Please pass the Worcestershire sauce; I’m about to eat my words. Not fewer than three (count ’em, three) times before now I have proclaimed that I won’t mourn TEFRA. But Judge Juan F. (“The Grist Miller”) Vasquez gives me what I would have sworn that neither oxen nor wain ropes would do…drag me to wanting a return to TEFRA.

4000 Investment Logistics, LLC, Chichukuya Investment Logistics, Inc., Tax Matters Partner, Docket No. 16211-22, filed 5/4/26, petitioned a FPAA for a pre-2018 year. Problem was, the TMP had been decorporatized by the CFTB (the CA corporate police) at the time they filed the petition, and were only been revived 503 (count ’em, 503) days after the FPAA issued, totally blowing all the TEFRA petitioning cutoffs.

Judge Vasquez, ever the obliging jurist in the Judge David Gustafson mould, “invited petitioner to file a supplement to its response addressing whether the Petition could be ratified by another partner and advising the Court of the partner qualified under the statute to be appointed and serve as tax matters partner of 4000 Investment ” Order, at p. 2.

But alas, there was no one, neither found he any, willing to take up the quarrel with IRS.

So the 4000’s petition gets tossed.

Now here’s where I get nostalgic for the old TEFRA method.

The post-BBA 2015 Section 6223(a) provides for a draft by IRS of any partner to serve as partnership rep, nolens volens with no input from the partners unless IRS feels like asking. If the draftee dodges the draft, game over, with no voluntary substitution method. Likewise, if IRS doesn’t designate the substitute partnership rep, theoretically, the partners could designate anyway, but there’s no statutory provision allowing it. And there is no provision for IRS to draft a nonpartner partnership rep, even though Section 6223(a) provides that an originally designated partnership rep needn’t be a partner. Note the statute doesn’t use the term”(or other person”) when speaking of an IRS draftee. Yes, I know, Reg. Section 301.6223-1(f)(5)(ii) says “the IRS may designate any person to be the partnership representative,” and should consult the partners, but the Reg doesn’t bind IRS to do either. In any case, would those provisions survive a Loper Bright challenge?

And finally, if neither the partnership designates a substitute, nor IRS drafts, a partnership rep, Tax Court is ousted of jurisdiction.

The old TEFRA provision, allowing partners other than the TMP to contest on their own, without having to risk being sued by the other partners if their contest isn’t to the liking of these others and binds the partnership, was fairer.