The Golsen Rule: Why Your Circuit Decides Your Tax Case

On August 11, 2026, the Eighth Circuit held that the 90-day deadline for filing a Tax Court deficiency petition isn’t jurisdictional and can be equitably tolled. Six days later, the First Circuit agreed the deadline isn’t jurisdictional — and then held it can’t be tolled anyway. Same statute, same August, two different answers. The Tax Court will apply both.

That is the Golsen rule at work.  It’s why the first question in a Tax Court case is often geographic. Under Golsen v. Commissioner, 54 T.C. 742 (1970), aff’d, 445 F.2d 985 (10th Cir. 1971), the Tax Court follows the court of appeals to which your case would be appealed when that court has already decided the precise question — even where the Tax Court’s own precedent runs the other way. One national court, thirteen possible answers. The map does real work.

What Is the Golsen Rule?

Before 1970, the Tax Court took a different line. In Lawrence v. Commissioner, 27 T.C. 713 (1957), rev’d, 258 F.2d 562 (9th Cir. 1958), it reasoned that a tribunal with nationwide jurisdiction “has a similar obligation to apply with uniformity its interpretation of those statutes,” and that it “cannot conscientiously change unless Congress or the Supreme Court so directs.”

Thirteen years of criticism later, the Court gave in. Its holding is one sentence: “it is our best judgment that better judicial administration requires us to follow a Court of Appeals decision which is squarely in point where appeal from our decision lies to that Court of Appeals and to that court alone.” Golsen, 54 T.C. at 757.

Note what the Court didn’t say. It never conceded that a court of appeals binds it as a matter of hierarchy. The Tax Court explained the point directly in Lardas v. Commissioner, 99 T.C. 490 (1992): the logic “is not that we lack the authority to render a decision inconsistent with any Court of Appeals,” but that “it would be futile and wasteful to do so where we would surely be reversed.” Golsen is a rule about not wasting everyone’s money. And the Court kept the uniformity project alive on its own terms, promising to give effect to its own views “in cases appealable to courts whose views have not yet been expressed,” and, elsewhere, “by explaining why we agree or disagree with the precedent that we feel constrained to follow.”

Read enough reviewed opinions, and you’ll see that second promise honored regularly, and sometimes at length.

Where Does the Taxpayer’s Appeal Lie?

Everything turns on section 7482(b). For an individual contesting a deficiency, venue follows “the legal residence of the petitioner.” For a corporation, it’s the principal place of business, principal office, or agency. Declaratory judgment cases under sections 7428 and 7476 have their own subparagraphs; BBA partnership cases go to the circuit of the partnership’s principal place of business, innocent spouse cases under section 6015(e) follow the petitioner’s residence, and collection due process cases under sections 6320 and 6330 split between residence for individuals and principal place of business for everyone else.

Two details in the statute’s closing lines are important. First, if no subparagraph applies — think of a petitioner with no U.S. legal residence — review goes to the D.C. Circuit. Second, residence and principal place of business “shall be determined as of the time the petition seeking redetermination of tax liability was filed with the Tax Court.” Where the client lived last year is beside the point. Where the client lives on filing day sets the law of the case.

Section 7482(b)(2) supplies the other lever: the Secretary and the taxpayer may stipulate to any circuit in writing. Golsen itself noted the obvious problem in a footnote, with characteristic dryness — where the circuit has already spoken, “it is hardly likely that the party prevailing before the Tax Court would join in such a stipulation.” Nobody stipulates away a sure win.

When Is a Circuit Decision “Squarely in Point”?

This is where most Golsen arguments get decided, and where many briefs overreach. Golsen is, in the Tax Court’s own words, “a narrow exception,” and the Court has said it will be “careful to apply the Golsen doctrine only under circumstances where the holding of the Court of Appeals is squarely on point.” Lardas, 99 T.C. at 501.

Lardas shows the limit in operation. The taxpayers argued that a Ninth Circuit decision about S corporation returns and the limitations period controlled their grantor trust case. The Tax Court walked through three different readings of the Ninth Circuit’s opinion, concluded it couldn’t tell which one the court held, and declined to treat an opinion built on a statute that didn’t apply as binding on a case where it didn’t exist.

The practical translation for anyone briefing this: dicta won’t do it, a case decided on different statutory grounds won’t do it, and an unpublished disposition is a hard sell. What you want is a holding, on your provision, that the panel could not have avoided.

One Deadline, Four Answers

The current fight over the 90-day petition deadline in section 6213(a) is the cleanest illustration in years, and it is moving fast.

The Tax Court says the deadline is jurisdictional. Hallmark Research Collective v. Commissioner, 159 T.C. 126 (2022); Sanders v. Commissioner, 161 T.C. 112 (2023). Four courts of appeals now disagree: the Third (Culp, 2023), the Second (Buller, 2025), the Sixth (Oquendo, 2025), and, in Maniktala v. Commissioner, No. 25-1366 (8th Cir. Aug. 11, 2026), the Eighth. The Maniktalas’ notice of deficiency was mailed in December 2023 and reached them in July 2024. They petitioned ten days later, four months past the deadline, and the Eighth Circuit reversed the dismissal and remanded so the Tax Court could decide whether tolling is warranted.

Then came Kyick Holdings, LLC v. Bessent, No. 25-1429 (1st Cir. Aug. 17, 2026). The First Circuit joined the nonjurisdictional camp and then parted from it, holding that section 6213(a)’s deadline is “mandatory” and not susceptible to equitable tolling — a conclusion it drew from the Supreme Court’s 2026 decision in Enbridge Energy, LP v. Nessel, which the earlier circuits didn’t have. The panel acknowledged the departure in a footnote and closed with a line worth remembering: “The Jenga tower will stand.”

So count the possibilities for a taxpayer who files late. In the First Circuit, the dismissal stands, though not for jurisdictional reasons. In the Second, Third, Sixth, and Eighth, tolling is at least on the table. In circuits still carrying pre-Boechler precedent treating the deadline as jurisdictional — the Seventh, for one, under Tilden v. Commissioner, 846 F.3d 882 (7th Cir. 2017) — the door is shut until that court revisits the question. And anywhere the circuit hasn’t spoken, Hallmark controls and the petition is dismissed. Four regimes, one sentence of the Code.

The same clear-statement fight is running through the rest of the Code’s deadlines. We covered the Tax Court’s holding that the BBA’s 90-day deadline is not jurisdictional in Big Apple Tompkins, where the Court expressly reserved equitable tolling for another day.

Same Penalty Statute, Different Rules

The section 6038 penalty litigation shows what happens when the Tax Court holds its ground outside the reversing circuit. In Farhy v. Commissioner, 160 T.C. 399 (2023), the Court held the IRS has no authority to assess penalties under section 6038(b) for unfiled Forms 5471. The D.C. Circuit reversed. 100 F.4th 223 (D.C. Cir. 2024).

End of story? It wasn’t. In Mukhi v. Commissioner, 163 T.C. No. 8 (2024), the Court reconsidered the question in a case appealable to the Eighth Circuit, acknowledged the reversal, took it seriously, and reaffirmed Farhy — because Golsen reaches only the circuit that would hear the appeal, and the D.C. Circuit wasn’t it. The Second Circuit has since sided with the D.C. Circuit in Safdieh v. Commissioner (2d Cir. Feb. 27, 2026), and appeals are pending elsewhere.

For a client with unfiled international information returns, that produces a genuinely odd map. The penalties are administratively assessable if the appeal would go to the D.C. or Second Circuits. Everywhere else, the Tax Court says they aren’t, and the government has to sue. Same form, same penalty, different answer at the state line.

Can You Pick Your Circuit?

Sometimes. Venue is fixed by residence or principal place of business on the day the petition is filed, so a client who has genuinely relocated — or a corporation whose principal place of business has genuinely moved — may file into a different circuit than the one the audit began in. But the operative word is genuinely. A paper move made to shop for a circuit invites a fight over facts the taxpayer will not enjoy having.

A section 7482(b)(2) stipulation requires the government’s signature, which it will withhold whenever the stipulation costs it something. Cases with petitioners in different circuits raise a problem Golsen flagged and expressly left open, noting that decisions involving two or more taxpayers “may be appealable to more than one circuit” and that it need not decide then what to do about it. And in small tax cases under section 7463, no appeal lies at all, so the premise of the rule — that court, and that court alone — has nothing to attach to.

The rule really changes how you research and how you write. Before you assess a Tax Court case, fix the circuit. Then read that circuit’s law before you read the Tax Court’s, because on any issue where the two diverge, the circuit’s law is the law of your case. A circuit split on supervisory penalty approval or an untested regulation can be a losing issue in Denver and a winning one in Atlanta. We saw a compact example of the rule deciding an outcome in Hough Beck & Baird, where a Ninth Circuit decision on supplemental assessments went from persuasive to dispositive because that was where the appeal would go.

The Tax Court has spent fifty-six years living with the compromise it struck in Golsen, and the current wave of clear-statement litigation is stretching it about as far as it goes. Until the Supreme Court takes one of these deadline cases, the answer to what the law is will keep depending on the answer to where you are. Check the map first.

Freeman Law’s Tax Court litigation attorneys handle deficiency, collection, penalty, and partnership matters nationwide, and circuit selection is part of the analysis from the first conversation. See also our discussion of what an IRS notice of deficiency is and our Tax Court in Brief archive.

This article is for general information only and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Tax outcomes turn on specific facts, and the law changes. Consult qualified counsel about your own situation.