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Chamber of Commerce Files Amicus in Facebook Case: In Praise of Appeals

Posted on Mar. 16, 2018

The Chamber of Commerce, no stranger to cases challenging fundamental issues in tax procedure, has filed an amicus brief in the case I discussed earlier this week where Facebook is suing IRS due to the agency denying Facebook access to Appeals.

The amicus largely repeats the substantive arguments Facebook has made though emphasizes 1) the importance that taxpayers place on ensuring access to a fair and impartial Appeals function and 2) the cost to the system if IRS is allowed to bypass Appeals when it in its unreviewable discretion believes that decision is consistent with “sound tax administration.”

The brief highlights how taxpayers value privacy (uhh a privacy argument  in a case involving Facebook?) and unlike cases in federal court, Appeals proceedings are outside the public eye. The brief also discusses how Exam is kept in check by Appeals’ mission to settle cases fairly and on the hazards of litigation, a balancing act that Exam does not apply in evaluating possible resolutions:

Taxpayers no longer can feel confident that they will have access to an independent forum to serve as a safety valve on an overzealous examination team. Taxpayers and examination teams alike may focus more energy on convincing IRS Counsel whether it is in the interests of “sound tax administration” to permit access to IRS Appeals at the expense of devoting effort to developing the merits of the issues in the case. The effects of Revenue Procedure 2016-22 will be felt far beyond those cases in which access to IRS Appeals is actually denied.

The brief also emphasizes the Chamber’s view that IRS is trying to carve out a different path and extend dreaded tax exceptionalism:

The IRS continues to resist application of the APA, arguing in this case that “Congress has provided specific rules for judicial review of tax determinations; those specific rules control over the more general rules for judicial review embodied in the APA.”

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Whatever the underlying merits of the IRS Appeals process, and Facebook’s claims in this case, it is nonetheless astonishing for the IRS to argue in its Motion to Dismiss that it has the authority to deny taxpayers access to an independent administrative forum in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and that taxpayers that are adversely impacted by those actions have absolutely no judicial recourse. Whatever one can say about the goals of “sound tax administration,” a system in which the IRS is above the law—the very same law that applies to all administrative agencies of the federal government—is not one that the Supreme Court has approved and is not one that this Court should approve.

The Chamber brief hangs its hat in part on the argument that the courts have been pushing back on tax exceptionalism. That to me is atmpospherically relevant, but it proves too much: administering the tax system is different from say regulating noxious emissions or ensuring airplane safety.  The devil is in the details of the particular procedures or path IRS believes warrant a separate approach.

IRS has not helped itself in this case though by promulgating essentially a standardless standard that allows Counsel to bypass Appeals that as the brief indicates allows Counsel to “mask illegitmate reasons for denying access to Appeals.” Even if in this case the reason for cutting off access to Appeals is legitimate, the lack of guidance on what should inform or explain that bypass decision generates a perception of illegitimacy, and that is not sound tax administration.

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