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Alaska |
Michael R. Spaan, U.S. Atty., Anchorage, Alaska, F. Michael Kovach, Jr., Trial Atty., Tax Div., U.S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., for plaintiff.
Robert M. Kane, Jr., Seattle, Wash., Thomas O. McLaughlin, Anchorage, Alaska, for defendants.
This action was brought under 26 U.S.C. §§ 7401 and 7403 to reduce to judgment an assessment of federal income taxes allegedly owed by Defendants for the years 1971, 1972, and 1973. Now before the Court is the stipulation of the parties that the case be submitted for decision without trial based on the present record.
As noted in the Court's order of October 8, 1985, the threshold determination here is whether Plaintiff mailed the requisite notice of deficiency in full compliance with 26 U.S.C. § 6212 which, in relevant part, provides:
(a) In general. — If the Secretary determines that there is a deficiency in respect of any tax ... he is authorized to send notice of such deficiency to the taxpayer by certified mail or registered mail.
After the statutory notice is mailed, the taxpayer has ninety days within which to petition the Tax Court of the United States for a redetermination. 26 U.S.C. § 6213(a). No collection action may be maintained against the taxpayer until notice has been mailed and the ninety-day period has run, and, if a petition has been filed with the Tax Court, until the judgment of that court has become final. Id. The IRS must send a deficiency notice before it may assess, collect, or reduce to judgment most income tax liabilities. This notice is valid — even if not received by the taxpayer — when mailed to his or her last known address. United States v. Zolla, 724 F.2d 808, 810 (9th Cir.1984), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 830, 105 S.Ct. 116, 83 L.Ed.2d 59 (1985). If the notice were mailed in compliance with the foregoing, the Court must then consider Defendants' other grounds for dismissal; if not so mailed, this case must be dismissed.
The record consists mostly of an extensive stipulation of facts. Briefly, the relevant undisputed facts are as follows.
During 1971 to 1974, Donald Wright and his wife Carol1 lived at 1104 Southampton Drive in Anchorage. That address appeared on the tax returns the couple filed for those years, and mail directed to that address continued to reach Donald Wright even though he spent the winter of 1974-1975 in Hawaii. At first, mail was forwarded to him by friends and relatives who lived at the Southampton Drive residence; later, mail was forwarded as a result of a change of address form sent by Donald and Judith Wright to the post office. When the Wrights returned to live in Alaska in May of 1975, they again directed the post office to forward their mail, this time to a postal box in Fairbanks where they were staying with relatives.
During this time, the IRS investigation of the tax status of Donald and Carol Wright had progressed through both civil and criminal divisions. Following adoption of a report recommending that the criminal investigation be dropped, the audit division determined in the summer of 1975 that a civil action would be instituted to recover amounts allegedly owed as taxes for the years 1971, 1972, and 1973. The IRS asserts that it sent a deficiency notice on or about July 10, 1975, to Donald and Carol Wright at the Southampton Drive address. Defendants argue that such a notice was not mailed.
The IRS manual details the procedures to be followed by IRS employees in keeping a record of the mailing of notices of deficiency. The notices are to be sent by certified mail, and the certified mailing receipt (also known as a "form 3877") is filled out and retained. In practice, that form was usually attached to a copy of the notice and placed in the file. These forms are highly probative and have been held sufficient to establish, in the absence of contrary evidence, that notice has been properly given. United States v. Zolla, 724 F.2d at 810. The IRS also maintains a daily log of such mailings. This log contains the taxpayer's name and the certified mail number for all deficiency notices mailed.
Some time after July 10, 1975, the Wrights' file with the audit materials and tax returns was lost. The daily log has since been discarded.
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Walthall v. US, A94-052 CV (JKS).
...was mailed, not that it was received. See § 6223(a); see also United States v. Zolla, 724 F.2d 808 (9th Cir.1984); United States v. Wright, 658 F.Supp. 1 (D.Alaska 1986); and United States v. Arford, 71 A.F.T.R.2d 93-718, 1993 WL 120365 (D.Idaho 1993). The Court is satisfied that the mailin......
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Farr v. U.S.
...log book and affidavit supporting mailing of notices sufficient to prove actual mailing of IRS notices). But see United States v. Wright, 658 F.Supp. 1, 2 (D.Alaska 1986) (date-stamped copy of IRS notice and memorandum discussing it not sufficient evidence to prove mailing). Farr did submit......
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Peter v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue
...was admissible, it did not, standing alone, meet respondent's burden to show that the notice was in fact mailed. In United States v. Wright, 658 F. Supp. 1 (D. Alaska 1986), a collection action, the government had lost the administrative file and had long since discarded the daily log of ma......
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Welch v. United States
...leads to the justifiable inference that the 1992 notice of deficiency was timely mailed. The appellants' reliance on United States v. Wright, 658 F.Supp. 1 (D.Alaska 1986) to defeat this conclusion is misplaced. In Wright, much of the taxpayers' file was lost or discarded. Id. at 2. The IRS......