The Girl of My Dreams remarked yesterday on my use of the word “leisurely” to define United States Tax Court practice, for which see my blogpost “Modest Experience,” 8/15/23. She remembered my tales of State courtiering in the early days, when waiting six months for decision in a motion for a summary J was unheard of, and administrative judges wore out bullwhips from cracking same at the dilatory. “Three years with discovery incomplete?” she said, incredulous.

Today she can look at Daniel E. Larkin and Christine L. Larkin, T. C. Memo. 2023-106, filed 8/16/23, involving Docket Nos. 14886-08, 19940-09. You can pay three figures for Scotch younger than those petitions. But this is a remand from DC Cir, to redo four (count ’em, four) “‘discrete errors acknowledged by the Commissioner’ affecting the correct amounts of the deficiencies, additions to tax, and penalties due from petitioners for the years at issue.” T. C. Memo. 2023-106, at p. 2. I’ve blogged Dan’s & Christine’s earlier trips to USTC.

And that’s all Judge Gale does. The Larkins’ attempts to get IRS to abate previous years’ assessments and re-assess corrected ones, to allow foreign earned income credits that the Larkins failed to substantiate, and their belated attempt to challenge chops based on Boss Hossery, all fail, either because of Section 7486 correctability, or the limitations of remand. DC Cir, after all, affirmed everything but the four errors.

So this case establishes that Judge Gale, unusually, can add.