Jeffrey G. Sharp v. United States

I would grant the petition, for I do not view governmental relitigation of an issue on which the government has already lost in other tribunals to be “substantially justified” in terms of the fee-shifting statute of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C. § 7430.

At the time of its appeal to this court, the government had lost on the identical tax question in the Fourth Circuit, Beyer v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 916 F.2d 153 (4th Cir.1990) (overruling the Tax Court decision reported at Beyer v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 92 T.C. 1304, 1989 WL 66555 (1989)); had lost in a district…