SMU Law Review
Abstract
Tax filing deadlines have always been a source of anxiety for U.S. citizens, and the law surrounding the subject is equally perplexing. Federal courts developed a mailbox rule to determine whether a document is timely filed through the mail, but the federal circuits did not agree on how it functioned. Congress subsequently passed Section 7502 of the Internal Revenue Code to clear up confusion among the circuits. However, this only sparked a new debate—whether the statute takes the place of the common law mailbox rule or merely adds another avenue for the taxpayer to prove timely filing. This circuit split has proven strangely resilient, even resisting an attempt at amelioration by Treasury Department regulation. Despite the amount of time the circuit split has persisted, the Supreme Court has neglected to resolve it.
This Comment discusses the ongoing circuit split between the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Fourth, and Sixth Circuits and then the Eighth and Tenth Circuits over whether Section 7502 replaces or merely supplements the common law mailbox rule. This Comment argues that, in line with the majority of circuits, Section 7502 should replace the common law rule entirely. There is little doubt that Congress intended for the statute to replace the common law rule, and the alternative would still lead to a variance in the governing rule across jurisdictions. Such a simplification is desirable under the law because it would reduce confusion and the likelihood of error among layperson taxpayers and tax preparers, thus improving efficiency of processing returns and refunds at the IRS. Also, due to the growth and acceptance of electronic filing, commentators have drawn attention to a disparity present in the law between filing electronically and filing by mail. Finally, this Comment argues for the extension of Section 7502 to documents filed electronically to cure the disparity between paper and electronic filing and to encourage taxpayers to switch to electronic filing in the interest of efficiency.
Recommended Citation
Colton Franks,
You’ve Got Mail—Or Not? The Deepening, Decades-Long Circuit Split Surrounding the Tax Filing Mailbox Rule,
78
SMU L. Rev.
1183
(2025)
