Estate’s Tax Refund Claim Requires Trial After Attorney Switch

A trial is needed to determine an estate’s penalty liability for filing tax returns ten months late after retaining a new attorney, a federal court in Providence ruled.

Vincenzo Sandonato’s estate retained the decedent’s longtime attorney, Joseph Palumbo, and only learned several months after the deadline to file its federal tax return that Palumbo had stopped practicing law because of illness. The estate filed its tax return ten months late upon retaining new counsel and correcting Palumbo’s analytical mistakes with the help of a certified public accountant.

The IRS assessed more than $600,000 in failure to file and failure to ...