That’s Judge Cohen; she doesn’t like cognomens, and doesn’t like petitioners who fiddle with OIC forms and expect the SO assigned to their CDP to edit their Forms 656 (with no financial information attached).

And this is the third time around for Craig K. Potts & Kristen H. Potts, Docket No. 9307-17L, filed 6/20/18.

The backstory is found in 2017 T. C. Memo. 228, filed 11/20/17, which I didn’t blog at the time. It was a Form 870-AD waiver for one year, and a chance to contest deficiency for the others that ended with another T. C. Memo. That Craig & Kristen has six (count ‘em, six) OICs hanging about in 2017 didn’t impress the SO, or Judge Albert G (“Scholar Al”) Lauber either.

OK, so tax due is off the table.

Craig & Kristen has an OIC pending when they had their latest CDP. The SO said he couldn’t deal with the OIC, but checked out everything else, and affirmed.

“Essentially petitioners argue that it was an abuse of discretion for the SO not to delay action while petitioners’ missteps–whether intentional and strategic or inadvertent–were straightened out. Those missteps were altering the prescribed form for submitting an offer-in-compromise, submitting various altered forms to different offices of the IRS, attempting to recharacterize the form from ETA to one based on DATC, and continuously raising new arguments not properly raised with the Appeals office during the years that administrative proceedings were pending. Petitioners’ inconsistencies and strategies of altering forms and resubmitting them to different IRS offices apparently were intended to avoid submitting financial information and to support their claim that the payment made with the offer was refundable.” Order, at p. 3.

Any confusion was engendered by Craig & Kristen. NOD affirmed.