“Abstract from the Tax Court website. ‘Generally, a Tax Court Opinion is issued in a regular case when the Tax Court believes it involves a sufficiently important legal issue or principle.’ ‘Generally, a Memorandum Opinion is issued in a regular case that does not involve a novel legal issue. A Memorandum Opinion addresses cases where the law is settled or factually driven.’

“So one expects a Tax Court Opinion to have a certain gravitas;  if not an Olympian pronouncement, then at least an oracular quality.”

See my blogpost “This Old House”,  1/30/12, from  which the foregoing is taken.

So I question why Michael Keith Shenk, 140 T. C. 10, filed 5/6/13, is so favored.

After all, Mike’s story is a many-times-told tale of matrimonial counsel’s ineptitude, awarding dependency exemption and child tax credit to the non-custodial Mike, but not requiring custodial Julie to give Mike a Form 8332 or equivalent. So non-custodial Mike wanted all of it, but custodial Julie split the exemption and credit, for the three minor offspring they have bestowed on the world.

IRS gave custodial Julie the two she claimed, and Mike one of three (like the Ancient Mariner). Mike says “No, I should have it all per the divorce decree.” And he asked for a continuance of the trial to get one from custodial Julie or modify the divorce decree to require her to give him one.

IRS says non-custodial Mike can file the Form 8332 late, but in this case the statute is about to run for IRS to recover from custodial Julie the exemptions and credits she took for the year at issue.

The ever-obliging Judge Gustafson: “Because Mr. Shenk made no accounting for his having waited a year to try to obtain Form 8332, the Court denied Mr. Shenk’s motion for a continuance, stating that the parties should ‘go ahead and have today the trial that you are ready to have now, to put on the evidence you have to put on now,’ and that the Court would then ‘entertain at the end of it whatever motion you want to make about keeping the record open.’ Mr. Shenk put on his case and contended he is entitled to a dependency exemption deduction for all three children. At the end of trial, he again moved that the record be left open so that he could obtain and offer a Form 8332 signed by his ex-wife for 2009. We denied the motion without prejudice and stated that we would delay issuing any opinion in the case until after April 15, 2013, in order to give Mr. Shenk the opportunity to obtain the Form 8332, if he could, and to move to reopen the record of this case by that date. He did not do so.” 140 T. C. 10, at p. 7.

Non-custodial Mike argues that under the divorce decree and State law, custodial Julie should have signed the Form 8332, and custodial Mike is therefore entitled.

The ever-obliging Judge Gustafson can’t go that far. “But ultimately it is the Internal Revenue Code and not State court orders that determine one’s eligibility to claim a deduction for Federal income tax purposes, and Mr. Shenk does not meet the criteria of the Code for claiming the disputed dependency exemption deduction. He is the noncustodial parent, and the custodial parent did not sign the required declaration.” 140 T. C. 10, at p. 11.

And “coulda woulda shoulda” doesn’t get it. Neither does a Form 8332 obtained after custodial Julie got the tax benefits, and it’s too late for IRS to go after her. Then both custodial Julie and non-custodial Mike would get the benefits, and that’s a double-dip.

So what else is new?