Tax Court Chief Judge Thomas B. Wells delivered remarks on Musings on Tax Court Traditions to the Court Procedure Committee at the ABA Tax Section’s Midyear Meeting on January 30, 2004, recently published at 57 Tax Law. 857 (2004). Here is the abstract:

Thank you for inviting me here today. I thought I would deviate from discussing the usual fare, such as statistics, since you will be hearing about them in great detail from the Chief Counsel’s office later today. I would like to note, however, that because the IRS and the Tax Court keep their statistics on a different basis, there may be some small differences in their numbers and ours, but, in general, I do not think the differences between the two institutions’ statistics are significant. Rather than discussing statistics, I would like to use this time to touch upon some of the traditions that exist in the Tax Court. You are no doubt aware from some of the speeches given and articles written by Tax Court judges and others that there exist in the Tax Court many traditions that have evolved over time. It is some of these traditions that I would like to discuss.