Petition for Rehearing En Banc Filed in Altera

As most expected, Altera filed a petition for rehearing en banc after the reconstituted three-judge panel decided to reverse the Tax Court’s invalidation of Treasury’s cost-sharing regulations. (A link to the petition is below.) As we explained previously, those regulations have been the subject of much controversy over the last two decades, and the success that Xilinx had with its petition for rehearing several years ago made it likely that Altera would ask for rehearing.

The petition picks up on one of the themes we discussed in our most recent post here. The taxpayer takes aim at the majority’s conclusion that the “commensurate with income” language added to section 482 in 1986 is relevant in the cost-sharing context. The taxpayer argues that language was aimed at addressing a different issue from the one before the court here—“how to value transfers of existing intangible property from one related entity to another” and not “intangible property yet to be created.”

The taxpayer makes four or five (the petition combines arguments (3) and (4) below) arguments for why its petition should be granted:

(1) The decision upsets settled principles about the application of the arm’s-length standard because the majority permitted Treasury to “cast aside the settled arm’s-length standard” for “a new standard” that is “purely internal.”

(2) The decision “validates bad rulemaking” because, contrary to the majority’s account of the regulation’s history, “[n]o one involved in the rulemaking thought the IRS was interpreting ‘commensurate with income’ to justify a new standard that did not depend on empirical evidence.” And under the law in Chenery, the court must assess the “‘propriety of [the agency’s] action solely by the grounds invoked by the [agency]’ in the administrative record.”

(3) The decision is irreconcilable with the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Xilinx, which held that parties would not share in employee stock option costs at arm’s length.

(4) The decision “threatens the uniform application of the tax law” because, under the Golsen rule, the Tax Court will continue to apply its unanimous decision declaring the regulation invalid to cases arising anywhere outside the Ninth Circuit.

(5) As evidenced by the glut of amicus briefs, the treatment of employee stock options in cost-sharing arrangements is “exceptionally important.”

It is likely that additional amicus briefs will be filed in support of the rehearing petition. And given the prominence of the issue, we anticipate that the court will order the government to file a response to the petition. We will report on further developments as warranted.

Altera Petition for Rehearing En Banc July 2019

Rehearing Denied in SIH Partners

The Third Circuit today denied a petition for rehearing en banc in SIH Partners.  See our prior reports here.  The taxpayer now has 90 days to file a petition for certiorari.

The petition for rehearing focused more on general administrative law principles than on the substantive section 956(d) issue in the case.  In particular, the petition criticized the panel for applying Chevron deference to a regulation that did little more than parrot the statutory language.  It also argued that the panel erred in stating that the IRS was not bound by a previously published Revenue Ruling.  Given the Supreme Court’s recent interest in regulatory deference issues (and the lack of any reason to believe that it has any particular interest in the taxation of controlled foreign corporations), one can expect that a cert petition, if one is filed, would have a similar focus.  The Court, however, will have many other opportunities to explore Chevron deference further if it so desires, so it is hard to say that the outlook for Supreme Court review in this case is very promising.

SIH Partners – Taxpayer Petition for Rehearing