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POLSELLI v. IRS

Opinion of the Court

575 U. S. 1, 9 (2015); see also Hibbs v. Winn, 542 U. S. 88, 100 (2004). Section 7609(c)(2)(D)(i) does not excuse notice, therefore, until the IRS makes an official assessment or a judgment has been rendered with respect to a taxpayer’s liability. Third, a summons must aid the collection of assessments or judgments “against the person with respect to whose liability the summons is issued.” §7609(c)(2)(D)(i). This requirement links the subject of the assessment or judgment with the subject of the collection effort—they must concern the same delinquent taxpayer. None of the three components for excusing notice in §7609(c)(2)(D)(i) mentions a taxpayer’s legal interest in records sought by the IRS, much less requires that a taxpayer maintain such an interest for the exception to apply.

Had Congress wanted to include a legal interest requirement, it certainly knew how to do so. The very next provision—also enacted as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1976—requires the IRS to “establish the rates and conditions” for reimbursing costs “incurred in searching for, reproducing, or transporting” information sought by a summons. §7610(a)(2); see 90 Stat. 1702. But the IRS may not provide reimbursement if “the person with respect to whose liability the summons is issued has a proprietary interest in” the records “to be produced.” §7610(b)(1). We assume that Congress “acts intentionally and purposely” when it “includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act.” Sebelius v. Cloer, 569 U. S. 369, 378 (2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). The fact that the exception to the reimbursement provision expressly turns on a taxpayer’s “proprietary interest” in records summoned by the IRS strongly suggests that Congress deliberately omitted a similar requirement with respect to the notice exception in §7609(c)(2)(D)(i). And here the provision in question is not just in the “same Act”—it is in the adjacent section, having been enacted in the same Public Law.