No, not the TV cops-‘n’-robbers. Today it finally became clear to me why there cannot be refunds of the sixty buck filing fee.

It’s probably been clear to y’all from the getgo, so I’m waiting for the choir to sing the “Amen” from Messiah.

Every day the Tax Court is open, even when there are no opinions or designated hitters, there are dozens of orders telling petitioners to cough or cop.

Either cough up the sixty bucks or cop a waiver.  I don’t have the statistics on how many do neither, but intuition seasoned with plowing through this stuff says better than 90% do neither.

I wish the hard-laboring intake clerks and flailing datestampers would provide valid statistics.  I know it’s tangential to TAS’ mission at best, but the numbers could be part of Nina E. (“The Big O”) Olson’s annual weep to Congress.

Howbeit, each of those nonstarters takes the same amount of work to log in and create a file as a multi-billion-dollar deficiency filed by a trillion-dollar multinational, featuring white shoes in divisional strength, which takes ten years to get to trial with no time off for good behavior.  And the trillion-dollar multinational pays the same sixty bucks.

So the relatively few who cough or cop subsidize the rest.

No, don’t draw any political analogies. Not here.

Hit it, choir!