Every year the government refunds taxes overpaid by people who didn’t owe as much as the government imagined they did. Arguably one of the main functions of the IRS is to ensure the government doesn’t have a huge and increasing liability for taxes that were never correctly collected in the first place.

Then you add on the fact that this government never had the legal right to make the “mistake” in the first place.

So if a Democratic president uses the IRS to illegally seize assets from billionaires and the courts later rule it illegal, your opinion would be that the government should get to keep the money? If not, could you explain why it would be different?