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White House Oversight of Tax Regulations

Posted on June 18, 2018

One of the more significant tax procedure developments of the past year is the new centralized OMB review  that applies to some tax regulations. In this post, Professor Clint Wallace from the University of South Carolina School of Law describes the new framework and notes the many areas that await further clarification. Clint discusses this in greater detail in Centralized Review of Tax Regulations, forthcoming in the Alabama Law Review. Clint is an important voice in the academy on tax administration and tax procedure. His article Congressional Control of Tax Rulemaking appeared this past year in the Tax Law Review. In that piece Clint discussed the special institutional capacity that the Joint Committee on Taxation plays in tax legislation, situating the JCT in the context of administrative law and principles of statutory interpretation. Les

Earlier this month, the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget announced a “new framework” that appears likely require many more tax regulations to undergo OMB review.  In other contexts—for example, environmental or workplace rules—this sort of consultation between agency regulation-writers and OMB is commonplace.  Dating back to the Reagan administration, centralized review has been mandated for many regulations.  (The fountainhead of OMB’s authority to impose this review is Executive Order 12,866, which has been modified in some minor respects by subsequent EOs, but remains in effect).  When OMB reviews a “significant” regulation, it requires the drafting agency to quantify the costs and benefits of the rule, and it facilitates a process whereby other departments can weigh in on the proposals.  But OMB has never before required tax regulations to be subjected to this sort of review.

Some political commentators saw the framework as OMB winning a turf war against Treasury, and some tax professionals reacted with dismay that additional layers of analysis will delay new regulations.  Delays are a particular concern in the tax community right now because Treasury is scrambling to produce reams of important regulations to fill in the many blanks that Congress left when it hastily enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of 2017.

But treating this as either an issue of shifting political power or simply a matter of stretching out a bureaucratic process both undersells and oversells the potential import of this move.  As of now, no one really knows what it means for the implementation of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, nor for the development of regulatory tax policy more generally.

The framework has three major components.  First, it requires Treasury to keep the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (the office within OMB charged with central authority to review regulations)abreast of its agenda by submitting quarterly “notices” of all “planned tax regulatory actions.”  This, of course, does not mark a significant change from current Treasury and IRS practices: Treasury and the IRS already produce an annual “Priority Guidance Plan,” with quarterly updates.  Further, these documents are already robust and useful versions of the sort of regulatory agenda-setting prescribed under Executive Order 12,866: Treasury does a good job of soliciting public input on agenda items, makes fairly accurate predictions of its capacity, and follows through on the items it places on the agenda. It looks like the new framework does not change anything about this agenda-setting process, but rather simply mandates that Treasury should provide the (already publicly available) agenda and updates directly to OIRA.  The framework specifies that “[a]t the election of the OIRA administrator, Treasury will engage in substantive consultation with OIRA regarding any” regulatory action that appears on the agenda.  It is not clear from the memorandum what such engagement might consist of; regardless, such engagement was not prohibited previously.

The second component of the framework is that it provides that OIRA will review any regulatory actions that “create a serious inconsistency or otherwise interfere with an action taken or planned by another agency,” or that “raise novel legal or policy issues, such as by prescribing a rule of conduct backed by an assessable payment.”  The treatment of this category of tax regulatory actions corresponds with the treatment of “significant” rules under E.O. 12,866.  Along similar lines, the third element of the framework requires that regulatory actions that have “an annual non-revenue effect on the economy of $100 million or more,” be subject to the comprehensive review that is required for “economically significant” regulations under E.O. 12,866.  This review calls for the drafting agency (i.e., Treasury) to produce quantified cost-benefit analysis of the proposed regulation and alternatives.   The framework provides OIRA with 45 days to review each rule, with additional time provided as necessary, and allows Treasury to request an “expedited” 10-business-day review—this is notably shorter than the standard 90-day review period provided for regulations from other agencies, which suggests Treasury and OIRA were mindful of timing concerns expressed from the tax community.

These changes potentially mark a sea-change in the process for producing tax regulations.  However, many important details—which could impact the effectiveness and significance of this new world of centralized review—remain to be determined.  Most prominently, the categories of tax regulatory actions subject to review are ill-defined:

  • The first category of tax regulations that OIRA plans to review—i.e., the category that aligns with “significant” regulations under Executive Order 12,866—applies if a proposed regulation presents a “serious inconsistency” with action taken by another agency. But it is unclear how OIRA will distinguish between serious and minor potential inconsistencies.  The other definitional prong is similarly vague: a “novel legal or policy issue” appears straightforward, but is then exemplified as a “rule of conduct backed by an assessable payment.”  In tax administration, such a rule is not novel; it is a tax or a penalty.  It is unclear whether OIRA intends to (or believes it is authorized to require) review of any rule that can affect the amount of tax or penalty owed, or if this is more limited.
  • The second category of tax regulations includes no explanation of how the “non-revenue effect on the economy of $100 million or more” will be calculated. The first descriptor, “non-revenue effect” makes clear that revenue estimates are not relevant.  Presumably this means that Treasury will be focused on the costs and benefits of compliance and behavioral changes.  If Treasury relies on its existing compliance cost estimates, this requirement will simply weight review towards regulations that affect more taxpayers.
  • Further, the $100 million amount is measured again a “no action” baseline, but it is unclear what sort of action that refers to—Does that mean a state of the world where Congress has not enacted a provision that requires regulatory action?Or where Congress has acted but Treasury provides no further guidance?  If it is the latter, then the baseline will often be defined by partial compliance with a law as enacted.

Additionally, a central feature of centralized review is quantified cost-benefit analysis.  But for most tax regulations, current CBA practices will not yield any benefits—a tax creates deadweight loss, and imposes compliance and administrative costs, and CBA does not account for benefits flowing from transfers to the government.  So how will CBA be used in the tax regulatory process?

The way that OMB and Treasury construe these provisions could be the difference between almost all regulations proposed this year and next being subject to centralized review, or almost none, so these are significant questions.

The framework allows OIRA to defer the “economically significant” style of review for up to a year (until April 2019), in order for Treasury and OIRA to hire necessary personnel. And shortly after the framework was released, OIRA announced that Kristin Hickman is acting as an advisor, presumably sorting through these sorts of issues.  I address many of these challenges in my forthcoming piece Centralized Review of Tax Regulations(this linked version is newly updated – the previous version was written prior to the release of Trump administration framework).

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