Judge Patrick J. (“Scholar Pat”) Urda has USDCDC and DC Cir to block for him, as he blo0ws through Prince Amun-Ra Hotep Ankh Meduty, 160 T. C. 13, filed 5/23/23. Prince Amun-Ra Hotep Ankh Meduty, hereinafter “Steve,” is an old-time merchant of “run-of-the-mill tax-protester arguments,” 160 T. C. 13, at p. 5.

Steve ran up $100K of taxes and Section 6702 chops, so IRS told State to grab Steve’s passport. Judge Scholar Pat goes through the Action Code 640s in the Form 4340s (160 T. C. 13, at p. 6) showing levies made.

Now SOL has run on some, but not all, of Steve’s open delinquencies, and have been written off.

“The total amount of Mr. Meduty’s tax liabilities thus dipped below the [year at issue] threshold amount after the date of the certifications. This change in circumstances does not suggest that the certification should be reversed. Once a valid certification is made, section 7345(c)(1) and (2) provides that a debt ‘ceases to be a seriously delinquent debt’ only if the debt ‘has been fully satisfied or has become legally unenforceable.” (Emphasis added.) Since at least some of the debt remains outstanding and legally enforceable, this requirement has not been satisfied. See Belton, T.C. Memo. 2023-13, at *16 n.17.” 160 T.C.13, at p. 5, footnote 4. For the Belton story, see my blosee my blogpost “Section 7345 – Backdoor CDP?” 1/24/23.

Steve has one valid claim, hence this full-dress T. C. He claims he never got the Section 7345(d) contemporaneous notice of certification. But USDCDC and DC Cir got there first.

“As the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia recently noted, ‘§ 7345 does not say that a flawed or failed notice renders a certification erroneous.’ McNeil v. United States, No. CV 20-329 (JDB),  2021 WL 1061221, at *5 (D.D.C. Mar. 18, 2021), aff’d per curiam sub nom. McNeil v. U.S. Dep’t of State, No. 21-5161, 2022 WL 4349598 (D.C.  Cir. Sept. 20, 2022). And the structure of section 7345 belies such a conclusion. Subsections (a) and (b) describe when the Secretary of the Treasury must transmit certification to the Secretary of State and identify which debts qualify as “seriously delinquent tax debt.” Neither suggests that notice is a prerequisite to a proper certification by the IRS of a ‘seriously delinquent tax debt.’ See McNeil, 2021 WL 1061221, at *5. To the contrary, ‘subsection (d) says that notice to the taxpayer should be ‘contemporaneous[]’ with certification to State, so it logically cannot be a prerequisite to that certification.=’ Id.” 160 T. C. 13, at p. 8.

And since Section 7345(e) doesn’t set any SOL on a grabee going into USDC to challenge the grab, Steve isn’t prejudiced if he didn’t get the notice.

Tax Court only has Section 7345 jurisdiction to review if there was a substantial tax liability at time of certification to State. “In short, we do not believe that our jurisdiction to determine whether a certification is erroneous encompasses patrolling compliance with the requirement to provide notice to a taxpayer ‘in simple and nontechnical terms of the right to bring a civil action under subsection  (e).’ See I.R.C. § 7345(d).” 160 T. C. 13, at p. 8.