Mail sent to the building through the U.S. Postal Service is generally being held until the court reopens, Tax Court Judge Ronald L. Buch said during a webinar hosted by the American Bar Association's tax section. Since the court has been closed for almost three months, a lot of mail has come through, he said.
"I had heard rumors of a truck and a half," Judge Buch said when asked to estimate the amount of mail. "And when I say a truck, I don't mean an 18-wheeler, but it is substantial."
The Tax Court previously canceled trial sessions for March and April because of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The court then closed its building in Washington, D.C., but still allowed people to file petitions and other documents to abide by statutory deadlines.
The last time the Tax Court had to stop processing mail was in January 2019, due to a lapse in government funding that resulted in a temporary shutdown at the court, Judge Buch said.
Last year, Chief Judge Maurice Foley spoke about the effect of the government shutdown, when the Tax Court similarly held received mail, which it later had to process after the shutdown ended. While Judge Foley could not estimate the exact numbers in 2019, during a previous shutdown in 2013, which lasted 16 days, the court received about 2,000 petitions and generally receives about 100 petitions a day, he said at the time.
Judge Buch said after last year's furlough ended, it took a number of weeks and monumental efforts to get caught up on processing mail.
But because the Tax Court has been closed for a longer period of time due to the pandemic, it will require even more time and attention to get caught up, he said. The Tax Court generally receives about 24,000 petitions a year, which is roughly 2,000 a month, and that could generate a rough estimate of around 6,000 tax petitions to process, Judge Buch said.
"That is substantial," he said. "And that number that I just ballparked only includes petitions."
While mail generally sent to the building is being held until the court reopens, to the best of his knowledge, mail sent by private delivery services is being returned as undeliverable, Judge Buch said.
The timing of delivery matters because the Tax Court closed on March 18, but the IRS only extended deadlines for filing petitions to the Tax Court beginning on April 1, which are now due on July 15, he said.
This could create some problems for those who mailed tax petitions between March 18 and April 1 and had the mail returned to them and not processed at reopening because it was sent through a private carrier, he said.
Those who may have received returned mail should look at a 2016 U.S. Tax Court case, Guralnik v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue
, Judge Buch said. In Guralnik, the court ruled a winter storm could not stop the Tax Court from taking up a taxpayer's petition challenging a federal tax lien after the storm shut down government offices and delayed the petition by one day.Similar to the Tax Court being unable to process the petition because of the snow day in Guralnik, the Tax Court could not process tax petitions that were sent by private carrier between March 18 and April 1 due to COVID-19, Judge Buch said. So if someone is worried they have filed something on time, it may be in their best interest to save the original postmark on the original package, he said.
"If you want to best preserve your argument, I would say retain whatever postmarks and whatever proofs of mailing you have," he said. "Because those will be issues that I think the court is going to have to face and is going to have to grapple with for that window."
While there has been no announcement for when the Tax Court will reopen, at some point it will begin processing mail again. If a tax petition is due between now and July 15, it may be best to send it through the U.S. Postal Service, Judge Buch said.
"When the court does resume processing mail, if there is a petition to be mailed in — my suggestion is mail it in at the earliest opportunity," he said. "Mail it in now … with proof of mailing [because] using the United States Postal Service is probably one of the safest routes at this point because we do know that mail is going to be held."
Going forward, Judge Buch said the Tax Court will conduct remote proceedings during its fall session, which was announced recently by the court in two administrative orders.
In getting ready for these remote trials, Judge Buch said many judges already manage their dockets by holding conference calls in advance of trial session. But now many will hold remote conference calls on cases when a trial is definite or probable, he said.
"Increased use ... of the conference calls in advance of the trial session [is] a means to help narrow down the cases that need to be called at a calendar call," he said.
Pretrial memos and stipulated documents that will be used at trial must be submitted in advance because electronic documents cannot be shared spur-of-the-moment the same way documents can be shared during an in-person trial, Judge Buch said.
However, pretrial memos will likely be one of the most important documents shared in advance because it will help the assigned judge be well-informed on someone's case, he said.
When the fall trial calendar is set, which will probably start in mid-to-late September, proceedings will be conducted through Zoomgov, which is an offshoot of the videoconferencing platform Zoom and is certified and secure, Judge Buch said.
"Most of the people who appear in our court or at least most of the petitioners who appear in our court do so pro se, and so it is important that we have a tool that is user-friendly," he said. "We sampled many and we found Zoomgov to be a very user-friendly option."
One reason the Tax Court choose Zoomgov is because it allows setting up break-out rooms so parties can have conversations without the judges being involved, Judge Buch said.
"There will be a lot more details on this as the calendar calls get closer and we provide information on how exactly these proceedings are going to happen," Judge Buch said.
--Additional reporting by Vidya Kauri and Theresa Schliep. Editing by Neil Cohen.
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