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Eric Rietveld was quoted in the article "Farhy Turns on Statute’s Breadth (and What’s in a Parenthetical)," published by Tax Notes [sub. req'd] on February 15, 2024. 

The article examines the oral arguments heard in Farhy v. Commissioner on February 14, 2024, which assess the idea of overturning a Tax Court decision holding that the IRS cannot assess international information return penalties. Eric asserts that the court will need to grapple with the key issue of surplusage. In the government’s case, the parenthetical’s "assessable penalties" language would be surplusage since section 6201(a) would apply to all penalties except those specifically exempted. In Farhy’s case, he says, if the code must specifically state that a penalty is assessable, other code provisions that provide the opposite would have surplus language.