PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT ____________ No. 21-1592 ______ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. CHARLES J. WEISS, Appellant ____________ On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (D.C. No. 2:19-cv-00502) District Judge: Honorable Joel H. Slomsky ____________ Argued: May 3, 2022 Before: GREENAWAY, JR., PORTER, and PHIPPS, Circuit Judges. (Filed: November 2, 2022) ____________ Michael J. Haungs John Schumann [ARGUED] UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE TAX DIVISION 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. P.O. Box 502 Washington, DC 20044 Counsel for United States of America James R. Malone, Jr. [ARGUED] POST & SCHELL 1600 John F. Kennedy Boulevard Four Penn Center, 14th Floor Philadelphia, PA 19103 Counsel for Charles J. Weiss _______________________ OPINION OF THE COURT _______________________ PHIPPS, Circuit Judge. After assessing delinquent taxes, the United States has ten years to collect them, see 26 U.S.C. § 6502(a)(1), and this case comes down to a matter of days within that decade. Importantly, that limitations period does not necessarily run continuously; it may be tolled for several increments of time, including for the period during which a specific administrative hearing before the Internal Revenue Service “and appeals therein” are pending. Id. § 6330(e)(1). Here, the taxpayer requested an administrative hearing, and that began tolling the limitations period. After a series of unfavorable rulings – at 2 the hearing, in the Tax Court, and before the D.C. Circuit – the taxpayer filed a petition for a writ of certiorari, which the Supreme Court denied. But the United States waited until after the denial of that petition to commence this action. By that time, even with tolling, much, if not all, of the limitations period had elapsed. Yet in interpreting the statute, petitions for writs of certiorari are ‘appeals therein,’ and also an appeal remains ‘pending’ until the time to file such a petition expires. Due to that additional tolling of the statute of limitations for those increments, this collection action is timely. Id. I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND (UNDISPUTED BY THE PARTIES) For the six-year period from 1986 through 1991, Charles Weiss did not pay federal income taxes. In October 1994, Weiss late-filed his tax returns for those years, self-reporting a liability of $299,202. Later that month, the Internal Revenue Service made tax assessments against him for each of those years. By assessing those taxes, the IRS triggered a ten-year limitations period for collecting the unpaid taxes through a court proceeding or a levy, which is a legal seizure of property or a right to property. See 26 U.S.C. §§ 6331(b), 6502(a)(1). Weiss’s subsequent bankruptcies tolled that limitations period three times between 1994 and 2009, yielding a new expiration date for the statute of limitations: July 21, 2009. In anticipation of that deadline, the IRS began the process of collecting the unpaid taxes through a levy. It mailed a Final Notice – Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing letter to Weiss on or about February 13, 2009. That …
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals