TiNY Report for April 5, 2018 (covering DTA cases from March 29)

This week we have one short Tribunal Decision on a timeliness issue.  Which is good, because I’ll need the extra time to digest the Budget which passed in both houses of the Legislature late Friday night (as of this writing, it doesn’t appear it has been signed by the Governor yet).

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TiNY Report for March 29, 2018 (covering DTA cases from March 22)

This week we have two short Tribunal Decisions.  There was also an ALJ Order dated March 22^nd, but we reported on that last week.  So this week is a pretty light lift.

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TiNY Report for March 22, 2018 (covering DTA cases from March 15)

This week we have two ALJ Determinations and one Tribunal Decision.  There was also an Order dated March 22nd that leaked on to the website.  Our standard practice is to wait a week after the issue date to report on determinations and decisions, so the parties have time to read and digest them before we start tossing our grenades.  But since this one is “only” an order, we’ll blab about it.

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TiNY Report for March 15, 2018 (covering DTA cases from March 8)

This week we have two ALJ Determinations, three Tribunal Decisions, and one Order from DTA.

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TiNY Report for March 8, 2018 (covering DTA cases from March 1, 2018)

BAM!  One ALJ Determination this week and the DTA website says there will be nothing else.  So we’re going to press early!

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TiNY Report for March 2, 2018 (covering DTA cases from February 22)

This was a pretty mundane week compared to last week’s page-turners.  Two ALJ Determinations, and nothing from the Tribunal.

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TiNY Report for February 22, 2018 (covering DTA cases from February 15)

“The defense is wrong!”  There’s a courtroom scene in “My Cousin Vinny”  in which defense attorney Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci) hands expert witness/girlfriend  Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) two photographs and asks her to confirm that the defense’s theory of the case “holds water.”  After reviewing the photos with a critical eye, Ms. Vito loudly declares “No, the defense is wrong!”  It all works out; while the truth Ms. Vito deduces from the tire tracks in the photographs trashes Mr. Gambini’s articulated theory of the case, it nonetheless exculpates the defendants Mr. Gambini represents.

Do I have a point?  Sure.  It’s OK if you’re wrong every once in a while.

And I think I was wrong two weeks ago when, after excoriating the authors of the Memorandum in Support (MIS) of the Governor’s Revenue Budget Bill for a lack of balance and accuracy, I made the following statement:  “[T]o say that the result in Sobotka ‘leads to absurd results’ while not acknowledging that the proposed ‘legislative fix’ leads to results that many would view as even more absurd is, at best, disingenuous.”   After publishing that, I tested my hypothesis by talking with a few knowledgeable tax practitioners, and their opinions were that Sobotka and the legislative fix could lead to equally absurd results. 

Anyway, it seems I may have been engaging in the same type of hyperbole I accused the MIS’s authors of when I said that the legislative fix would lead to results “that many would view as even more absurd,” and I apologize.  At TiNY, inaccuracy is bad, but hypocrisy is worse.

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TiNY Report for February 15, 2018 (covering DTA cases issued February 8)

This week we had 5 ALJ Determinations and 2 Tribunal Decisions. No orders.

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TiNY Report for February 8, 2018 (covering DTA cases issued February 1)

A slow news day: Just one Tribunal decision.  

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TiNY Report for February 1, 2018 (covering DTA cases issued January 25)

One Tribunal Decision and three ALJ Orders this week.

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