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Section 7433’S Statute Of Limitations: How Courts Have Wrongly Turned A Taxpayer’S Exclusive Sword Into The Irs’ Shield Against Damages, Diana Leyden

Diana L Leyden

Despite the importance of section 7433 to check government unauthorized tortious collection activity, federal courts have turned section 7433 into a shield against excessive or unsupported IRS action, rather than maintain it as the small, but important, sword that Congress intended to give taxpayer. This article contributes to the sparse literature on section 7433 by demonstrating that federal courts have effectively vitiated section 7433 by misreading its statute of limitations to: (1) require a taxpayer to be put on notice that all collection action taken by the IRS is unauthorized and to therefore file section 7433 actions from the first …