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Summary Opinions for the Week Ending 8/21/15

Posted on Sep. 23, 2015

We here at PT are huge fans of self-promotion, so I am thrilled to link Les’ recent article in The Tax Lawyer.   Les’ article, Academic Clinics: Benefitting Students, Taxpayers, and the Tax System, was published in the Tax Section’s 75th Anniversary Compendium – Role of Tax Section in Representing Underserved Taxpayers.  There are various other articles in the full publication that are worth reading (and hopefully will make you all feel guilty enough that you aren’t doing enough pro bono work to either cause you to assist some underserved folks or donate some money to those who are).

To the tax procedure:

  • Hopping in the not-so-wayback-machine, in October of 2014, SumOp covered Albemarle Corp. v. US, where the Court of Federal Claims held that tax accruals related back to the original refund year under the “relation back doctrine” in a case dealing with the special statute of limitations for foreign tax credit cases.   As is often the case in SumOp, we did not delve too deeply into the issue, but I did link to a more robust write up.  It seems the taxpayers were not thrilled with the Court of Federal Claims and sought relief from the Federal Circuit.  Unfortunately for the taxpayer, the Fed Circuit sided with its robed brothers/sisters, and affirmed that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction because the refund claim had not been made within the ten year limitations period under Section 6511(d)(3)(A).   This case deserves a few more lines.  The language in question states,  “the period shall be 10 years from the date prescribed  by law for filing the return for the year in which such taxes were actually paid or accrued.”   When the tax was paid or accrued is what generated the debate.

In the case, a Belgium subsidiary and its parent company, Albemarle entered into a transaction, which they erroneously thought was exempt from tax, so no Belgian tax was paid.  Years in question were ’97 through ‘01.  In 2002, Albemarle was assessed tax on aspects of the transaction in Belgium, and paid the tax that was due.   In 2009, Albemarle filed amended US returns seeking about $1.5MM in refunds due to the foreign tax credit for the Belgian tax.  Service granted for ’99 to ’01, but not ’97 or ’98 because those were outside the ten year statute for claims related to the foreign tax credit under Section 6511(d)(3)(A).  Albemarle claimed that the language “from the date…such taxes were actually…accrued” means the year in which the foreign tax liability was finalized, which would be 2002 instead of the year the tax originated.  Both the lower court and the Circuit Court found that the statute ran from the year of origin.  The Circuit Court came to this conclusion after a fairly lengthy discussion of what “accrue” and “actually” mean, plus a trip through the legislative history and various doctrines, including the “all events test”, the “contested tax doctrine”, and the “relation back” doctrine.  The Court found the “relation back” doctrine was key for this issue, which states the tax “is accruable for the taxable year to which it relates even though the taxpayer contests the liability therefor and such tax is not paid until a later year.” See Rev. Rul. 58-55.  This can result in a different accrual date for crediting the tax against US taxes under the “relation back” test and when the right to claim the credit arises, which is governed by the “contested tax” doctrine.

  • Prof. Andy Grewal, a past PT guest poster, has uploaded an article on SSRN entitled “King v. Burwell:  Where Were the Tax Professors?”  The post discusses possible reasons why tax professors largely did not enter the public debate on the merits of the legal arguments in King v. Burwell, and encourages them to be more active in future similar cases.
  • Another fairly technical issue was addressed in PMTA 2015-009, where the Service discussed interest netting when it is later determined that there was no original overpayment.  Under Section 6621(d), interest is wiped out if there equivalent overpayments to the taxpayer and underpayment to the Service.  The PMTA has a fair amount of analysis, but the issue and conclusion are a sufficient summary for our purposes.  Issues are:

(1) Whether an underpayment applied against an equivalent overlapping overpayment to obtain a net interest rate of zero pursuant to Section 6621(d) is available for netting against another equivalent overlapping overpayment if the Service determines the first overpayment was erroneous, (2) Whether the same is true for an overpayment netted against an erroneous underpayment, and (3) Whether the cause of the error affects these answers.

And concludes:

(1)  An underpayment that was previously netted against an equivalent overlapping overpayment is not available to net against another equivalent overpayment if the taxpayer has retained the benefit of the original interest netting (the interest differential amount paid or credited to the taxpayer). If, however, the taxpayer did not retain the benefit of the original netting, then the underpayment is available for netting against another overpayment. (2) The same analysis applies to an overpayment netted against an erroneous underpayment. (3) We are unaware of any circumstance where the cause of the error would change our answers.

  • I haven’t highlighted Prof. Jim Maule’s blog, MauledAgain, in a while, which is a failing on my part.    Here you will find Prof. Maule’s post on tax fraud in the People’s Court and if you scroll down on this page you will find an update to the case.  Two schmohawks agreed to commit tax fraud by transferring the value of a child tax credit.  The plan fell apart, and one sued the other in People’s Court to enforce the “contract” between the co-conspirators.  The Judge dismissed the case because fraudulent contracts are not enforced.  Prof. Maule quotes from the show, where the plaintiff said, “What about pain and suffering?”  Stole my line.
  • TIGTA has released a report about Appeals penalty abatement decisions, and it isn’t great.  First, it isn’t great because, as the report concludes, Appeals is not adequately explaining its abatement decisions.  I agree Appeals should indicate why it is abating penalties, but I do not agree with the second conclusion, which is that Appeals is leaving money on the table.  Meaning, it should not be waiving those penalties.  TIGTA reports that an additional $34MM could have been collected on the abated penalties.  It also reported that many cases were inappropriately considered by Appeals because Compliance had not reviewed the abatement.  Given that penalties are essentially applied to every underpayment, with no consideration to whether the taxpayer reasonably attempted to comply, it seems inappropriate to assume those penalties are all collectible (or to encourage Appeals to abate less).
  • On Jack Townsend’s Federal Tax Procedure Blog is a discussion of the tax perjury case, US v. Boitano (What would Brian Boitano do?  Not perjure himself in a tax filing, that is for darn sure.  This is Steve Boitano- presumably not related to the super hero/figure skater).  Questions presented in the case were whether filing a document was required under Section 7206(1) for perjury, and what constituted filing.  In Boitano, the taxpayer provided returns to an agent who was not authorized to accept filed returns.  Agent realized the returns were questionable and never forwarded to appropriate Service employee for filing.  The 9th Circuit held filing was required (not stated in statute), and giving the return to the agent did not constitute filing.  Therefore, no crime under Section 7206(1).
  • Like Thor’s mighty hammer, the IRS has slammed down the tax law upon Marvel, and not even its super team of Avenger like lawyers could provide a  Shield (select from Captain America’s, or Agents of) from the consequences.  The Tax Court has decided the hulking consolidated group of the Marvel universe was required to offset its net operating loss by the cancellation of debt  income, and could be applied against the NOL of one member of the consolidated group.   I’ll touch on the holding below in broad strokes and I’ll stop trying to incorporate Marvel superheroes, but what I found most interesting about this case is that it arose out of the 1996 Chapter 11 Bankruptcy of Marvel, which seems to just print money with its movies now.  I had completely forgotten also that two real life titans (of industry) got in dustup in ’96 about that bankruptcy, Ronald Perelman and Carl Icahn.  You can read more about the amazing twenty year turn around here and here.   That story is more interesting than the law in this one.  Under Section 108(a), discharge of indebtedness income is not included as income if the discharge is pursuant to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  The excluded income reduces certain other tax attributes in certain circumstances, including a reduction of NOLs that carryover from prior years.  See 108(b)(1)(2).  Marvel’s subsidiary only reduced the carryover for the subsidiaries  in Chapter 11, and not the parent group that filed consolidated returns with the subs.  The Tax Court found that the aggregate approach was required, and the COD income had to reduce the NOLs of the consolidated full group.  I’ve glossed over the analysis, which is worthwhile if you have this specific type of issue.
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