Per 28 U.S.C. § 2402,7Congress generally mandates bench trials for tax refund suits, except with respect to individual refund suits brought under
28 U.S.C. § 1346(a). Partnership adjustment disputes, brought under
26 U.S.C. § 6234, are channeled only to bench trials in the district courts, CFC, and before the Tax Court. If the partnership opts for either the relevant district court or CFC, it is required to deposit the imputed underpayment and penalties with the IRS—but if it opts for the Tax Court, it can mount a pre-payment challenge. See 26 U.S.C. § 6234(b)(1).
To "'protect[] the Government's ability to collect a consistent stream of revenue' and require[] taxes to be challenged 'only after they are paid,'"8 Congress has also enacted the AIA and carved out claims and controversies with respect to federal taxes from the DJA, supra. The result is to direct tax claims to post-payment refund suits, available in the CFC or district courts, or pre-payment suits in the Tax Court, where a taxpayer need not deposit the disputed funds before bringing his or her complaint.
B.
The district court rejected Norcave's request for injunctive and declaratory relief for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under the AIA. Now challenging that decision, Norcave advances the theory that its suit is not
"for the purpose of restraining the collection or assessment of any tax." It _____________________
48 F.4th 358, 364 n.6 (5th Cir. 2022). 7In relevant part, "[A]ny action against the United States under section 1346 shall be tried by the court without a jury, except that any action against the United States under section 1346(a)(1) shall, at the request of either party to such action, be tried by the court with a jury." For background, other headings of § 1346 provide jurisdiction for the Tucker Act and TCA.
8Holland v. Westmoreland Coal Co. (In re Westmoreland Coal Co.), 968 F.3d 526, 533 (5th Cir. 2020) (quoting NFIB v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519, 543 (2012)). Case: 25-30542 Document: 68-1 Page: 6 Date Filed: 08/21/2026
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musters a flock of dictionary definitions for the constituent terms of the AIA, which, when substituted into the statutory language, read, "no suit for the [objective, goal or end] of [prohibiting acts of] the [official recording of a taxpayer's liability] or [obtaining payment of taxes due] shall be maintained in any court by any person[.]" 26 U.S.C. § 7421(a) (alterations supplying Norcave's definitions). On Norcave's preferred set of definitions, the read- ing of the statute becomes, if anything, more all-encompassing: Norcave's plain-language definitions would potentially sweep in any act with merely a goal or end related to the upstream recording of liability or the downstream collection process. As we show, this court and the Supreme Court have rejected such complaints.
Instead, the best reading of the AIA is to interpret its language in con- text and reflecting the terms of art of the IRC, whereunder "assessment"
refers to the multi-step statutory framework of identifying a payor's tax lia- bility and "collection" refers to the regulatorily-defined steps for the IRS to impose that liability on, and recover money from, taxpayers.9 As for the AIA's term "restrain," the Supreme Court has offered comparatively wider definitions, stating that the AIA "protects the Govern- ment's ability to collect a consistent stream of revenue, by barring litigation to enjoin or otherwise obstruct the collection of taxes." NFIB v. Sebelius,
567 U.S. at 543 (emphasis added). And the Court has offered comparatively narrower definitions. In Direct Marketing, it reversed an injunction against a state's reporting requirement under the closely parallel state-oriented Tax _____________________
9See Direct Mktg. Ass'n v. Brohl, 575 U.S. 1, 9-11 (2015) ("'Assessment' . . . refers to the official recording of a taxpayer's liability . . . . It might also be understood more broadly to encompass the process by which that amount is calculated . . . . '[C]ollection is the act of obtaining payment of taxes due . . . . It might be understood narrowly as a step in the taxation process that occurs after a formal assessment [or widely to include withhold- ing].") (cleaned up).
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Injunction Act ("TIA"),10along the way defining restrain as "[t]o prohibit from action; to put compulsion upon . . . to enjoin" and adding that "a suit cannot be understood to 'restrain' the 'assessment, levy or collection' of a state tax if it merely inhibits those activities." 575 U.S. at 13, 15. Most recently, in CIC Services, LLC v. IRS, 593 U.S. 209, 217 (2021), the Court interpreted the AIA as barring suits for "the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax," where courts, "inquire not into a taxpayer's subjective motive, but into the action's objective aim— essentially, the relief the suit requests." The IRS points out that the relief requested by Norcave amounts to barring the assessment and collection of taxes, including enjoining the IRS's current assertion and pursuit of valuation penalties against Norcave, bringing its objective aim within the language of CIC Services and the AIA.
Another point of distinction with CIC Services is that there, the Court confronted a notice and reporting requirement that carried a regulatory pen- alty, which the Court interpreted as distinct from a tax assessment, stating that "the Notice's reporting rule and the statutory tax penalty are several steps removed from each other," and ultimately held that a challenge to it did not trigger the AIA. Id. at 220.
Here, by contrast, the negligence and misstatement accuracy-related _____________________
10The TIA provides that federal district courts "shall not enjoin, suspend or restrain the assessment, levy or collection of any tax under State law." 28 U.S.C. § 1341 (emphasis added). We consider this formulation to be materially equivalent to the AIA, which in relevant part provides that "no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person…." 26 U.S.C. § 7421(a) (emphasis added). See Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading the Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 204, 252 (2012) (on the Related Statutes Canon). Indeed, the Court has said that the TIA was modeled on the AIA and that it "assume[s] that words used in both Acts are generally used in the same way." Direct Mktg., 575 U.S. at 8 (2015); see also Hibbs v. Winn, 542 U.S. 88, 100-05 (2004). Case: 25-30542 Document: 68-1 Page: 8 Date Filed: 08/21/2026
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penalties fit into the assessed tax itself, as clearly set out by the language of
26 U.S.C. § 6665:
Applicable Rules . . .
(1) the additions to the tax, additional amounts, and penalties provided by this chapter shall be paid upon notice and demand and shall be assessed, collected, and paid in the same manner as taxes; and
(2) any reference in this title to "tax" imposed by this title shall be deemed also to refer to the additions to the tax, additional amounts, and penalties provided by this chapter. Directly reading this statutory provision, one can see that except as otherwise provided, penalties and affirmative taxes as debt or liability claims on income merge into the IRC's term of art: tax. Indeed, this court has said as much:
"The reference in the [AIA] to 'tax' is deemed also to refer to certain pen- alties, including the penalty provided for frivolous returns under § 6702."
Warren v. United States, 874 F.2d 280, 282 (5th Cir. 1989). And so did the Supreme Court in NFIB v. Sebelius.
Recently, in Harward v. City of Austin, 84 F.4th 319 (5th Cir. 2023) (per curiam), this court applied CIC Services in a case seeking injunctive relief against state taxes despite the federal TIA. We carefully delineated between
(1) impermissible relief restraining acts of collection and assessment and
(2) permissible relief targeting the preliminary procedural step of identifying the geographic location of a piece of real estate. See id. at 323-34. We de- scribed the distinction as permitting relief against "the ordinance's authori- zation," which "itself is therefore not an act of assessment, levy, or collec- tion" but "is no more than a prerequisite to assessment." Id. Importantly, in Harward, this court struck two requested remedies seeking pre-payment relief against assessments asserted by the City of Aus- tin, including "a declaration that the City's notices to [appellant] that the Case: 25-30542 Document: 68-1 Page: 9 Date Filed: 08/21/2026
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shoreline properties are within their taxing-unit boundaries are invalid" and a mandamus to the same effect. Id. at 325. We thereby have taken CIC Ser- vices's "objective purpose of relief" test to bar suits against assessments and notices of assessments already in motion. For the State of Texas, this court has strictly upheld the pay-now sue-later tax structure. Harward applies analogously to the federal FPA.
Applying CIC Services and Harward, as to which Norcave claims that its suit "targets its constitutional right to defend against the assertion of pen- alties, not the IRS's right to assess taxes themselves," and insists that it tar- gets "a separate legal mandate," it draws upon an unavailable distinction. Cf. CIC Servs., 593 U.S. at 223. The objective target of Norcave's relief is a tax assessment already in motion, which we identify by "look[ing] to the face of the taxpayer's complaint." Id. at 218 (citing Bob Jones Univ. v. Simon,
416 U.S. 725, 738 (1974)).11
Indeed, another avenue for identifying the 'objective aim of relief' as 'restraining' the imposition of the tax penalty—part of the tax—is to recog- nize that Norcave's requested injunction would potentially eliminate the entire tax assessment through a jury trial, in violation of Congress's jurisdic- tional plan.12By contrast, attacking the standalone duty to report in CIC Ser- vices did not involve a jury trial that could ultimately declare the target of a _____________________
11Some assessment is obviously taking place. The question throughout has been whether that assessment counts as a tax assessment.
12CIC Servs., 593 U.S. at 218 ("[W]e have looked to the "relief requested"—the thing sought to be enjoined . . . . The [AIA] kicks in when the target of a requested injunc- tion is a tax obligation.") (citing Alexander v. "Americans United" Inc., 416 U.S. 752, 761 (1974)) (further citation omitted); see also Bob Jones, 416 U.S. at 736 ("The Court has interpreted the principal purpose of this [AIA] language to be the protection of the Gov- ernment's need to assess and collect taxes as expeditiously as possible with a minimum of preenforcement judicial interference") (emphasis added) (citation omitted). Case: 25-30542 Document: 68-1 Page: 10 Date Filed: 08/21/2026
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tax non-liable and thereby frustrate the revenue-collection process.13We are reassured of this view by the IRC's coordinating provisions,14which not only illuminate that a direct effect on penalties amounts to a direct effect on taxes, but potentially reach further than our holding. That would occur by sweeping in tax penalties writ broad, opening the door to the AIA's immunization of procedural steps upstream or downstream of the tax penalty provided that they are not attenuated down to the incidental status of the reporting or property-identification rules in CIC Services and Harward. Another point of distinction with CIC Services is that the reporting requirement there involved a criminal overlay, which contributed to the Supreme Court's construction of it as serving a purpose removed from the assessment or collection of a tax, as well as the Court's implicit concern for a plaintiff to be required to violate the law before raising a challenge.15Here, by contrast, none of the avenues available to challenge an assessed tax accur- acy or negligence reporting penalty requires the taxpayer to violate any crim- inal law, as these penalties are purely civil, and criminal tax matters are sep- _____________________
13See CIC Servs., 593 U.S. at 218 ("CIC's complaint asks for injunctive relief from the Notice's reporting rules, not from any impending or eventual tax obligation"); id. at 226 ("CIC's suit aims to enjoin a standalone reporting requirement, whose violation may result in both tax penalties and criminal punishment. That is not a suit 'for the purpose of restraining the [IRS's] assessment or collection' of a tax, and so does not trigger the [AIA].). Here, the penalty is not standalone but merges into tax liability. Cf. id. at 225 ("Had Congress, or the IRS acting through a delegation, imposed a tax on micro-captive transactions themselves—and had CIC then brought a pre-enforcement suit to prevent the IRS from applying that tax—the [AIA] would have kicked in. Then, CIC would have had to pay the tax and seek a refund."). We see this hypothetical at play here, where the appel- lant is ultimately trying to contest the tax, pre-payment, in front of a jury. 14See 26 U.S.C. § 6665 ante for accuracy-related penalties and § 6671 (equivalent). 15See CIC Servs., 593 U.S. at 221-22 ("[V]iolation of the Notice is punishable not only by a tax, but by separate criminal penalties . . . . That fact clinches the case for treating a suit brought to set aside the Notice as different from one brought to restrain its back-up tax.").
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arately prosecuted by the Department of Justice, with defendants entitled to a jury trial.16
As for Norcave's argument that it has no alternative forum to vindi- cate its alleged right: The Tax Court has already entertained a virtually identical case challenging the IRS's denial of charitable deductions for land conservation easements, where that court rejected equivalent constitutional arguments on the merits. See Silver Moss, 165 T.C. No. 3. The Tax Court is an alternative forum. It is not this court's fault if an independent tribunal has reached a conclusion that Norcave finds unfavorable—there is no "escape valve" for a lack of subject matter jurisdiction.17Additionally, because the partnership tax is assessed at the entity level but then ultimately "passed through" and levied upon individuals, there is no reason to assume that these taxpayers will never have individual access to a forum in which to challenge the FPA, provided that they use the push-out election in 26 U.S.C. § 6226. As one final observation on the DJA, the IRS suggests that the DJA's jurisdiction stripping is, if anything, more sweeping than the AIA's. This court has held as much,18so we are reassured that both the DJA and AIA bar _____________________
16See, e.g., Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192 (1991) (analyzing the burden of proof for a good-faith defense in a criminal tax evasion jury trial); see generally U.S. CONST. amend. VI.
17But see South Carolina v. Regan, 465 U.S. 367 (1984) (offering a state plaintiff a federal forum within original jurisdiction as a last resort and adding that "the Act's purpose and the circumstances of its enactment indicate that Congress did not intend the Act to apply to actions brought by aggrieved parties for whom it has not provided an alternative remedy."). Subsequent courts have stated, "'Because of the strong policy animating the [AIA], and the sympathetic, almost unique facts in South Carolina, courts have construed the South Carolina exception very narrowly.'" RYO Mach., LLC v. U.S. Dep't of Treasury,
13
this action because its objective purpose relevant to the DJA analysis is to restrain or enjoin an assessed penalty, which counts as a tax.
III.
Norcave's complaint and requested relief target a tax within the statu- tory meaning of the AIA and DJA, given Congress's clear jurisdiction strip and plain command that this accuracy and reporting penalty merges into tax liability. Thus we lack jurisdiction to entertain Norcave's constitutional claim against the jurisdictional scheme assigning FPA disputes to bench trials. The judgment of dismissal is AFFIRMED.
_____________________
citations omitted).
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