United States Tax Court
162 T.C. No. 7 MOHAMED K. ABDO AND FARDOWSA J. FARAH , Petitioner s v .
COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, Respondent ————— Docket N o. 5514- 20 . Filed April 2, 2024.
————— R issued Ps a notice of deficiency dated December 2, 2019. The notice specified March 2, 2020, as the last day to petition the Court. That date was not a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday in the District of Columbia.
Ps mailed the Petition on March 17, 2020.
Ps resided in Ohio at all relevant times. On March
31, 2020, the President issued a major disaster declaration under the authority of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 5121 – 5207, with respect to Ohio as a r esult of the COVID - 19 pandemic. The declaration identified the disaster conditions as “beginning on January 20, 2020, and continuing.”
On September 2, 2020, R filed a M otion to D ismiss for L ack of J urisdiction on the ground that the P etition was not filed within the time prescribed by I.R.C. § 6213(a) or I.R.C. § 7502. Ps contend that I.R.C. § 7508A(d), which provides for a mandatory 60-day extension of certain tax -related deadlines by reason of a federally declared disaster, operated in conjunction with the President’s declaration to automatically extend the filing deadline.
Served 04/02/24
OPINION
MARSHALL , Judge : This deficiency case is before the Court on respondent’s M otion to D ismiss for L ack of J urisdiction ( M otion) on the Respondent issued petitioners a notice of deficiency dated December 2, 2019, in which respondent determined a $9,634 income tax deficiency and a $166 accuracy-related penalty under section 6662(a) for petitioners’ taxable year 2018. The 90th day after December 2, 2019, was Sunday, March 1, 2020. The notice of deficiency specified the following day, March 2, 2020, as the last day to petition the Court. That da te was not a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday in the District of Columbia. The parties agree that petitioners mailed their P etition to the Court on March 17, 2020.
Between March 19 and July 9, 2020, the Court did not receive mail because of the Court’s closure in response to the Coronavirus In reaching this conclusion, petitioners interpret section 7508A(d) to provide for “a mandatory postponement period for taxpayers affected Respondent also contends that the statute is ambiguous because it does not address federally declared disasters without an incident date. In support of this contention, respondent points to the Nationwide Emergency Declaration that did not specify an inci dent date. Respondent contends that “Congress did not address whether the mandatory 60- day postponement in subsection (d) applies to F ederal disaster declarations that do not have an incident date. Therefore, I.R.C. § 7508A(d) is ambiguous with respect t o F ederal disaster declarations without an incident date, which satisfies the first step in the Chevron framework.”
Petitioners, however, do not argue that they are entitled to a 60- day postponement with respect to the Nationwide Emergency Declaration. Instead, petitioners focus on the Ohio Disaster The parties agree that petitioners mailed their petition to the Court on March 17, 2020. As petitioners’ Petition was mailed on March 17, 2020, their Petition was timely and we have jurisdiction in this case. See § 7502. We will therefore deny respondent’s Motion .
We have considered the parties’ other arguments and, to the extent they are not discussed herein, find them to be irrelevant, moot, or without merit.
To reflect the foregoing, An appropriate order will be issued.
Today, the opinion of the Court holds that section 7508A(d) provides for an unambiguously self-executing postponement period for certain acts set forth in section 7508(a), including the filing of a petition for redetermination with the Tax Court. § 7508(a )(1)(C); see op. Ct. p. 18. This position is consistent with the Court’s prior decisions in Hallmark and Sanders that the deadline under section 6213(a) is jurisdictional, because unlike equitable exceptions, statutory exceptions to jurisdictional deadli nes are of course permissible. Moreover, our prior decisions in Hallmark and Sanders are further undergirded by the Such a suit would therefore exceed the jurisdictional limits imposed by section 6213(a) and the AIA and violate the restrictions imposed by the AIA. See § 7421(a); Bob Jones Univ. , 416 U.S. at 736 – 37 (citing Williams Packing & Navigation Co. , 370 U.S. at 7).