Perhaps the most significant aspect of the LITC Support Center’s U.S. activities is the establishment of the CTR Litigation Strategy Group.  This group, with about forty members, meets weekly to discuss ongoing casework and litigation and to identify areas of law affecting low income taxpayers that might be ripe for challenge.  The goal of the CTR Litigation Strategy Group is to help the LITCs operate along the lines of a national law firm, working together in the federal courts to litigate taxpayer rights and other issues affecting low income taxpayers.  We started by focusing on aspects of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s implementation of COVID-related Economic Impact Payments, which drew several significant challenges, including on behalf of incarcerated individuals; US citizen spouses and children of undocumented persons; and federal beneficiaries with dependent children.  Attorneys for the plaintiffs in many of these cases are members of the CTR Litigation Strategy Group.  For 2021, we are identifying and developing potential procedural due process challenges in tax litigation.    

The Center is committed to raising taxpayer rights issues in the courts via amicus curiae briefs; it and LITCs are particularly well-situated to explain the impact of various holdings on low and moderate income taxpayers, analyses and consequences that might not otherwise be raised in litigation.  This past year, the Harvard Law School Federal Tax Clinic filed four amicus briefs on behalf of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, including one in the United States Supreme Court and one in a successful class action suit on behalf of incarcerated individuals who were barred by the US government from receiving Covid-related economic impact payments.  You can read our amicus briefs here.