Added 10/22/25 @ 3:40pm: On October 17, 2025, the Third Circuit denied rehearing and rehearing en banc and issued a revised opinion in Murrin v. Commissioner, ___ F.4th ___ (3rd Cir. 10/17/25), CA3 here and GS here. The revised opinion reaches the same result as the earlier opinion--fraud on the return permits the unlimited statute of limitations regardless of whether or not it is the taxpayer's fraud. I have not analyzed the opinion to see where precisely the changes were. The opinion is a straight-foward textualist reading of the Code provision. It is apparent that, as with the original opinion, the author is not that familiar with tax procedure. (See e.g., p. 4 n. 1, basically same as original opinion.)
In Murrin v. Commissioner, ___ F.4th ___ (3rd Cir. 8/18/25), CA3 here and TN here, the Court held that the §6501(c)(1), here, unlimited statute of limitations applying "In the case of a false or fraudulent return with the intent to evade tax" applies even without the taxpayer's personal fraud. The opinion is a straightforward textualist interpretation of the governing statute. Since the opinion is relatively short, I am not sure my nitpicking (aka pontificating) over the reasoning and specific text would be helpful to readers of this Blog, most of whom are already familiar with the issue.
In the event my thoughts may be helpful, I link here first my prior blogs generated by the search terms "allen fraud limitations" which picks up the blogs that discussed the issue. (If you click that link, the returns are first in some relevance scoring of the content order for the terms but there is a link to put them in reverse date order.) The more recent blog discussions that I think may be most helpful to readers wanting more than offered in Murrin are:
- On the Tax Court decision in Murrin: Tax Court Again Declines to Reconsider Its Holding that the Preparer's Fraud without the Taxpayer's Fraud Invokes Unlimited Statute of Limitations (Federal Tax Procedure Blog 1/25/24; 2/5/24), here (where I discuss and link Professor Bryan Camp's discussion of the Tax Court opinion in Murrin) (those reading the Third Circuit opinion in Murrin will see that Professor Camp filed an amicus in favor of the taxpayer's position).
- On BASR P’ship v. United States, 795 F.3d 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2015), which Murrin conflicts (Murrin substantially adopts the dissenting opinion in BASR), I did not write a separate blog on the BASR opinion, but I wrote one on the court awarding attorneys fees under § 7430: Major Attorneys Fee Award for BASR Partnership Prevailing on the Allen Issue in Federal Circuit (Federal Tax Procedure Blog 2/11/17), here. This conflict certainly insures a petition for cert by Murrin. I suspect that there may be a flurry of amicus briefs on the petition and, if cert is granted, on the merits briefing because a lot of wealthy taxpayers investing in fraudulent taxpayers have a dog in the hunt, so to speak.
- On City Wide Transit, Inc. v. Commissioner, 709 F.3d 102 (2d Cir. 2013) discussed in Murrin: Second Circuit Holds That Fraud on the Return -- Even If Not the Taxpayer's -- Causes an Unlimited Civil Assessment Statute of Limitations to Apply (Federal Tax Procedure Blog 2/4/13), here.
- My early venture into the subject discussing an important extension of a holding that the taxpayer's fraud is not required if the return is fraudulent: Civil Tax Statute of Limitations for Fraudulent Tax Shelters (Federal Tax Procedure Blog 12/19/09), here.
