Your assumption is that the IRS's right to override appraisers comes with a fine print that says "applicable only in an awkward corner case" (in this case "item

Your assumption is that the IRS's right to override appraisers comes with a fine print that says "applicable only in an awkward corner case" (in this case "items that cannot be legally sold"). I'm pretty sure if they're indeed allowed to do this and the conditions are defined as narrowly as possible (still to be decided in court I guess) then it can be easily abused. And the article doesn't suggest that such an exception exists. And that's not even discussing yet the process through which an appraisal gets bumped up by over 300% between 2 steps that were both considered to be solid enough to actually be sent out.