Estate of Randy Glassman, Deceased, Steven Glassman, Personal Representative, and Steven Glassman, T. C. Memo. 2024-51, filed 4/24/24, is another off-the-shelf IRS partial summary J motion, where the RA’s supe was on leave and an acting supe (with a Form 10247 designation in the file covering material dates) signed off on the Section 6662 chop.

And Judge Albert G. (“Scholar Al”) Lauber brushes off the petitioners’ contention that the Acting Boss Hoss didn’t even look at what he was signing.

“Section 6751(b)(1) does not inquire into the time or effort the examiner and the supervisor devote to their respective tasks. Rather, ‘[t]he written supervisory approval requirement . . . requires just that: written supervisory approval.’  We do not second-guess the extent of the RA’s or the supervisor’s deliberations about whether penalties should be imposed. We reiterate that the signature of a group manager on a penalty approval form—or the signature of the acting group manager, as here—is sufficient, without more, to satisfy the statutory requirements.” T. C. Memo. 2024-51, at pp. 5-6. (Citations omitted, but they’re the usual).

Judge Scholar Al has briefly summarized the complete evisceration of Section 6751(b). Rather than providing the slightest, flimsiest protection to taxpayers from RAs who use the threat of penalties to extort settlements from the unsophisticated, the slipshod drafting that should embarrass a first-hour law student has made supervisory approval the equivalent of the robosigned foreclosure pleadings in the days of the Great Subprime Mortgage Meltdown.

Lest any readers misinterpret what I am saying, I am not laying a blast on the Court or on the judges. It’s the wretched drafting of Section 6751(b) that’s at fault here. The judges are interpreting the law as written. That the writer(s) hadn’t a clue what the word “assessed” means in taxspeak, or that they did not make clear that the sign-off was more than a hasty scrawl routinely given, isn’t the judges’ fault.