William Goddard, T. C. Memo. 2022-96, filed 9/19/22, and the law firm which he founded, didn’t realize that the CDP is the trial; that every argument you have has to be raised; and that the administrative record has to be built and probed for adequacy.

You can read for yourself Judge Elizabeth A. (“Tex”) Copeland’s deconstruction of Goddard’s and the law firm’s attempts to fight the liability issue in Tax Court. But when it’s all been sifted, Goddard and the law firm participated in the process. And when an AO noted that cases like theirs settled for 50% because of fading memories, and that necessary information was missing from the Exam file in their cases, they did nothing. T. C. Memo. 2022-96, at pp. 11-12.

The issue in this case was the old Section 6707 chops for nonregistration of potentially abusive tax shelters, subsequently repealed (or maybe amended out of existence). See T. C. Memo. 2022-96, at pp. 31-32.

SOL founders on nonfiling of the now-obsolete Form 8264. No filing, no SOL. The 28 USC § 2462 catch-all five-year SOL doesn’t apply when there’s no filing.

There will be more, though. ” We will hold additional proceedings to consider Mr. Goddard’s and [law firm]’s remaining issues raised in their Petitions, namely additional verification issues, the laches defense, the rejection of LGD’s offer-in-compromise, and whether the SOs balanced the need for collection actions with the legitimate concern that those actions be no more intrusive than necessary.” T. C. Memo. 2022-96, at p. 32.

Judge Tex Copeland split this case in two, as if Goddard and the law firm won on any of the issues they raised in this half, that would have ended the case. They didn’t, so it didn’t.