Supreme Court strikes down equitable tolling of limitations period for refund claims.On Feb. 18, 1997, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the position adopted by the Ninth Circuit that the statutory period for filing claims for refund TO REFUND. To pay back by the party who has received it, to the party who has paid it, money which ought not to have been paid. 2. On a deficiency of assets, executors and administrators cum testamento annexo, are entitled to have refunded to them legacies may be tolled on equitable equitable adj. 1) just, based on fairness and not legal technicalities. 2) refers to positive remedies (orders to do something, not money damages) employed by the courts to solve disputes or give relief. (See: equity) EQUITABLE. grounds (Brockamp, 117 Sup. Ct. 849 (1997)). The Court's decision ended a conflict between the Ninth Circuit (which had adopted the principle of equitable tolling Equitable tolling is a principle of tort law stating that a statute of limitations shall not bar a claim in cases where the plaintiff, despite use of due diligence, could not or did not discover the injury until after the expiration of the limitations period. ) and the First, Fourth, Tenth, Eleventh In music or music theory an eleventh is the note eleven scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the eleventh. Since there are only seven degrees in a diatonic scale the eleventh degree is the same as the subdominant and the interval and Federal Circuits (which had rejected the principle). In each of these cases, the taxpayer asked the court to extend the statutory period for an "equitable" reason, namely, that he had a mental disability (senility senility (sənil`ətē), deterioration of body and mind associated with old age. Indications of old age vary in the time of their appearance. or alcoholism alcoholism, disease characterized by impaired control over the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Alcoholism is a serious problem worldwide; in the United States the wide availability of alcoholic beverages makes alcohol the most accessible drug, and alcoholism is ) that caused the delay. In siding with the taxpayer, the Ninth Circuit determined that the statutory limitations period in Sec. 6511 contained an implied "equitable tolling" exception. In making their claim, the taxpayers relied on Irwin v. Department of Veteran Affairs, 498 US 89 (1990) (a nontax case), in which the Supreme Court found an untimely lawsuit filed against a government employer under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to be timely based on the "rule of equitable tolling," which applies "to suits against the Government, in the same way that is applicable" to Title VII suits against private employers. In reversing the Ninth Circuit, the Supreme Court found that, unlike ordinary limitations statutes that use fairly simple language that can often be plausibly plau·si·ble adj. 1. Seemingly or apparently valid, likely, or acceptable; credible: a plausible excuse. 2. Giving a deceptive impression of truth or reliability. 3. read as containing an implied "equitable tolling" exception, Sec. 6511 contains complex language and explicit exceptions. To read an implied exception into the statute would require not only an exception for timeliness, but also as to amount. Further, serious administrative problems would occur if "equitable tolling" was implied in the statute. As the Court stated: "The nature and potential magnitude of the administrative problem suggest that Congress decided to pay the price of occasional unfairness in individual cases (penalizing a taxpayer whose claim is unavoidably delayed) in order to maintain a more workable tax enforcement system." |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion