It’s been a long time since I beat my tin drum for lawyers to be required to pass the Tax Court admission exam, s/a/k/a The Slaughter of the Innocents. And now I’m a retired lawyer, it can well be objected that it’s none of my business. But it is the nature of the journalist that everything is our business. So I’m using  Eric Deters & Mary Deters, Docket No. 19882-24, filed 7/27/26, to illustrate my pioint yet again, although petitioners are not represented by counsel.

According to Judge Eliabeth A. (“Tex”) Copeland, “(T)he record does not clearly state Eric Deters’s relationship with Deters Law, but he was previously a practicing attorney, and the law firm may be associated with that prior occupation.” Order, at p. 3, footnote 3. Hence Eric could formerly, had he so chosen, been automatically admitted to practice in US Tax Court. 

Judge Tex Copeland’s Order is fact-bound and offers no new insights. It does thoroughly canvass Tax Court precedent on “reasonable possibility of recovery” as a criterion for fixing the date of a theft loss, an essential of establishing the deduction. And her opinion details almost every nail in the Section 6751(b) Boss Hoss discovery coffin (which by now is more nail than coffin). 

Moreover, Eric settles his theft lawsuit with a Joint Stipulation of Dismissal with Prejudice, under which he receives a very substantial payout, just four (count ’em, four) months before he files the 1040MFJ for the previous year, in which he claims the loss.

AFAIK, this is Eric’s sole appearance in Tax Court, he represented himself, and no longer practices law. So this is not about Eric. It’s about why Tax Court practice isn’t like the litigation we’re all accustomed to. It’s about why a level of competence other than our general level is needed, and should be demonstrated, to protect the public. 

The English Lord Chief Justice Campbell wrote in 1850: “There is nothing so dangerous as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry.”