[PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 22-10793 ____________________

WAYNE LEE, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Defendant-Appellee.

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Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 8:21-cv-01579-TPB-AAS ____________________

Before LAGOA, BRASHER, and ED CARNES, Circuit Judges. USCA11 Case: 22-10793 Document: 30-1 Date Filed: 10/24/2023 Page: 2 of 24

2 Opinion of the Court 22-10793

BRASHER, Circuit Judge: The IRS penalizes taxpayers for filing late tax returns, unless the delay “is due to reasonable cause and not . . . willful neglect.” 26 U.S.C. § 6651(a)(1). In United States v. Boyle, the Supreme Court established the bright line rule that “reliance on an agent,” without more, does not amount to “reasonable cause” for failure to file a tax return on time. 469 U.S. 241, 248, 252 (1985). The question in this appeal is whether Boyle’s bright line rule applies to e-filed returns. Wayne Lee’s CPA failed to file Lee’s tax returns for three consecutive years: 2014 through 2016. In 2019, the IRS assessed Lee with over seventy thousand dollars in penalties for violating Section 6651(a) of the Internal Revenue Code and barred him from applying his 2014 overpayment to taxes owed for 2015 and 2016. Lee sued, arguing that his failure to file was due to reasonable cause. He also sought a refund of the penalties. The dis- trict court granted summary judgment for the government, con- cluding that Boyle foreclosed Lee’s claims. Lee appealed. If Lee’s CPA had failed to file paper tax returns, there would be no question that Boyle would have precluded a reasonable cause defense and a refund. Boyle, 469 U.S. at 252. But no circuit court has yet applied Boyle to e-filed tax returns. See Haynes v. United States, 760 F. App’x 324, 327 (5th Cir. 2019) (noting that this is an open question). We must answer this open question and decide whether Boyle’s bright line rule applies to e-filed returns. We believe it does. Accordingly, we conclude that Lee’s reliance on his CPA does not USCA11 Case: 22-10793 Document: 30-1 Date Filed: 10/24/2023 Page: 3 of 24

22-10793 Opinion of the Court 3

constitute “reasonable cause” under Section 6651(a)(1). We do not address Lee’s claim, which he raises for the first time on appeal, that the IRS incorrectly assessed failure-to-pay penalties under Sec- tion 6651(a)(2). We affirm the district court. I.

We briefly recount the pertinent facts of this case, which are largely undisputed. Wayne Lee, a Florida surgeon, hired CPA Kevin Walsh to prepare and file his federal income tax returns for 2014, 2015, and 2016. 1 Because Walsh’s firm, ATROX Partners, prepared and filed more than ten federal tax returns each year, Treasury Regulations deemed Walsh a “specified tax return pre- parer,” requiring him to file all prepared returns on magnetic media (e.g., e-filing). From 201