In litigation, the IRS will often seek to short circuit a
proceeding by filing an early, pre-discovery motion for summary
judgment. Taxpayers, in turn, often resist those motions by
submitting documentary evidence and affidavits to raise genuine
issues of material fact or to highlight the need for further
discovery. Inevitably, the IRS argues in rebuttal that such
affidavits should be disregarded because they are
"self-serving" and (often) uncorroborated with
independent evidence. However, the IRS's historically safe
argument just became a whole lot harder to make due to a recent
unanimous decision by the full U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Eleventh Circuit.
In United States v. Stein, the government filed a
pre-discovery motion for summary judgment to collect on outstanding
tax assessments along with interest and penalties.. In opposition,
the taxpayer proffered an affidavit attesting to the fact that she
had already paid the taxes the government claimed she owed.
