No, not the usual six or seven pager with its injunction to play nice and prep for trial. Jones Bluff, LLC, Green Rock Management, LLC, Partnership Representative, 166 T. C. 6, filed 3/19/26, claim that the partners therein are deprived of due process because the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 vests sole right to challenge the FPA IRS unleashed on the Jones Bluffers on the Green Rockers.

Ch J Urda, and Judges Buch, Nega, Pugh, Ashford, Copeland, Jones, Toro, Greaves, Marshall, Weiler, Way, Landy, Arbeit, Guider, Jenkins, and Fung aren’t buying. Ex-Ch J Kathleen (“TBS = The Big Shillelagh”) Kerrigan tells us why.

After a review of partnership taxation from before TEFRA to the current BBA régime, the Green Rockers Are without standing to assert the claims of the Jones Bluff partners. Sure, the Green Rockers have standing to fight the FPA. But do they have standing to represent the partners?

“The third-party standing inquiry adds a second set of prudential considerations to the Article III requirement of injury in fact. Once a party has satisfied the requirements of Article III standing, the doctrine of third-party standing requires a plaintiff to meet additional factors to assert another party’s rights. A decision to grant third-party standing is one of ‘judicial self-governance.’” 166 T. C. 6, at p. 9. (Citations omitted). And courts are reluctant to do so except in First Amendment cases. 

Now there is a close relationship between partnership and partners, satisfying one branch of the third-party standing test. But the Green Rockers fail to satisfy the other branch, that the third party is hindered in seeking redress if third-party standing is withheld. There’s always a CDP or a pay-and-seek-refund in USDC, 166 T. C. 6, at p. 11, footnote 6.

Moreover, the summary J motion here isn’t ripe for adjudication. BBA section 6226 lets the partnership push out liability to the partners, or pay at partnership level. But that depends on whether there’s liability at all, and nobody knows that until trial and decision final beyond appeal. Courts refrain from deciding cases where the result will depend on contingent future events that may or may not happen.

“The passing on of that liability to the individual members will occur, if at all, as a result of petitioner’s actions and not respondent’s actions. Petitioner’s actions therefore are ‘contingent future events’ that render the claims it is making on behalf of the individual members not ripe at this time.” 166 T. C. 6, at p. 12. (Footnote omitted).

Judge Buch concurs, joined by Judges Copeland, Way, Jenkins, and Fung.

The Green Rockers’ claim that TEFRA let partners intervene is misleading. Some partners (like one-percenters in large partnerships) were more equal than the non-notice types. The non-noticed might be bound in TEFRA cases by decisions which no partner entitled to petition did so, or of which they were unaware, or which stiped out without their consent. And all that survived due process challenge. 

Whether the BBA communications provisions are valid or not is beyond the scope of this case. And if the PR, like predecessor TMP, didn’t tell the non-noticed, that’s not IRS’ fault.

Finally, we get another vintage Judge Ronald L. (“Ingenuity”) Buch in full cry as he quotes from Vander Heide T. C. Memo. 1996-74, at p. 8: “We sympathize with [the partners], but must point out that [they] are not victims of [the Commissioner] or the Internal Revenue Code. They are victims of unscrupulous purveyors of tax shelters . . . . [They] are also victims of their own greed and naivete by investing in these scams, obtaining outrageous deductions and credits without paying attention to the details of the tax laws, nor putting into place some sort of check and balance system to monitor their own investments.” 

Cf. my blogpost “Judge Buch Says It All Here,:” 7/17/25.