In Cowie v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2007-108 (4/30/07), an attorney represented himself in a tax dispute with the IRS.  The attorney agreed to invest funds provided by his father for the father’s benefit.  But "to avoid paying two sets of transaction fees and to save time," the attorney-son deposited the father’s funds in his existing brokerage account.  Although the father and attorney-son each reported their respective shares of the taxable transactions from the brokerage account, the brokerage firm reported all of the transactions on a single Form 1099-B in attorney-son’s name.

The IRS issued a notice of deficiency to attorney-son for over $100,000 in taxes, penalties, and interest.  After attorney-son filed a Tax Court petition, he settled with the IRS and sought attorneys’ fees from the IRS.  The Tax Court held that (1) the IRS’s position was reasonable and substantially justified because the taxpayer failed to provide the requisite information to the IRS to verify that all the income from the brokerage account had been properly reported until late in the proceedings; (2) a pro se litigant attorney cannot recover attorneys’ fees under § 7430 because he did not "pay or incur fees for legal services”; and (3) the taxpayer did not specify an award amount:  "The motion lists only ‘at least 15 hours on the telephone’, ‘at least twenty five hours generating the Petition’, ‘at least ten hours generating this motion’, and ‘many additional hours marshalling and copying paperwork.’ The recitation of time spent does not include dates or descriptions of the work done."