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Tuesday, February 27, 2024

U.S. Tax Court's Tax Trailblazers: Alice Thomas

Tax Trailblazers: Mentoring the Next Generation(registration):

Alice thomasPlease join the United States Tax Court as its Tax Trailblazers series continues with Howard Law Professor Alice Thomas, today at 7:00 - 8:15 PM EST (register here). 

Professor Alice Martin Thomas is a tenured associate professor of law at Howard University School of Law where she heads the tax program and teaches federal tax, contracts, and commercial law subjects. She is an inaugural member of the Loretta Argrett ABA Tax Fellowship. She also is a Carnegie Scholar with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning and the former Interim Director of the Howard University Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Assessment.

Professor Thomas attended Washington University in St. Louis, earning a Double Major in Psychology and Black Studies, and a Minor in Biology.

She then attended Howard University for both graduate and professional school, being the first graduate of Howard's JD/MBA Dual Degree program, graduating cum laude from the law school and as a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma Business Academic Honor Society from the Graduate School of Business. While a student, she was Editor-in-Chief of the Howard Law Journal and a member of the Charles Hamilton Houston Moot Court team.

In practice, Professor Thomas worked for a major NY law firm, specializing in international tax planning and controversy. In her own practice, she specialized in commercial transactions, nonprofit law, and employment discrimination. She is a board member of the Center for Taxpayer Rights. Her scholarship primarily focuses on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning but includes tax and closing the racial wealth gap.

Tax Trailblazers:


Tax Court Denies WB Claim Made Contemporaneously With Target Taxpayer’s Voluntary Disclosure 

In Whistleblower 14376-16W v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2024-22, GS here, the Court held that the Whistleblower (“WB”) was entitled to no relief from the Whistleblower Office’s denial of an award. The opinion establishes no new precedent, which is why it is a Memo opinion. The opinion does offer some interesting aspects, which I will discuss here.

1. The WB claim targeting several taxpayers was made a couple of months before some of the taxpayers made a request to CI to participate in an IRS voluntary disclosure program.  (It is not clear whether the request was under one of the offshore variants or was under the general voluntary disclosure program (see p. 3 n. 6); it makes no difference, however, for the point I discuss here, so I will just call it a VDP request.) The VDP request was made before any submissions (amended returns, etc.) required to complete voluntary disclosure; those submissions were delayed a substantial period. After the voluntary disclosure request, the WBO processed and sent to the field the WB claim after CI received the VDP request. The IRS subsequently undertook the work required to determine and collect substantial tax based on the taxpayers' submissions. The IRS says that, although its examination function received the WB information, it took no action based on the information. The record before the Court (essentially the record related to the WB claim and related items) supported the IRS’s claim that the proceeds generated from its activity did not rely on the WB claim and information in the WB claim.

2. The Court denied the WB’s sweeping and broadly written discovery requests designed to ferret out all documents and information that could test even tangentially the IRS’s narrative that no collected proceeds resulted from the WB information (including whether the record the IRS submitted to the Court was complete). In part, the WB requested documents and information in the voluntary disclosure package that, it claims, was “indirectly considered” in collecting the proceeds. (See pp. 33-37.) In part, the Court reasoned

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