Boechler v. Commissioner

596 U.S. 199
CourtSupreme Court of the United States
DecidedApril 21, 2022
Docket20-1472
StatusPublished
Cited by41 cases

This text of 596 U.S. 199 (Boechler v. Commissioner) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of the United States primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Boechler v. Commissioner, 596 U.S. 199 (2022).

Opinion

(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2021 1

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

BOECHLER, P.C. v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

No. 20–1472. Argued January 12, 2022—Decided April 21, 2022 In 2015, the Internal Revenue Service notified Boechler, P.C., a North Dakota law firm, of a discrepancy in its tax filings. When Boechler did not respond, the IRS assessed an “intentional disregard” penalty and notified Boechler of its intent to levy Boechler’s property to satisfy the penalty. See 26 U. S. C. §§6330(a), 6721(a)(2), (e)(2)(A). Boechler re- quested and received a “collection due process hearing” before the IRS’s Independent Office of Appeals pursuant to §6330(b), but the Of- fice sustained the proposed levy. Under §6330(d)(1), Boechler had 30 days to petition the Tax Court for review. Boechler filed its petition one day late. The Tax Court dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdic- tion and the Eighth Circuit affirmed, agreeing that §6330(d)(1)’s 30- day filing deadline is jurisdictional and thus cannot be equitably tolled. Held: Section 6330(d)(1)’s 30-day time limit to file a petition for review of a collection due process determination is a nonjurisdictional dead- line subject to equitable tolling. Pp. 2–11. (a) Not all procedural requirements are jurisdictional. Many simply instruct “parties [to] take certain procedural steps at certain specified times” without conditioning a court’s authority to hear the case on com- pliance with those steps. Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U. S. 428, 435. The distinction matters, as jurisdictional requirements cannot be waived or forfeited, must be raised by courts sue sponte, and do not allow for equitable exceptions. Id., at 434–435; Sebelius v. Auburn Re- gional Medical Center, 568 U. S 145, 154. As such, a procedural re- quirement is jurisdictional only if Congress “clearly states” that it is. Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 500, 515. This case therefore turns on whether Congress has clearly stated that §6330(d)(1)’s deadline is jurisdictional. 2 BOECHLER v. COMMISSIONER

Section 6330(d)(1) provides that a “person may, within 30 days of a determination under this section, petition the Tax Court for review of such determination (and the Tax Court shall have jurisdiction with respect to such matter).” Whether this provision limits the Tax Court’s jurisdiction to petitions filed within the 30-day timeframe depends on the meaning of “such matter,” the phrase marking the bounds of the Tax Court’s jurisdiction. Boechler contends that it refers only to the immediately preceding phrase: a “petition [to] the Tax Court for review of such determination,” making the filing deadline independent of the jurisdictional grant. The Commissioner, by contrast, argues that “such matter” refers to the entire first clause of the sentence, sweeping in the deadline and granting jurisdiction only over petitions filed within that time, making the deadline jurisdictional. The text does not clearly mandate the jurisdictional reading. It is hard to see how it could, given that “such matter” lacks a clear ante- cedent. Moreover, Boechler’s interpretation has a small edge under the last-antecedent rule, which instructs that the correct antecedent is usually the closest reasonable one. There are also other plausible ways to read “such matter.” For example, “such matter” might refer to “such determination” or the preceding subsection’s list of “[m]atters” that may be considered during the collection due process hearing, see §6330(c), but neither possibility ties the Tax Court’s jurisdiction to the filing deadline. And it is difficult to make the case that the jurisdic- tional reading is clear where multiple plausible, nonjurisdictional in- terpretations exist. Nothing else in the provision’s text or structure advances the case for jurisdictional clarity. Finally, other tax provi- sions enacted around the same time as §6330(d)(1) much more clearly link their jurisdictional grants to a filing deadline—see §§6404(g)(1), 6015(e)(1)(A)—accentuating the lack of comparable clarity in §6330(d)(1). Pp. 2–6. (b) The Commissioner’s counterarguments fall short. In this con- text, it is not enough that his interpretation of the statute is plausible, or that some might even think it better than Boechler’s. To satisfy the clear-statement rule, the Commissioner’s interpretation must be clear, and it is not. A requirement “does not become jurisdictional simply because it is placed in a section of a statute that also contains jurisdic- tional provisions.” Auburn, 568 U. S., at 155. Rather than proximity, what is needed is a clear tie between the deadline and the jurisdic- tional grant. The Commissioner also contends that a neighboring pro- vision, §6330(e)(1), clarifies the jurisdictional effect of §6330(d)(1)’s fil- ing deadline. Section 6330(e)(1) plainly conditions the Tax Court’s jurisdiction to grant an injunction to enforce the suspension of levy ac- tions during collection due process hearings on a timely filing under Cite as: 596 U. S. ____ (2022) 3

§6330(d)(1). But, if anything, §6330(e)(1)’s clear jurisdictional state- ment only highlights the lack of such clarity in §6330(d)(1). Finally, the Commissioner insists that §6330(d)(1)’s filing deadline is jurisdic- tional because it was enacted at a time when Congress was aware of lower court cases that had held that an analogous tax provision, §6213(a), is jurisdictional. Those lower court cases, however, almost all predate this Court’s effort to “bring some discipline” to the use of the term “jurisdictional.” Henderson, 562 U. S., at 435. Pp. 6–8. (c) Nonjurisdictional limitations periods are presumptively subject to equitable tolling, Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U. S. 89, 95–96, and nothing rebuts the presumption here. Section 6330(d)(1) does not expressly prohibit equitable tolling, directs its 30- day time limit at the taxpayer, not the court, and appears in a section of the Tax Code that is particularly protective of taxpayers, see Au- burn, 568 U. S., at 160. The Commissioner invokes United States v. Brockamp, 519 U. S. 347, which held equitable tolling inapplicable to §6511’s deadline for taxpayers to file refund claims, but that case is inapposite. Brockamp’s holding rested on several distinctive features of §6511 that are absent here. Unlike §6511’s deadline, §6330(d)(1)’s deadline is not written in “emphatic form” or with “detailed” and “technical” language, nor is it reiterated multiple times. Id., at 350–351. And §6330(d)(1) admits of a single exception (as opposed to §6511’s six). See §6330(d)(2). If any- thing, these differences underscore the reasons why equitable tolling applies to §6330(d)(1). Despite the Commissioner’s protestations, the Court is not convinced that allowing §6330(d)(1) to be equitably tolled will appreciably add to the uncertainty already present in the process. Whether Boechler is entitled to equitable tolling on the facts of this case should be determined on remand. Pp. 8–11. 967 F.

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596 U.S. 199, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/boechler-v-commissioner-scotus-2022.