Taxpayer not entitled to legal rights if he does not respond to IRS notices
Taxpayer who didn’t pick up his mail couldn’t challenge tax liability at Onyango, (6/24/2014) 142 TC No. 24 The Tax Court has held that, where IRS sent a notice of deficiency, often called a 90 day letter, to a taxpayer’s legal residence that was returned to IRS by the Postal Service when the taxpayer didn’t pick up the notice after many weeks, the taxpayer couldn’t argue that he didn’t receive the notice for purposes of allowing a taxpayer to challenge his underlying tax liability at a collection due process cdp hearing if he didn’t receive a notice of deficiency. On several occasions, the U.S. Postal Service attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to deliver the notice of deficiency to Onyango at his address. On at least two occasions, the Postal Service left notices of attempted delivery of certified mail at that address. In those notices, the Postal Service informed Onyango that it had certified mail to deliver to him and that he had to sign a receipt for that mail before the Postal Service would deliver it to him. At all relevant times, including during the period August to December 2010, Onyango received certain bills through the Postal Service mail system at his apartment. Onyango declined to check on a regular basis his mailbox at that apartment and to retrieve on a regular basis any Postal Service mail items delivered there. He usually disregarded and rarely opened the bills that he received through the Postal Service mail system. In other words, you can’t ignore the IRS notices and then dispute their claim. Background. IRS must give a taxpayer written notice before IRS levies on the taxpayer’s property. The notice must inform him of the right to request a hearing in IRS’s Appeals Office. At the hearing, the taxpayer may challenge the existence or amount of the underlying tax liability only if he did not receive a statutory notice of deficiency for the tax liability and did not otherwise have an opportunity to dispute the tax liability. But in this case the taxpayer did nothing. IRS argued that Onyango’s denial was not credible and “should be given no weight.” The Court agreed with IRS that Onyango’s testimony was not credible in certain material respects and thus was unreliable.
