No. 98-932
In the Supreme Court of the United States
OCTOBER TERM, 1998
DOMINICK LAROSA AND CATHERINE LAROSA,
PETITIONERS
v.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ON PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI
TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
BRIEF FOR THE UNITED STATES IN OPPOSITION
SETH P. WAXMAN
Solicitor General
Counsel of Record
LORETTA C. ARGRETT
Assistant Attorney General
RICHARD FARBER
ANNETTE M. WIETECHA
Attorneys
Department of Justice
Washington, D.C. 20530
(202) 514-2217
QUESTIONS PRESENTED
1. Whether equitable principles bar the United States from recovering an
erroneous refund made to petitioners.
2. Whether, under the facts of this case, interest accrued on petitioners'
tax liability after the date of the jeopardy assessment and seizure of their
assets.
In the Supreme Court of the United States
OCTOBER TERM, 1998
No. 98-932
DOMINICK LAROSA AND CATHERINE LAROSA,
PETITIONERS
v.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ON PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI
TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
BRIEF FOR THE UNITED STATES IN OPPOSITION
OPINIONS BELOW
The opinion of the court of appeals (Pet. App. Item 2) is unofficially reported
at 82 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 98-5257. The opinion of the district court (Pet.
App. Item 3) is reported at 993 F. Supp. 907.
JURISDICTION
The judgment of the court of appeals was entered on July 10, 1998. The petition
for rehearing was denied on September 8, 1998. The petition for a writ of
certiorari was filed on December 7, 1998. The jurisdiction of this Court
is invoked under 28 U.S.C. 1254(1).
STATEMENT
1. On December 3, 1985, the Internal Revenue Service made a jeopardy assessment
of outstanding taxes and interest against petitioners and levied on their
assets (Pet. App. Item 3, at 5). Although the Service was entitled to liquidate
the seized assets to satisfy the jeopardy assessment, petitioners requested
that such action not be taken because they believed it would ruin their
business (id. at 5, 27). To accommodate this concern, the government entered
into an escrow agreement with petitioners that placed these assets in escrow
pending the Tax Court's determination of their federal tax obligations (id.
at 5). The escrow agreement prevented the liquidation of the assets during
the pendency of the litigation and expressly provided that these assets
were not to be treated as a payment of any federal tax obligation (ibid.).
When the tax litigation was settled in 1991, the escrowed assets and the
income earned on those assets were returned to petitioners (id. at 18).
2. The 1991 settlement was embodied in an agreed decision filed in the Tax
Court (Pet. App. Item 3, at 5). Under the settlement, the parties stipulated
that petitioners had underpaid their tax obligations for 1981, 1982 and
1983 and overpaid their taxes for 1984 and 1985 (id. at 5-6). Petitioners
elected to have the overpayments (inclusive of interest) from 1984 and 1985
applied against their underpayments for 1981 through 1983. On May 1, 1991,
petitioners paid the remaining balance owed (ibid.).
In the settlement, petitioners reserved the right to contest the amount
of interest that they owed on their tax liabilities. Petitioners submitted
refund claims for the interest they paid, asserting that interest should
not have accrued on their tax obligations after December 3, 1985, the date
of the jeopardy assessment. That refund claim sought to recover interest
in the amount of $3,694,418 (Pet. App. Item 3, at 6). Although the Service
denied that claim, the Service thereafter made a refund of approximately
$1.5 million for the interest that accrued between the dates on which the
overpayments for 1981 and 1982 arose and the date of the final payment of
tax on May 1, 1991 (id. at 6-7).
3. The Service subsequently determined, however, that this $1.5 million
had been refunded to petitioners in error (Pet. App. Item 3, at 7). Within
the time permitted by the applicable statute of limitations, the United
States commenced this action to recover the erroneous refund pursuant to
26 U.S.C. 7405.1 Petitioners asserted that the United States should be equitably
estopped from recovering the refund and, in a counterclaim, sought an additional
refund based upon the contention that interest on the underpayments stopped
accruing on December 3, 1985, the date of the jeopardy assessment and seizure
of their assets.
The district court granted summary judgment to the United States on all
issues (Pet. App. Item 3, at 33). The court held that the $1.5 million refund
was erroneous (id. at 19-22) and that the Service was not estopped from
recovering that amount because "[t]here is nothing special about the
case at bar in this regard" (id. at 25-26). The court also rejected
petitioners' contention that interest should not have accrued after the
date of the jeopardy assessment and seizure. The court held that interest
continued to accrue on the underpayments after the seizure because the escrow
agreement had specified that the seized assets could not be liquidated to
pay the tax liabilities (id. at 26-30).
4. The court of appeals affirmed for the reasons set forth in the district
court's opinion (Pet. App. Item 2).
ARGUMENT
The decision of the court of appeals is correct and does not conflict with
any decision of this Court or any other court of appeals. Further review
is therefore not warranted.
1. Under Section 7405 of the Internal Revenue Code, the United States is
authorized to recover the amount of any tax (or interest on such tax) that
has been erroneously refunded to a taxpayer. 26 U.S.C. 7405. A suit to recover
such an erroneous refund may be brought at any time within two years from
the date the refund is made. 26 U.S.C. 6532(b). In the present case, the
United States timely sued to recover an erroneous refund of approximately
$1.5 million. The courts below correctly concluded that the refund had been
made erroneously (Pet. App. Item 3, at 19-24), and petitioners no longer
contest that determination.
Instead, petitioners contend (Pet. 12-16) that the United States should
be equitably estopped from recovering the erroneous refund simply because
petitioners had not anticipated that the government would seek to recover
the improper windfall that they had received. That contention has no support
in the case law or governing statutes. As the courts below concluded, there
is nothing about this case that takes it out of the ordinary: "it is
hard to conjure a case where prior to * * * suit a taxpayer would not believe
that the IRS had acted correctly and would not make use of the refund"
(Pet. App. Item 3, at 26). The plain language of Section 7405 authorizes
the government "to undo such mistakes regardless of who is to blame
for the error" (ibid.). If the sort of facts that petitioners contend
creates an "estoppel" prevented the government from bringing a
suit for refund, then the provisions of Section 7405 would be deprived of
their natural and obvious meaning.2
There is no conflict among the courts of appeals on the application of equitable
estoppel to suits for the recovery of erroneous refunds under Section 7405.
None of the decisions cited by petitioner (Pet. 12-15) addresses that issue,
and certainly no court has ever adopted petitioners' novel contention that
the government may be estopped from bringing suit under Section 7405 to
recover an erroneous refund of tax or interest. Further review of the decision
in this case is therefore not warranted.
2. Petitioners err in claiming (Pet. 16-23) that interest was incorrectly
imposed on their tax liabilities after the date of the jeopardy assessment
and the seizure of their assets. The Service generally sells a taxpayer's
assets as soon as practicable after a seizure. If it fails to do so, interest
on the unpaid taxes stops accruing as of the date of the seizure (to the
extent that the seized assets were sufficient to satisfy the tax liability).
United States v. Barlow's, Inc., 767 F.2d 1098 (4th Cir. 1985). As the courts
below correctly concluded, however, that general rule does not apply to
this case.
Petitioners requested the Service not to sell the seized assets because
of their concern that such a sale would ruin their business. As an accommodation
to petitioners, the Service entered into an escrow agreement (i) that barred
any sale of these assets during the pendency of the tax litigation and (ii)
that expressly specified that the seized assets were not held as a payment
of the taxes then outstanding (Pet. App. Item 3, at 5, 27). The earnings
on the escrowed assets were distributed to petitioners either during the
litigation or at its conclusion, when all of the escrowed assets were also
returned to petitioners (id. at 27). It was thus petitioners, and not the
Service, that received all economic benefits from the assets placed in escrow.
In these circumstances, the courts below properly concluded (Pet. App. Item
3, at 27) that petitioners' delinquent taxes could not be deemed to have
been paid on the date their assets were seized and placed in escrow.3 Interest
therefore continued to accrue after the date of seizure and until the date
of payment of petitioners' tax liabilities.
Petitioners err in claiming (Pet. 20) that the decision in this case conflicts
with St. Louis Union Trust Co. v. United States, 617 F.2d 1293 (8th Cir.
1980), supplemented by Stone v. Commissioner, 47 T.C.M. (CCH) 1502 (1984),
and Stone v. Commissioner, No. 5311-72 (T.C. Mar. 30, 1987) (Memorandum
Sur Order) (Pet. App. Item 7). In St. Louis Union Trust Co., the court of
appeals held that the Service was entitled to levy upon certain escrowed
property. The Tax Court therafter held that interest on the taxpayer's liabilities
stopped accruing as of the date of the levy because, following the levy,
the Service had constructive possession of the assets and could have required
the assets to be delivered to it. In the present case, by contrast, the
escrow agreement prevented the Service from selling the assets and using
the resulting proceeds to satisfy petitioners' tax underpayments. As the
courts below correctly concluded, since the government was precluded from
taking the steps that would have stopped the running of interest on petitioners'
outstanding tax obligations, interest continued to accrue until the taxes
were ultimately paid.4
CONCLUSION
The petition for a writ of certiorari should be denied.
Respectfully submitted.
SETH P. WAXMAN
Solicitor General
LORETTA C. ARGRETT
Assistant Attorney General
RICHARD FARBER
ANNETTE M. WIETECHA
Attorneys
FEBRUARY 1999
1 Section 7405 provides that an erroneous refund "may be recovered
by civil action brought in the name of the United States." 26 U.S.C.
7405. Under 26 U.S.C. 6532(b), an action for an erroneous refund is to be
commenced "within 2 years after the making of such refund."
2 Moreover, equitable estoppel does not apply against the government on
the same terms that it applies to private parties. E.g., OPM v. Richmond,
496 U.S. 414, 419 (1990); Heckler v. Community Health Servs., 467 U.S. 51,
60 (1984). When estoppel is sought against the government, the plaintiff
must prove not only the traditional elements of estoppel but must, at a
minimum, also show affirmative misconduct by a government employee. Id.
at 61. No showing of any affirmative misconduct was made in this case. Moreover,
the repayment of funds that should not have been received by petitioners
in the first place is hardly the sort of irreparable injury that could support
an estoppel against a private party, much less against the United States.
3 The district court correctly concluded that petitioners' contentions "can
be restated as 'I want my cake and to eat it too.'" Pet. App. Item
3, at 27.
4 For these same reasons, petitioners err in relying (Pet. 19) on the prior
decisions of the Fourth Circuit in United States v. Eiland, 223 F.2d 118
(1955), and United States v. Barlow's, Inc., 767 F.2d 1098 (1985). Moreover,
a conflict among the decisions of different panels of the same circuit does
not warrant review by this Court. Wisniewski v. United States, 353 U.S.
901, 902 (1957).