D.C. Circuit Denies Government’s Stay Request in Loving

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March 28, 2013

The D.C. Circuit (Rogers, Tatel, and Brown, JJ.) has denied the government’s request for a stay of the district court’s injunction of the new registration regime for paid tax-return preparers.  The court did not give an elaborate explanation, simply stating that “[a]ppellants have not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending appeal.”  Thus, the court did not indicate whether the government fell short because its motion was not sufficiently convincing that the district court was likely to be reversed on the merits or because it did not make a sufficiently compelling case of irreparable harm.

In any case, it is now likely that the government will not be able to implement the regulatory scheme in full at this time, but will remain bound by the injunction until the D.C. Circuit rules on the merits of its appeal in due course (and, of course, even after that if it is unable to persuade the D.C. Circuit to reverse).  The government does still have the option of asking the Supreme Court to stay the district court’s order pending resolution of the appeal in the court of appeals.  It is unusual for the government to ask the Court for that kind of relief, and for the Court to grant it, but pursuing that route remains a possibility if the government feels strongly enough about the adverse consequences of leaving the injunction in place for the time being.

Loving – Court of Appeals Order Denying Stay

Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Penalty Issue in Woods

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March 25, 2013

The Court this morning granted the government’s petition for certiorari in United States v. Woods, No. 12-562.  As we recently reported, the issue presented in the petition concerns the applicability of the valuation overstatement penalty — specifically, whether tax underpayments are “attributable to” overstatements of basis when the inflated basis claim has been disallowed based on a finding that the underlying transactions lacked economic substance.

The Court also added a second question for the parties to brief — “Whether the district court had jurisdiction in this case under 26 U.S.C. section 6226 to consider the substantial valuation misstatement penalty.”  This issue involves the general question under TEFRA of which issues are to be resolved in a partner-level proceeding and which should be resolved at the partnership level.  See Petaluma FX Partners, LLC v. Commissioner, 591 F.3d 649, 655-56 (D.C. Cir. 2010).

The government’s opening brief is due May 9.  Oral argument will likely be scheduled for late 2013, with a decision expected by June 2014.

Supreme Court Denies Certiorari in Union Carbide

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March 18, 2013

The Court this morning denied Union Carbide’s petition for certiorari that sought review of the Second Circuit’s denial of claimed research and experimentation credits for the costs of certain supplies used in production process experiments.  The petition had also asked the Court to consider the court of appeals’ application of Auer deference principles.  See our prior reports here.

The Court also entered an order denying a motion by the National Association for Manufacturers to file an untimely brief as amicus curiae in support of the petition.  Although the Court routinely grants motions for leave to file timely amicus briefs, it does take its time limits seriously.  In this case, the amicus brief was due January 3 and the brief was actually filed (with an accompanying motion for leave to file out of time) on January 15.

The Court took no action on the government’s petition for certiorari in Woods, a penalty case.  See our prior report here.  It was scheduled to consider the case at last Friday’s conference, but apparently decided that it needed more time to decide what to do.  The case will be rescheduled to be considered again at a future conference, possibly this Friday.  So there could be an order in the case next Monday.

Reply Brief Filed on Stay Motion in Loving

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March 15, 2013

Yesterday, in Loving v. IRS (the subject of a recent post), the Government filed its reply brief in support of its motion to stay the district court’s injunction of the new registration regime for paid tax-return preparers.  With respect to its likelihood of success on the merits, the Government argued the ambiguity of the statute authorizing Treasury to “regulate the practice of representatives of persons before” it.   With respect to the threat of irreparable harm, the Government argued that the injunction risked delaying the implementation of the regulatory regime until the 2015 return-preparation season and that the problem of unregulated return preparers represents a “major public concern.”

Loving – USG Reply Brief re Motion for Stay

Government Seeks Appellate Stay of Order Enjoining Enforcement of New Registration Regime for Paid Tax Return Preparers

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March 13, 2013

The Government has appealed to the D.C. Circuit from the district court decision enjoining the IRS from enforcing its new registration regime for paid tax return preparers.  Loving v. IRS, D.C. Cir. No. 13-5061.  The Government has also asked the court of appeals to stay the decision pending appeal, after the district court declined to grant a stay.  The Government’s stay motion recites that, the appeal has not yet been authorized by the Solicitor General’s office, but that, if the appeal is authorized, the Government intends to file its opening brief in March and to move for an expedited oral argument.

To recap the district court’s decision:  In 2011, the Treasury Department promulgated regulations that extended Circular 230 (the regulations that govern practice before the IRS) to non-attorney, non-CPA tax-return preparers who prepare and file tax returns for compensation.  Under the new regulations, tax-return preparers must register before they can practice before the IRS, and they are deemed to practice before the IRS even if their only function is to prepare and submit tax returns.  In order to register initially, tax return preparers must pass a qualification exam and pay a fee.  To maintain their registration each year, they must pay a fee and take at least fifteen hours of continuing education courses.  The IRS estimated that the new regulation sweeps in 600,000 to 700,000 new tax return preparers who were previously unregulated at the federal level.

Three tax return preparers who were not previously regulated by Circular 230 brought suit challenging the 2011 regulations and seeking declaratory and injunctive relief.  In January 2013, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Boasberg, J.) granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment.  The court recognized that, under Mayo Foundation, the two-step analysis of Chevron should be applied to determine the validity of the regulations.  The court explained, however, that “the battle here will be fought and won on Chevron step one” because “Plaintiffs offer no independent argument for why, if the statute is ambiguous, the IRS’s interpretation would be ‘arbitrary or capricious . . .’ under Chevron step two.” Focusing in this way on the unambiguous statutory text, the court held that the Treasury Department lacked statutory authority to issue the regulations.

The court rejected the Government’s argument that the agency had inherent authority to regulate those who practice before it, because a statute (31 U.S.C. § 330) specifically defined the scope of the Treasury Department’s authority.  Under that statute, the Treasury Department is authorized to “regulate the practice of representatives of persons before the Department of Treasury.”  The district court held that, although the statute did not define “the practice of representatives,” the surrounding statutory text made clear that Congress used “practice” to refer to “advising and assisting persons in presenting their case,” not simply preparing returns.  Turning to provisions in the Internal Revenue Code that regulate tax return preparers, the court reasoned that Congress could not have intended § 330 to be the authority for regulating tax return preparers because “statutes scattered across Title 26 of the U.S. Code create a careful, regimented schedule of penalties for misdeeds by tax-return preparers.”  The court rejected the Government’s resort to policy arguments.  “In the land of statutory interpretation, statutory text is king.”  Holding that the new regulations were ultra vires, the court enjoined the IRS from enforcing the registration regime.

In the motion for a stay pending appeal filed with the district court, the Government argued that the injunction substantially disrupted the IRS’s tax administration and that shutting down the program would be costly and complex. The district court was not persuaded, concluding that “[t]hese harms, to the extent they exist are hardly irreparable, and some cannot even be traced to the injunction.”

The Government’s stay motion in the court of appeals, filed February 25, argues that “[f]ailure to grant the stay will work a substantial and irreparable harm to the Government and the taxpaying public, crippling the Government’s efforts to ensure that individuals who prepare tax returns for others are both competent and ethical.”  According to the Government’s brief, the “IRS estimates that fraud, abuse, and errors cost the taxpaying public billions of dollars annually.”  In their March 8 response, the Plaintiffs/Appellees argue that the Government failed to establish any imminent irreparable harm traceable to the injunction, noting that even the Government acknowledged that most of the alleged harms would not occur until 2014.  The tax return preparers also emphasize that the injunction merely preserves the historical status quo.

Loving – District Court Opinion Granting Injunction

Loving – District Court order denying stay and modifying injunction

Loving – Government Motion for Stay

Loving – Appellees’ Response to Motion for Stay

Supreme Court Poised to Consider Penalty Issue in Woods

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March 13, 2013

The government has asked the Supreme Court to resolve a longstanding conflict in the circuits on the applicability of the penalty for valuation misstatements in United States v. Woods, No. 12-562.

The Code contains a variety of civil penalty provisions for conduct connected with underreporting of tax.  The basic penalty is found in section 6662, which imposes an accuracy-related penalty for underpayments of tax “attributable to” different kinds of conduct, including negligence, substantial understatements of tax, and substantial overvaluations.  The penalty is 20% of the portion of the underpayment “attributable to” the misconduct.  I.R.C. § 6662(a), (b).  Section 6662(e) applies the 20% penalty in the case of a “substantial valuation misstatement,” which is defined as occurring when “the value of any property (or the adjusted basis of any property) claimed on any [tax return] is 150 percent or more of the amount determined to be the correct amount of such valuation or adjusted basis.”  I.R.C. § 6662(e)(1)(A).  That 20% penalty is doubled, however, to 40% in the case of a “gross valuation misstatement,” which is defined in the same way, except that the overvaluation is 200% or more of the correct amount.  I.R.C. § 6662(h)(2)(A)(i).  (Prior to 2006, the relevant percentages were 200% for a substantial valuation misstatement and 400% for a gross valuation misstatement.)

Congress’s focus in originally enacting this penalty was to address a specific problem of overvaluation.  It found that many taxpayers were severely overvaluing difficult-to-value assets like artwork, anticipating that the dispute would ultimately be resolved by “dividing the difference.”  Thus, the severe penalties were enacted as a deterrent to these overvaluations.  See generally H.R. Rep. No. 97-201, at 243 (1981).

In the last decade or so, however, the government has most frequently invoked this penalty regime in its efforts to combat tax shelters.  Oversimplifying a bit, many tax shelters work by using a series of transactions that have the effect of creating a high basis in some particular asset.  Disposal of that asset then generates a large tax loss.  The IRS often argues in these cases that the high basis is artificially inflated because the transactions lack economic substance.  If that argument succeeds, the high basis and attendant tax loss goes away.  In such cases, the government also frequently argues that the 40% gross valuation overstatement penalty applies on the theory that the taxpayer claimed a high basis in an asset ultimately found to have a much lower basis; hence, the adjusted basis “claimed on” the return exceeded by more than 200% or 400% “the amount determined to be the correct amount of” the adjusted basis.  I.R.C. § 6662(h)(2)(A)(i).  The government has not been able to apply this approach in a uniform way across the country, however, because of a persistent disagreement in the circuits over how to construe the penalty statute.

The crux of the dispute centers on the “attributable to” language in the statute.  More than 25 years ago, the IRS contested certain taxpayers’ deductions and credits claimed as a result of transactions involving the purchase of refrigerated containers.  It argued both that the taxpayers had overstated their bases in the property and that the containers had not been placed in service in the years in which the deductions had been taken.  The court ruled for the IRS based on the latter argument.  The Fifth Circuit held that, in these circumstances, the valuation overstatement penalty did not apply because the tax underpayment was not “attributable to” the valuation overstatement; even if there were such an overstatement, the deductions were completely disallowed for a reason independent of the overstatement.  Todd v. Commissioner, 862 F.2d 540, 541-45 (5th Cir. 1988).  Two years later, the Fifth Circuit applied Todd to a case where the two grounds for disallowance were more closely connected, the IRS having contended that the units were overvalued and that the taxpayers did not have a profit motive for the transactions.  Heasley v. Commissioner, 902 F.2d 380, 383 (5th Cir. 1990).

The Fifth Circuit has continued to apply Heasley in tax shelter cases, holding that when an asset is found to have an artificially inflated basis because transactions lack economic substance, the tax underpayment is “attributable to” the economic substance conclusion, not to an overvaluation.  Last year, it reaffirmed its adherence to that approach in Bemont Invs. L.L.C. v. United States, 679 F.3d 339 (5th Cir. 2012), although the judges indicated that they thought the Fifth Circuit precedent was probably wrong.  Shortly thereafter, a different panel rejected the government’s position in a one-paragraph per curiam opinion in Woods v. Commissioner, No. 11-50487 (June 6, 2012), that describes Todd, Heasley, and Bemont as “well-settled,” and the court denied a petition for rehearing en banc.  As a result, the 40% penalty is unavailable in the Fifth Circuit in the typical tax shelter case, although a 20% penalty usually will still apply because of negligence or a substantial understatement of tax (I.R.C. §§ 6662(c), (d)(1)).

The government asks the Court to grant certiorari in Woods, contending in its petition that “[t]here is a lopsided but intractable division among the circuits over whether a taxpayer’s underpayment of tax can be ‘attributable to’ a misstatement of basis where the transaction that created an inflated basis is disregarded in its entirety as lacking economic substance.”  Although the Ninth Circuit has followed the Fifth Circuit’s approach, the petition states that eight other circuits have gone the other way.  Several of those decisions have expressly disagreed with the Fifth Circuit precedent.  The petition says the circuit conflict is “ripe for resolution” given that the Fifth and Ninth Circuit have recently denied petitions for rehearing en banc asking them to reconsider their minority view on this issue.

The case is a strong candidate for Supreme Court review, unless the Court concludes that the issue is “overripe.”  In 2010, Congress passed section 6662(i), which imposes a 40% penalty on any underpayment of tax attributable to a “nondisclosed noneconomic substance transaction” entered into after March 30, 2010.  That new section would make the penalty applicable in such economic substance situations even in the Fifth and Ninth Circuits, and thus makes resolution of the conflict less important for future years.  The cert petition addresses this concern, stating that the new statute “has no application to the thousands of taxpayers who engaged in abusive, basis-inflating tax shelters before the provision’s effective date.”  In addition, the government argues that the new provision will not affect cases “where value- or basis-related deductions are disallowed in full on a ground other than lack of economic substance.”

In its brief in opposition, the taxpayer does not deny the existence of the circuit conflict.  He argues, however, that the issue does not warrant the Court’s attention, largely because the 2010 legislation has resolved the issue presented for future years.  In addition, the taxpayer argues that “the imposition of the 40% penalty in cases where the 20% penalty applies is not an important matter” and expresses skepticism about the government’s “sensationalized claim” that “hundreds of millions of dollars” in penalties are riding on this issue.  In response, the government identifies a group of eight cases docketed within the Fifth Circuit that involve aggregate basis misstatements of approximately $4 billion.

The Court is expected to announce whether it will hear the case on March 18.

Woods – Petition for Certiorari

Woods – Brief in Opposition

Woods – Reply Brief in Support of Certiorari

Fifth Circuit decision in Bemont