United States v. Isadore Verlinsky, A/K/A Isadore Verlin, and Murray Verlinsky, A/K/A Murray Verlin

CLARK, Circuit Judge:

The alloyed tax-bankruptcy issue in this appeal requires that we construe a very narrow, highly technical, seldom invoked, slightly ambiguous — but here hotly contested — section of the Internal Revenue Code. Our interpretation constricts the reach of the aphorism of olde that “[t]he King’s debtor dying, the King shall first be paid,”1 by holding that before the sovereign claimed its privilege the statute of limitations had run. Indeed, the parties before us are agreed that but for the possible application of the tolling provisions of the Code section at issue in this…