Bittner v. United States (21-1195)
argument 21-1195Bittner v. United States
Supreme Court of the United States
1h 12m
8 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 8 days ago
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What is the central dispute over whether a failure to file a report creates one or many violations?
We will hear
argument this morning in case twenty one eleven ninety five, Bittner versus United States. Mr Geyser. Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court. The Bank Secrecy Act instructs the Secretary of the Treasury to require parties to keep records, file reports, or keep records and file reports. The question here is whether the failure to file the report leads to one violation of the Act or potentially dozens. In this case, over 270 violations of Federal law for each account not listed on five annual forms. Under the Act's plain text, context, history, and purpose, the answer is clear. The Act requires parties to file reports, not report individual accounts. Any failure to file a report thus gives rise to a single statutory violation, no matter how many accounts a person has or how many mistakes a person might make on a single form.
Because there is no independent duty to report each account, there is no independent violation every time an account is not reported. According to the government, petitioner violated the Act two hundred and seventy-two times for unintentionally failing to file five annual forms. If Congress wanted to expose innocent parties to potentially dozens of violations of Federal law for a single unintentional annual misstep, Congress would have said so expressly. Because the government's contrary position is wrong, this court should reverse. I welcome the court's questions.
Mr. Geyser, uh you make uh Uh you put quite an emphasis on the report versus the account. What if the uh IRS simply said every account has to be on a separate report? And so rather than having uh just a handful of reports, you had one per account. What would your argument be?
I think our argument would be that would still be a single violation because the the the way the act is structured, it says that parties shall file reports as required by the Secretary. So if the Secretary says, I want a separate report for each account and you failed to do that, then the answer is, did you follow the Secretary's instructions? The answer would be no you didn't. So if you have ten accounts and you file five reports and you should have filed all ten, you violated the act. But you violated it once. Reports, because the only way to violate the Act is to fail to file the reports as required by the Secretary. Now, to be very clear in this case, the Court doesn't need to decide that here because the regulation in question only imposes a single annual reporting requirement.
Parties have to file a single report. That's the way it's been for decades. That's the way the law stood when Congress added the non-willful penalty in 2004. And I think it would be very unfortunate. unusual for the Secretary to go and change that re that regulation after decades of practice to suddenly impose a s uh an individual uh report uh requirement for each separate account.
Mr. Geyser, uh one of the contextual points that you raise and that I think has some force is that it's um unusual for the government to impose draconian penalties on someone who is not willful. In other words, does not even perhaps know of the reporting uh obligation. And that's a powerful contextual point in your favor, I think. But the government comes back and says, well, but the statute has a reasonable cause provision. That in essence takes care of people who have reasonable cause for not knowing of the obligation or failing to file the report with the accounts listed. Doesn't that reasonable cause provision take care of some of the concerns that you raise about people being penalized who didn't know about the reporting requirement or otherwise didn't know about the remote?
Yeah.
Your Honor, it may take care of it to some extent, but obviously not entirely, because there are still non willful violators of the Act.
Sorry to interrupt, but uh in that those instances, what I think the government will say is that in this case the lower courts said as well, it's in those instances where someone uh f di was unreasonable in failing to make further inquiry to understand their legal obligations.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central dispute over whether a failure to file a report creates one or many violations?
0:00–9:59
2
How does the petitioner argue that the Bank Secrecy Act imposes only a single statutory violation regardless of the number of accounts?
9:59–18:17
3
What role does the reasonable‑cause defense play in distinguishing willful from non‑willful violations?
18:17–26:51
4
How do the Justices’ hypothetical questions (e.g., Justice Thomas’s multiple‑report scenario) test the parties’ interpretations?
26:51–34:55
5
What textual and historical evidence does each side cite to support a single‑violation versus per‑account reading?
34:55–45:13
6
How does agency guidance, such as the Internal Revenue Manual, influence the court’s view of the penalty scheme?
45:13–53:41
7
What are the arguments concerning the size of penalties for non‑willful versus willful failures to report?
53:41–1:03:16
8
What conclusions do the parties draw about the proper statutory construction and its impact on future enforcement?
1:03:16–1:12:54