Menu
Tax Notes logo

Executive Order on Regulatory Relief to Support Economic Recovery

Posted on May 21, 2020

Monte Jackel returns to discuss an executive order issued this week by the President. Keith

On May 19, 2020, the President signed an executive order (Order) relating to regulatory relief to support economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis. Section 1 of the Order states:

“Agencies should address this [crisis] by rescinding, modifying, waiving, or providing exemptions from regulations and other requirements that may inhibit economic recovery, consistent with applicable law and with protection of the public health and safety, with national and homeland security, and with budgetary priorities and operational feasibility. They should also give businesses, especially small businesses, the confidence they need to re-open by providing guidance on what the law requires; by recognizing the efforts of businesses to comply with often-complex regulations in complicated and swiftly changing circumstances; and by committing to fairness in administrative enforcement and adjudication.”

The reference to “regulations” is to EO 13892, section 2(g), which states that the term means a legislative rule under section 553 of 5 USC, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). This means that the executive order would only apply to tax regulations to the extent they are legislative rules and not interpretative rules. The IRS view is that most tax regulations are interpretative and not legislative but the courts have recently deviated from following the IRS view. [see this prior post here on PT for further discussion].

The Order then states:

“The heads of all agencies are directed to use, to the fullest extent possible and consistent with applicable law, any emergency authorities that I have previously invoked in response to the COVID-19 outbreak or that are otherwise available to them to support the economic response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The heads of all agencies are also encouraged to promote economic recovery through non-regulatory actions.”

This provision of the Order, as it could apply to federal tax matters, seems to authorize continued and expanded use of the tax related provisions of sections 7508 and 7508A. See below.

The Order then states:

“The heads of all agencies shall identify regulatory standards that may inhibit economic recovery and shall consider taking appropriate action, consistent with applicable law, including by issuing proposed rules as necessary, to temporarily or permanently rescind, modify, waive, or exempt persons or entities from those requirements, and to consider exercising appropriate temporary enforcement discretion or appropriate temporary extensions of time as provided for in enforceable agreements with respect to those requirements, for the purpose of promoting job creation and economic growth, insofar as doing so is consistent with the law and with the policy considerations identified in… this order.”

Does the Order apply to tax regulations and, if so, how? In cases outside of tax, it is relatively easy to determine what is and is not a legislative rule. Outside of FAQs not being legislative rules because they are not “authority” under section 6662 in the first place, the determination of what is a legislative rule in the tax realm at present is being determined by the courts on a case-by-case basis. Essentially, from where we stand right now, legislative rules are those that impose substantive rights and duties not directly dealt with in the applicable statute.

Assuming that there is some uniform approach taken by the Treasury Secretary to implement the Order on the issue of tax legislative rules, the next question is what action can the Treasury Secretary take with tax regulations and other items considered legislative rules for this purpose?

The following are possibilities:

  1. Tax regulations that raise revenue because of the substance of the rule would seem to impede economic growth and recovery because the taxpayer has less net after-tax cash than if the rule provided otherwise. Does this mean that all tax regulations, if deemed legislative rules, should be rescinded or suspended if such action would reduce the taxpayer’s net after-tax economic position? That is not likely to be how the IRS views the situation but guidance may be needed to flush this out.
  2. As briefly noted earlier above, the Order seems to lean in favor of the IRS issuing more extensions of applicable due dates pursuant to the authority of section 7508A due to the March 1, 2020 emergency presidential declaration on the coronavirus. This would mean that the IRS’s announced position that tax due dates will not be extended beyond July 15, 2020 may need to be re-examined by that agency. How else could the Order be interpreted in this area of law?
  3. There was a prior regulatory effort under executive orders previously issued by the president relating to withdrawing regulations deemed too burdensome or perhaps lacking legal authority and limiting the use of new regulations generally, among other matters. A limited list of regulations was produced by the IRS and Treasury a few years back and action was taken on a number of those items. Does the subject Order mean that this process will need to be repeated by Treasury and the IRS, perhaps more thoroughly than previously? Guidance should perhaps be issued on that as well.

As Professor Hickman and others have espoused over the years, due to the long period where tax regulations were, more or less, given a free pass under the APA, it is often not clear today how regulatory edicts generally, such as the subject Order, are to be applied to tax regulations given that the process of how and to what extent tax regulations are subject to the APA continues to be a developing area of law. Now would appear to be a good time to push this process along.

DOCUMENT ATTRIBUTES
Subject Areas / Tax Topics
Authors
Copy RID