Supreme Court Denies Cert in Altera
June 22, 2020
Despite the glut of high-powered amicus briefs in support of the taxpayer’s petition for certiorari and last week’s landmark APA decision on DACA (the relevance of which to the issues in Altera we covered here), the Supreme Court declined to review the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Altera this morning.
Supreme Court’s DACA Decision May Affect Altera
June 18, 2020
Altera’s petition for certiorari is pending at the Supreme Court. With the support of several amici, Altera has asked the Court to review the Ninth Circuit’s decision (see our prior coverage here) to uphold the validity of Treasury’s transfer-pricing regulation (Treas. Reg. § 1.482-7A(d)(2)) requiring taxpayers to include employee-stock-option costs in the pool of costs that parties to cost-sharing arrangements must share. Two APA arguments loom large in Altera’s petition. Today’s Supreme Court decision on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the APA in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, No. 18-587, may change the complexion of both arguments and provide the Court with an alternative route for the Court in handling Altera’s petition.
In today’s decision, the Court struck down efforts by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to terminate DACA because the initial action by the Acting Secretary of DHS failed to comply with the APA. DHS promulgated DACA in 2012. And in 2014, DHS sought to expand DACA by removing an age cap and creating a new program for parents (DAPA). That expansion was mired in litigation for several years and enjoined by the Fifth Circuit on the grounds that the expansion was more than a mere agency decision to not enforce particular immigration laws.
In 2017, the new administration sought not only to undo that expansion but altogether to rescind DACA, with DHS issuing a memorandum relying on little more than a citation to the Fifth Circuit’s decision (which addressed only the 2014 expansion) and reference to a letter from the Attorney General. The Fifth Circuit decision, however, had been limited to the aspects of the DACA expansion that related to eligibility for some public benefits (and not to the animating policy of forbearing deportations); the Attorney General’s letter reiterated only that the Fifth Circuit decision was correct. The NAACP (among others) challenged the administration’s attempt to rescind DACA based on this DHS memorandum. And in that suit, the D.C. District Court found that DHS’s “conclusory statements [in the memorandum] were insufficient to explain the change in [DHS’s] view of DACA’s lawfulness,” giving DHS a chance to explain itself more fully.
The new DHS Secretary offered up a second memorandum in which she stated that she “decline[d] to disturb” the first memorandum’s DACA rescission. That second memorandum had other conclusory statements and several prudential and policy reasons that were not in the first DHS memorandum. The D.C. District Court found the new explanations insufficient. That case and other related cases were appealed, and the Supreme Court ultimately granted certiorari in the California case in which it issued a decision today. The Supreme Court addressed, among other things, “whether the [DHS] rescission [of DACA] was arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA.”
The Court held that it was. There are two elements to that decision, both of which may bear on Altera’s arguments in its petition for certiorari. First, the Court held that “[d]eciding whether agency action was adequately explained requires, first, knowing where to look for the agency’s explanation.” And the Court held that it would look only to the first, conclusory DHS memorandum because “[i]t is a ‘foundational principle of administrative law’ that judicial review of agency action is limited to ‘the grounds that the agency invoked when it took the action.’” This means that DHS could have either (1) issued a new memorandum that better explained the reasoning behind the first memorandum (thus propping up the agency action embodied in the first memorandum) or (2) taken altogether new agency action with a distinct explanation (which new explanation would be subject to a distinct APA review). DHS did not take new action but sought instead to explain its earlier action. In doing so, however, DHS did not offer a better explanation of previously identified reasons, but rather offered reasons that were not in the first memorandum at all. (In the Court’s words, the “reasoning [of the second DHS secretary in the second memorandum] bears little relationship to that of her predecessor.”) The Court elaborated on the reasons why administrative law principles bar agencies from introducing new justifications for agency action after the fact, not the least of which is that “[c]onsidering only contemporaneous explanations for agency action … instills confidence that the reasons given are not simply ‘convenient litigating position[s].’” Therefore, the Court held, “[a]n agency must defend its actions based on the reasons it gave when it acted.”
This element of the Court’s decision goes to the heart of one of Altera’s leading arguments for certiorari. Altera observed that the government pivoted from arguing (in the regulatory preamble and before the Tax Court) that its cost-sharing regulation was consistent with the arm’s-length standard to arguing (in its briefs before the Ninth Circuit) that the addition of the “commensurate-with-income” language to section 482 permitted Treasury to adopt a rule under which a “comparability analysis plays no role in determining” the costs that taxpayers must share. Altera argued that by invoking one rationale in its rulemaking and then invoking a different rationale in litigation, Treasury violated the Chenery rule, which “ensures that an agency cannot say one thing in a rule-making proceeding, and then change its mind as soon as the rule is challenged in court.”
Today’s decision provides some reason to think the Ninth Circuit was incorrect in looking to the rationale that the government offered in litigation to decide whether to uphold the cost-sharing regulation. As Altera has argued extensively, the rationale that the government has offered in litigation bears little resemblance to the reasons offered in the regulatory preamble. And because they offer such different characterizations of how the arm’s-length standard operates, it is difficult to reconcile the former with the latter. If the Ninth Circuit was incorrect in entertaining the government’s rationale offered in litigation, then there are significant problems with the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion.
The second element of today’s decision that may be germane to Altera is the Court’s decision that DHS’s action to rescind DACA was “arbitrary and capricious” under the APA. The Court observed that the first DHS memorandum relied almost entirely on the Fifth Circuit’s decision (since the Attorney General letter cited in that memorandum also relied on the Fifth Circuit’s decision). But that Fifth Circuit decision pertained only to the benefit-eligibility features of the DACA expansion and did not address what the Court called the “defining feature” of DACA—“the decision to defer removal (and to notify the affected alien of that decision).” And on that front, the first DHS memorandum “offers no reason for terminating forbearance.” In fact, the Court held, the DHS memorandum “contains no discussion of forbearance or the option of retaining forbearance without benefits” and therefore “‘entirely failed to consider [that] important aspect of the problem’” in violation of the reasoned decision-making standard in the Court’s State Farm decision. In particular, the Court here observed that in taking any action with respect to the forbearance aspects of the DACA rescission, DHS had to consider the consequences of rescission on aliens’ obvious reliance interests.
This second element may affect the outcome with respect to another one of Altera’s APA arguments. Altera argued that the regulation was the result of arbitrary and capricious agency decision-making. Treasury “purported to apply the arm’s-length standard” and “stated that whether that standard is satisfied depends on an empirical and factual analysis of real-world behavior of unrelated parties.” But then, Altera argued, when confronted with “extensive evidence demonstrating that unrelated parties would not share stock-based compensation,” Treasury “ignored or dismissed that evidence because it was inconvenient” and enacted the regulation. There is no dispute that Treasury was aware of that evidence when it finalized the disputed cost-sharing regulation, but Altera has argued that neither Treasury’s regulatory preamble nor the government’s subsequent litigating position adequately address that evidence. Just as DHS’s failure to consider obvious reliance interests in its attempt to rescind DACA created a fatal APA problem, so too, the taxpayer might argue, does Treasury’s failure to consider obvious evidence that runs counter to its cost-sharing regulation when enacting that regulation.
Although the Court’s decision on DACA is directly relevant to issues in Altera, it may not ultimately result in the Supreme Court hearing the case. But the DACA decision gives the Court an opportunity to deal with the Altera decision in a much less labor-intensive way. The Court can issue a “GVR” (grant, vacate, and remand) order, which is a one-paragraph order in which the Court grants certiorari, immediately vacates the judgment below, and remands the case to the court of appeals for “further consideration in light of” a new development not previously considered—usually an intervening Supreme Court decision.
In many cases in which the Court issues such orders, the remanded case is on all fours with the new Supreme Court decision, and the circuit court’s decision on remand is a formality. That would not be true in Altera. Even so, if the Court were to issue such a GVR, it would send a clear message about what the Ninth Circuit would need to do on such a remand. Invoking the GVR procedure would allow the Court to vacate the Ninth Circuit’s Altera decision without having to entertain full briefing and argument. The Court often issues numerous GVR orders on the last day of its Term before breaking for the summer recess. That is usually at the end of June, though the timing could get extended somewhat this year because of the delays in the Court’s spring argument schedule caused by the coronavirus. But some resolution of the pending Altera petition should be expected within the next few weeks.
Supreme Court Opinion – DHS v. Regents of Univ. of Cal
Ninth Circuit Denies Petition for Rehearing
November 21, 2019
On Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit denied Altera’s petition for rehearing en banc (which petition we discussed in our recent post here). The order issuing that denial includes a strong, 22-page dissent written by Judge Smith and joined by Judges Callahan and Bade. (Ten judges recused themselves, meaning that the vote was 10-3 against rehearing.) The dissent made several arguments for why the petition should have been granted, taking aim at the panel’s reasoning in upholding the regulation and warning about the decision’s broader effects.
Quoting State Farm, the dissent stated that it would have invalidated the regulations because Treasury’s “‘explanation for its decision [ran] counter to the evidence before’ it.” When it promulgated the regulations, Treasury asserted that it was applying the traditional arm’s-length standard, stating that “‘unrelated parties entering into [cost-sharing arrangements] would generally share stock-based compensation costs.’” But the evidence showed that “unrelated entities do not share stock-based compensation costs.”
Although the dissent stated that “[t]his should be the end of our analysis,” it went on to explain why the panel’s decision violates the Chenery rule that courts cannot provide “‘a [purportedly] reasoned basis for the agency’s action that the agency itself has not given.’” The dissent observed that despite Treasury’s clear statement in the preamble that its cost-sharing rule was “based on a traditional arm’s length analysis employing (unsubstantiated) comparable transactions,” the panel upheld “Treasury’s convenient litigating position on appeal that it permissibly jettisoned the traditional arm’s length standard altogether.” That mismatch undermines the regulation’s validity under APA notice-and-comment principles because Treasury cannot offer one rationale in its preamble, dismiss public comments on that rationale, “and then defend its rule in litigation using reasoning the public never had notice of.” Compounding this notice problem, the panel accepted Treasury’s argument that it could jettison a traditional arm’s length analysis because of the addition of the “commensurate-with-income” sentence to section 482 in 1986. But Treasury had stated in the 1988 White Paper that the addition of that sentence did not amount to a “departure from the arm’s length standard.” So not only did the panel uphold the regulation based on a rationale that Treasury did not offer in its preamble, it also upheld the regulation based on a rationale that Treasury itself had previously disclaimed.
The dissent also took up a cause that we’ve explored here before. By its own terms, the commensurate-with-income provision in section 482 applies only to “transfers of intangible property.” The panel concluded that provision was implicated here because there were “future distribution rights” transferred in Altera’s cost-sharing arrangement. The dissent disagreed because (1) cost-sharing agreements contemplate the “development” of intangibles, which implies that not every intangible subject to the arrangement must have been transferred to the arrangement, and (2) the intangibles enumerated in the pertinent regulation do not include future intangibles because they are all “property types that currently exist.” The dissent therefore concluded that the commensurate-with-income language “simply does not apply to” cost-sharing arrangements.
Finally, the dissent detailed three “particularly deleterious” consequences of the panel’s decision. First, the decision will “likely upset the uniform application of the challenged regulation” because the Tax Court’s decision invalidating the regulation still applies to taxpayers outside of the Ninth Circuit. Second, the decision “tramples on the longstanding reliance interests of American businesses,” many of whom relied not just on the Tax Court unanimously invalidating the regulation but also on Treasury reaffirming the primacy of the arm’s-length standard in the 1988 White Paper and the 2003 regulatory preamble. The dissent observed that these reliance interests are far-reaching because at least 56 major companies have noted the Altera issue in annual reports. Third, the decision threatens international tax law uniformity insofar as the arm’s-length standard (setting aside GILTI and the latest from the OECD) has been the method for allocating taxable income among major developed nations.
At a minimum, the dissent should strengthen the Tax Court’s resolve to invalidate the regulation again for taxpayers from other circuits—the dissent remarked on the “uncommon unanimity and severity of censure” in the Tax Court’s decision. And the dissent can be read as encouragement for Altera to seek certiorari—the dissent stated that the panel’s reversal of a Tax Court decision that would have applied nationwide produces “a situation akin to a circuit split.” Unless extended, the time for Altera to file a petition for certiorari will expire on February 10.
Thanks to Colin Handzo for his help with this post.
Altera – Ninth Circuit Rehearing Denial
Reflections on the Ninth Circuit’s Decision in Amazon.com
October 17, 2019
Although some time has passed (and we’ve fallen short of our hope here to get something up “soon”), we nevertheless wanted to post some thoughts on the Ninth Circuit’s unanimous affirmance of the taxpayer’s victory in the Tax Court in Amazon.com while also revisiting some of the topics that we covered here after oral argument. The panel’s opinion is brief, but it touched on several important aspects of the law under section 482.
Finding Ambiguity in the Regulatory Definition of “Intangible”
As you’ll recall, the primary dispute on appeal was whether the regulatory definition of “intangible” under Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b) included residual business assets like goodwill, going concern, and the amorphous notions of “growth options” and “culture of continuous innovation” that the government theorized the taxpayer made available in its cost-sharing agreement.
The taxpayer argued that the definition excluded such residual business assets because it did not expressly list them in any of the six subparagraphs of the definition. And the taxpayer argued that the 28 specified items in the regulation all “can be sold independently” from the business while the residual business assets cannot, invoking the statutory-interpretation canon of ejusdem generis to reason that the regulation therefore excludes residual business assets (which cannot be sold without a sale of the entire business).
The government argued that those residual business assets fell under the sixth subparagraph of Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b), which provides that “intangible” includes “other similar items” and that “an item is considered similar … if it derives its value not from its physical attributes but from its intellectual content or other intangible properties.” Since residual business assets do not derive their value from physical attributes but from other intangible properties, the government reasoned, they must be included here. And the government went on to argue that residual business assets must be compensable because otherwise, taxpayers could have transferred assets of value to a cost-sharing arrangement without compensation, which the government asserts would have violated the arm’s-length principle that undergirds section 482 and its regulations.
The panel held that although the taxpayer’s “focus on the commonality of the 28 specified items has some force,” that argument did not carry the day. The panel drew this conclusion from the plain language in the sixth subparagraph: that paragraph does not state that the commonality is that each item “can be sold independently” but rather states that each item “derives its value … from its intellectual content or other intangible properties.” The panel reasoned that the regulation therefore “leaves open the possibility of a non-listed item being included in the definition even if it doesn’t share the attribute of being separately transferable.” The panel thus echoed the concern that Judge Fletcher raised at oral argument—that while the 28 specified items share the commonality of being independently transferable, that commonality is “not the one the text [describing what constitutes a ‘similar item’ under the regulation] gives me.”
Resolving the Ambiguity by Looking to the Drafting History of the Regulation
After concluding that the regulatory definition “is susceptible to, but does not compel, an interpretation that embraces residual-business assets,” the panel looked to the overall regulatory scheme but held that to be inconclusive. The panel then turned to the drafting history of Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b) and found it to show that Treasury’s 1994 final regulations (which amended the sixth subparagraph of Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b)) both (1) exclude residual business assets from the definition of intangible and (2) provide reason to think that the definition of “intangible” includes only independently transferable assets.
The panel described how when Treasury issued temporary and proposed regulations in 1993, it asked “whether the definition of intangible property … should be expanded to include … goodwill or going concern value.” The panel concluded that since Treasury asked whether the definition should be “expanded” to include residual business assets, those assets were not included in the then-existing definition. And when Treasury issued final regulations in 1994 without expressly enumerating goodwill or going concern value in that definition, Treasury stated that its final rule “merely ‘clarified’ when an item would be deemed similar to the 28 items listed in the definition.” The panel concluded that by its own admission, Treasury would have needed to “expand” the definition to include residual business assets but instead opted to merely “clarif[y]” its definition, and therefore Treasury did not intend for the 1994 final regulations to include residual business assets.
Moreover, Treasury’s 1993 regulations limited the universe of compensable intangibles to “any commercially transferable interest.” But when it issued final regulations in 1994, Treasury dropped the “commercially transferable interest” language because “it was superfluous: if the property was not commercially transferable, then it could not have been transferred in a controlled transaction.” The panel concluded that the transfer-pricing regulations thus “contemplate a situation in which particular assets are transferred from one entity to another.” Since Treasury stated that it would have been “superfluous” to expressly state that the definition of “intangible” includes only commercially transferable assets, the panel held that the regulatory history “strongly supports Amazon’s position that Treasury limited the definition of ‘intangible’ to independently transferable assets.”
That the panel found this history dispositive comes as no surprise. We observed in our prior post that both Judge Callahan and Judge Christen recounted the regulatory history, with Judge Callahan questioning government counsel about whether Treasury ever expressed an intent to expand the definition to include residual business assets.
What Is the Rationale for Including Only Independently Transferable Assets in the Definition of Intangible?
Although the panel’s explanation for how it concluded that the definition of intangibles includes only independently transferable assets is explicit, the rationale for why Treasury would include only independently transferable assets is markedly subtler. It’s possible, however, to cobble together an explanation from other statements in the decision.
The first clue is when the panel looked to the genesis of the cost-sharing regulations, where Treasury identified “intangibles as being the product of R&D efforts.” In that sense, the panel reasoned, the “regulations seem to exclude” residual business assets, “which ‘are generated by earning income, not by incurring deductions.’” This distinction is clear enough—businesses incur expenses in undertaking R&D efforts, while goodwill and going concern value are byproducts of a well-run and successful business.
Why does this distinction matter? One answer lies in the legislative history and policy underpinnings for the statutory definition of “intangibles.” As the panel observed in a footnote, the “Senate Report states that the Committee viewed the bill as combatting the practice of transferring intangibles ‘created, developed or acquired in the United States’ to foreign entities to generate income tax free.” Which is to say that one animating concern in defining intangibles was to prevent U.S. entities from developing intangibles domestically but then transferring those intangibles to foreign affiliates whose income is not subject to U.S. tax.
And the reason why this is a concern for intangibles that result from R&D and other independently transferrable assets but not goodwill or going-concern value should be apparent: while the former involve expenditures that are deductible against U.S. income (but where the asset transfer will prevent the income from being taxed in the U.S.), the latter involve assets that exist only if the taxpayer has generated business income in the U.S. in the first place. In other words, the definition of “intangible” was initially meant to prevent taxpayers from incurring expenses to create intangibles in the U.S. and deducting those expenses against U.S. income, but then turning around and transferring those intangibles to foreign affiliates that may not owe U.S. tax on the income resulting from those intangibles.
Distinguishing the Definition of “Intangibles” from the Value of Those Intangibles
On brief and at oral argument, the government repeatedly cited deposition testimony by one of the taxpayer’s experts in which that expert admitted that parties at arm’s length would pay for residual business assets. The government tried to leverage that admission to argue that the arm’s-length standard itself means that residual business assets are compensable because “it is undisputed that a company entering into the same transaction under the same circumstances with an unrelated party would have required compensation.”
The panel addressed that argument in a footnote, holding that the government’s argument “misses the mark.” The panel explained that while the arm’s-length standard “governs the valuation of intangibles; it doesn’t answer whether an item is an intangible.” This is a decisive response to the government’s arguments; it cannot be the case that any value associated with a business falls under the definition of “intangible.”
Putting Footnote 1 in Context
One aspect of the panel’s decision that is certain to receive attention in future transfer-pricing disputes is the discussion in the first footnote. In that footnote, the panel described the 2009 changes to the cost-sharing regulations as “broadening the scope of contributions for which compensation must be made” and explained that the TCJA “amended the definition of ‘intangible property’” in section 936(h)(3)(b). The footnote then stated that “[i]f this case were governed by the 2009 regulations or by the 2017 statutory amendment, there is no doubt the Commissioner’s position would be correct.”
There are a few things worth noting about this footnote, the first of which is arguably the most important: It’s dicta. The question of whether residual assets are compensable under the 2009 cost-sharing regulations or the 2017 statutory amendment was not before the court. And since the panel says nearly nothing in the footnote about the language in those 2009 regulations or the TCJA amendment, there is no reason to think that the panel gave material consideration to whether the outcome in the case would have been different under either.
Second, given some of the panel’s other statements, it is not so clear that “there is no doubt the Commissioner’s position would be correct” for years after the 2009 changes to the regulations. Recall that the government’s case was predicated on charging a higher buy-in for the purported transfer of “growth options” and a “culture of continuous innovation” to the cost-sharing arrangement. Although the 2009 regulatory amendments changed the cost-sharing regulations and TCJA amended the statutory definition for “intangibles,” there was no change to the definition under Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b). That regulation provides that an item not otherwise specified is an intangible only if it “has substantial value independent of the services of any individual.” The panel itself expressed serious doubt about whether the purported intangibles in this case met that requirement, stating that “residual business assets, such as ‘growth options’ and a ‘culture of innovation,’ are amorphous, and it’s not self-evident whether such assets have ‘substantial value independent of the services of any individual.’”
Finally, the TCJA amendments would affect the result in the case only if the purported “growth options” and “culture of continuous innovation” are items of property that fall under the new statutory category of “goodwill, going concern value, or workforce in place” or constitute an item “the value or potential value of which is not attributable to … the services of any individual.” But there is reason to think that the government is itself unconvinced that “growth options” and “culture of continuous innovation” fall under that new statutory category. At oral argument, the panel asked government counsel why, if Treasury meant to expand the definition of “intangible” with its 1994 changes, Treasury didn’t just add “goodwill and going concern” to the list. In response, government counsel argued that merely adding “goodwill and going concern” to the list would not have solved anything because then taxpayers would just fight about whether particular assets fell under those additions to the list. The government cannot coherently maintain both that (1) Treasury could not have achieved the Commissioner’s desired result in this case by expanding the regulatory list to include goodwill and going concern in 1994 and (2) Congress’s addition of goodwill and going concern to the list in TCJA would change the result in this case. Even though Congress meant to change the result in cases like this, government counsel’s argument suggests an absence of faith that expanding the list succeeds in changing the result.
Whether the Commissioner’s Litigating Position Warrants Auer Deference
The government also argued that under Auer, the Tax Court should have deferred to the Commissioner’s interpretation of Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b) as including residual business assets. The panel rejected this argument for two reasons.
First, the panel found that pursuant to the Supreme Court’s decision in Kisor, the Commissioner’s interpretation warrants Auer deference only if the regulation is “genuinely ambiguous.” The panel states that Auer thus implicates a higher standard for ambiguity. Under that standard, a regulation is “genuinely ambiguous” for Auer purposes only if ambiguity remains once the court has exhausted the traditional tools of construction, which requires it to consider “the text, structure, history, and purpose of a regulation.” The panel concluded that the text of Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b), its place in the transfer-pricing regulations, and its rulemaking history “leave little room for the Commissioner’s proffered meaning.” The panel’s holding is therefore that the definition of “intangible” under Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b) is ambiguous but not genuinely ambiguous.
Second, the panel also rejected the government’s deference argument because the government first advanced an interpretation of Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b) in the litigation that had never appeared in the drafting history of the regulations or anywhere else. As we remarked earlier, reliance concerns loomed large at oral argument, and especially in Judge Callahan’s questions. The panel’s conclusion that “Amazon and other taxpayers were not given fair warning of the Commissioner’s current interpretation of the regulatory definition of an ‘intangible’” was thus foreseeable from oral argument.
Whether the Cost-Sharing Regulations Provide a Safe Harbor
As we observed in our prior post, at oral argument the government disavowed the notion that the Treasury Regulations create a safe-harbor for cost-sharing arrangements. We surmised that whether the Ninth Circuit agreed with the government on this point might be pivotal in the outcome.
While the extent to which that issue factored into the panel’s decision is not evident, the panel’s decision is entirely consistent with the notion that cost sharing operates as a safe harbor. First, the panel described cost sharing as “an alternative to licensing … under which [the parties to the cost-sharing arrangement] become co-owners of intangibles as a result of the entities’ joint R&D efforts.” If the cost-sharing arrangement qualifies, then it “provides the taxpayer the benefit of certainty because … new intangibles need not be valued as they are developed.” But the panel explained that the certainty comes at a price—the R&D payments by the foreign cost-sharing participants “serve to reduce the deductions the [domestic] taxpayer can take for the R&D costs (thereby increasing tax liability).” What the panel thus described operates like a safe harbor—taxpayers that ensure that their cost-sharing arrangements qualify and sacrifice some deductions for intangible development costs can gain certainty that their intangibles need not be re-valued. The panel’s decision will hamper any future IRS arguments that cost-sharing does not operate like a safe harbor.
Procedural Status
The government did not file a petition for rehearing in the case; the mandate issued on October 8. There is still time for the government to file a petition for certiorari; it is due November 14.
Ninth Circuit Affirms Tax Court in Amazon.com
August 16, 2019
In a unanimous opinion issued today, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the taxpayer’s victory in the Tax Court in Amazon.com. We previously covered the case and oral argument here. We will take some time to digest the opinion and post on its finer points soon. In the meantime, one key sentence in the opinion is worth noting because it appears to capture the thrust of the Ninth Circuit’s decision about the disputed scope of the relevant regulatory definition for the term “intangible”: “Although the language of the definition is ambiguous, the drafting history of the regulations shows that ‘intangible’ was understood to be limited to independently transferable assets.”
Amazon.com Ninth Circuit Opinion
Petition for Rehearing En Banc Filed in Altera
July 24, 2019
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
Observations on Changes in the Ninth Circuit’s Second Altera Decision
June 27, 2019
As we posted earlier here (with a link to the new decision), the Ninth Circuit issued a new decision in Altera after replacing the late Judge Reinhardt with Judge Graber on the panel. But the result was the same as the withdrawn July 2018 decision—the Ninth Circuit upheld the validity of Treasury’s cost-sharing regulation that requires taxpayers to include the cost of employee stock options under qualifying cost sharing arrangements (QCSAs). Today, we present some observations after comparing the majority and dissent in the new decision with those in the Ninth Circuit’s withdrawn decision.
In the new decision, Judge Thomas recycled much of the language and logic from his withdrawn opinion, and Judge O’Malley reused much of her original dissent. Although they are few, some changes in the two opinions are interesting and notable. Overall, the changes serve to sharpen the disagreements between the parties (and the disagreements between the majority and dissent) in ways that will focus the discussion in the likely event of a rehearing en banc petition (or possible petition for certiorari). We focus here on two aspects of the changes.
Was There a Transfer of Intangibles that Implicated the Commensurate-With-Income Language in the Second Sentence of Section 482?
The majority did not address this issue in its withdrawn opinion, so some background is in order. When Treasury proposed cost-sharing regulations that explicitly required related parties to include employee-stock-option costs in the pool of shared costs, commenters put forward evidence that unrelated parties do not share employee-stock-option costs. But Treasury did not heed those comments and ultimately determined that the arm’s-length standard would be met if the regulations required taxpayers in QCSAs to include the cost of employee stock options in the pool of shared costs, regardless of what a comparability analysis might show about whether unrelated parties share those costs. So in order to uphold the Treasury Regulations, the majority had to conclude that the arm’s-length standard under section 482 does not mandate the use of comparable transactions.
In reaching that conclusion, the majority relied on the history of section 482 and especially on the addition of the second sentence of section 482. That second sentence provides that “[i]n the case of any transfer (or license) of intangible property…, the income with respect to such transfer or license shall be commensurate with the income attributable to the intangible.” The majority held that the Congressional intent behind the addition of that language in 1986 is what made it reasonable for Treasury to conclude that it was permitted “to dispense with a comparable transaction analysis in the absence of actual comparable transactions.”
Was there a “transfer (or license) of intangible property” such that Treasury could invoke the commensurate-with-income language to justify dispensing with a comparable-transaction analysis? There was indeed a transfer of intangibles at the outset of the QCSA in this case; Altera transferred intangible property to its QCSA with its foreign subsidiary. But that initial transfer is unrelated to the disputed employee-stock-option costs. Those stock-option costs relate to subsequently developed intangibles, not to the value of the pre-existing intangibles that Altera initially contributed. Then-applicable Treasury Regulation § 1.482-7A(g)(2) required a buy-in payment only for “pre-existing intangibles.”
It is, then, wholly unclear how those employee-stock-option costs for as-yet undeveloped intangibles constitute a “transfer (or license) of intangible property” such that the commensurate-with-income language is implicated at all. The taxpayer argued—both in its initial and supplemental briefing—that by its own terms, the commensurate-with-income language is not implicated once a QCSA is in place and therefore that language is irrelevant to the dispute. The taxpayer reasoned that “no ‘transfer (or license)’ occurs when entities develop intangibles jointly” because jointly developed intangibles “are not transferred or licensed between the parties, but rather are owned upon their creation by each participant.”
The majority said little about this issue in its withdrawn opinion and did not address the taxpayer’s argument. In its new opinion, the majority addressed the argument and declared itself “unpersuaded.” It held that “[w]hen parties enter into a QCSA, they are transferring future distribution rights to intangibles, albeit intangibles that are yet to be developed.” The majority does not, however, explain how “intangibles that are yet to be developed” are “pre-existing intangible property” under Treas. Reg. § 1.482-7A(g)(2) or, perhaps more importantly, how such undeveloped future intangibles can constitute intangible assets at all under the words of the statute. Instead, the majority leaned on the language in the second sentence of section 482 providing that the commensurate-with-income standard applies to “any” transfer of intangible property, holding that “that phrasing is as broad as possible, and it cannot reasonably be read to exclude the transfers of expected intangible property.”
The dissent seized on whether there was any transfer of intangibles that implicated the commensurate-with-income language. The dissent stated that “[t]he plain text of the statute limits the application of the commensurate with income standard to only transfers or licenses of intangible property.” And it observed that there is a contradiction between the majority’s conclusion that QCSAs “constitute transfers of already existing property” and Treasury’s own characterization (in the very preamble of the disputed regulations) of QCSAs “as arrangements ‘for the development of high-profit intangibles,’” inferring that parties cannot transfer something that is not yet developed. The dissent concluded that Treasury’s failure to make “a finding that QCSAs constitute transfers of intangible property” should be, as a matter of review under the APA, fatal to Treasury’s cost-sharing regulations.
Has the Arm’s-Length Standard Historically Required a Comparable-Transaction Analysis?
The majority made several changes from its withdrawn opinion in its account of the history of the arm’s-length standard under section 482. The changes appear to be aimed at bolstering the majority’s conclusion that Treasury was justified in concluding that the arm’s-length standard does not necessitate a comparable-transaction analysis. These changes take a couple of forms.
First, the changes add justifications for the proposition that the arm’s-length standard has not always mandated a comparable-transaction analysis in all cases. The withdrawn opinion included some evidence for this historical account, recounting the Tax Court’s Seminole Flavor decision from 1945 (where the Tax Court “rejected a strict application of the arm’s length standard in favor of an inquiry into whether the allocation…was ‘fair and reasonable’”). In its new opinion, the majority added the observation that Treasury provided for an unspecified fourth method for pricing intangibles in its 1968 regulations. And the majority refined its discussion of the Ninth Circuit’s 1962 decision in Frank, still quoting the language from that opinion denying that “‘arm’s length bargaining’ is the sole criterion for applying” section 482 (as it did in the withdrawn opinion) but then adding the new assertion that the “central point” of Frank is that “the arm’s length standard based on comparable transactions was not the sole basis” for reallocating costs and income under section 482. (As the dissent pointed out, a later Ninth Circuit decision limited the holding in Frank to the complex circumstances in that case and noted that the parties in Frank had stipulated to apply a standard other than the arm’s-length standard.)
Second, the majority made changes to add a series of new and more sweeping assertions that under section 482, Treasury has always had the leeway to dispense with comparable-transaction analyses in deriving the correct arm’s-length price. For instance, as a rejoinder to the taxpayer’s argument that the arm’s-length standard requires a comparable-transaction analysis, the majority wrote that “historically the definition of the arm’s length standard has been a more fluid one” and that “courts for more than half a century have held that a comparable transaction analysis was not the exclusive methodology to be employed under the statute.” It added similarly broad historical statements elsewhere in the new opinion, all in service of concluding that Treasury acted reasonably in dispensing with a comparable-transaction analysis in its cost-sharing regulations: “[a]s demonstrated by nearly a century of interpreting § 482 and its precursor, the arm’s length standard is not necessarily confined to one methodology” (p. 33); “the arm’s length standard has historically been understood as more fluid than Altera suggests” (p. 41); and “[g]iven the long history of the application of other methods…Treasury’s understanding of its power to use methodologies other than a pure transactional comparability analysis was reasonable” (p. 49).
In one of the subtler but more interesting changes from the withdrawn opinion, the majority’s new opinion removed a single word. In its withdrawn opinion, the majority said that Treasury’s 1988 White Paper “signaled a dramatic shift in the interpretation of the arm’s length standard” by advancing the “basic arm’s length return method…that would apply only in the absence of comparable transactions….” (emphasis added). But consistent with its conclusion in the new opinion that “for most of the twentieth century the arm’s length standard explicitly permitted the use of flexible methodology,” the majority appears to have concluded that shift in the White Paper was not so “dramatic,” dropping that word altogether in its new opinion. (In this vein, the majority also removed its assertion in the withdrawn opinion that “[t]he novelty of the 1968 regulations was their focus on comparability.”)
The new dissenting opinion disputed the majority’s historical account, stating that the first sentence of section 482 “has always been viewed as requiring an arm’s length standard” and that before the 1986 amendment, the Ninth Circuit “believed that an arm’s length standard based on comparable transactions was the sole basis for allocating costs and income under the statute in all but the narrow circumstances outlined in Frank.” And the dissent observed that even with the 1986 addition of the commensurate-with-income language, “Congress left the first sentence of § 482—the sentence that undisputedly incorporates the arm’s length standard—intact,” thus requiring a comparable-transaction analysis everywhere that comparable transactions can be found. The dissent pointed out that the White Paper clarified that this was true “even in the context of transfers or licenses of intangible property,” quoting Treasury’s own statement in the White Paper that in that context the “‘intangible income must be allocated on the basis of comparable transactions if comparables exist.’”
Ninth Circuit Again Upholds Cost-Sharing Regulation in Altera
June 7, 2019
The Ninth Circuit issued a new opinion in Altera today after having withdrawn its July 2018 opinion. But today’s opinion does not change the result—by a 2-1 vote, the Ninth Circuit upheld the validity of the Treasury Regulation under section 482 that requires taxpayers to include the cost of employee stock options in the pool of costs that must be shared in qualifying cost sharing arrangements. Judge Thomas again wrote the panel’s opinion, Judge O’Malley again dissented, and Judge Graber—who was added to the panel to replace the late Judge Reinhardt—voted with Judge Thomas.
Although it borrows heavily from the withdrawn opinion (indeed, much of the language remains similar if not the same), there are some notable differences between today’s opinion and the withdrawn opinion. We will post some observations after a more careful comparison.
The taxpayer may seek a rehearing of the decision by the full Ninth Circuit (which is likely after the success that another taxpayer had in the Ninth Circuit’s rehearing of a similar issue in Xilinx). A petition for rehearing would be due July 22.
Altera Ninth Circuit Opinion June 2019
Third Circuit Affirms Subpart F Income Inclusion Ruling in SIH Partners
May 7, 2019
A unanimous Third Circuit this morning affirmed the Tax Court in SIH Partners in an opinion that will please government lawyers who are increasingly dealing with APA challenges to Treasury regulations. As explained in our previous posts here, the issue in SIH Partners was whether loan guarantees by two CFCs resulted in income exclusions, even though the guarantees were not equivalent to an actual repatriation because, among other things, there were many other guarantors. Because the regulations on their face set forth a bright-line rule that takes no account of the individual circumstances of particular loan guarantees, the taxpayer argued that the regulations were invalid under the APA as arbitrary and capricious.
The Third Circuit noted “the Tax Court’s masterful analysis rejecting” the taxpayer’s challenge to the validity of the regulations, but it then stated that it did not need to rely on that analysis because the taxpayer’s argument failed for another reason. The court said that the taxpayer, in arguing that a bright-line rule treating all loan guarantees the same was unreasonable, had pointed to IRS administrative guidance issued over the years that relaxed the rule depending on the circumstances. The taxpayer, therefore, was asking the court to use “hindsight” in violation of the established rule that the validity of an agency action must be assessed based on the administrative record that was before the agency at the time. The court did not dispute that experience under the regulation might have demonstrated that “the regulations do not always address economic reality,” but it found that fact immaterial. The court declared: “We cannot and will not find half-century old regulations arbitrary and capricious, based on insights gained in the decades after their promulgation, when the challenger . . . has not made a showing that those insights were known or, perhaps, at least should have been known to the agency at the time of the regulations’ promulgation.” Indeed, the court said that the taxpayer’s argument would be better characterized as complaining about the IRS’s failure to amend the regulations to meet the “later observed economic realities,” instead of a complaint that the regulations were arbitrary when first promulgated. Since no one requested that the IRS amend the regulations, the court said, this argument could go nowhere.
The court’s “hindsight” criticism seems unfair, as the essence of the taxpayer’s argument was not that the administrative guidance was itself a later event that called for amending the regulations, but rather evidence of an obvious flaw in the bright-line regulation as promulgated that Treasury should have recognized from the start. The court acknowledged that the taxpayer had made this point in oral argument, but simply responded that regulations do not have to be “the most perfect solution possible.” In the court’s view, the regulation set forth a “straight-forward” rule that comported with the statutory language and hence was not arbitrary. The court added that no commenter at the time raised “the possibility of multiple-counting of loan guarantors being an issue with the regulations.” That suggested that this practice was “exceedingly rare” at the time, which meant that it was hardly unreasonable for the regulation not to address it at the time.
The court then went on to make a couple more observations that may well find their way into briefs in future cases raising APA challenges to regulations. The taxpayer had argued that the bright-line rule of the regulation was inconsistent with the policy of the statute, which was to address loan guarantees that were effectively repatriations. The court did not take issue with the taxpayer’s description of the statutory policy. Instead, it remarked that “we are satisfied that the regulations are not arbitrary or capricious merely because they may not adhere to the policies embodied in the statutes in every case.” The court also gave short shrift to the taxpayer’s contention that the regulations lacked enough explanation to satisfy the State Farm requirement of “reasoned decisionmaking.” The court stated: “Because the challenged regulations barely rocked the statutory boat [that is, they closely tracked the statutory language], and because of the lack of public commentary and the straight-forward nature of the regulations, little explanation was needed.”
As to the second issue in the case, the court held that the taxpayer was not entitled to the lower tax rate applicable to dividends. Like the Fifth Circuit in Rodriguez v. Commissioner, 722 F.3d 306 (5th Cir. 2013) (see our reports here), the court held that the fact that the payment could be analogized to a dividend did not actually make it a dividend.
A petition for rehearing is due in 45 days, and, if rehearing is not sought, a petition for certiorari is due in 90 days. The prospects for the taxpayer to get a favorable result from either of those avenues of further review are probably pretty slim.
Third Circuit Decision in SIH Partners
Both Parties Face Tough Questions in Amazon.com Ninth Circuit Argument
May 1, 2019
As we previewed here, the Ninth Circuit heard oral argument in Amazon.com v. Commissioner on Friday, April 12. Before giving a detailed recap of that oral argument, some background on the dispute is in order.
The Primary Issue in Dispute
Amazon.com, the U.S. parent company (Amazon US), entered into a qualified cost-sharing agreement with its Luxembourg subsidiary (AEHT) in 2005. Amazon US contributed the intangible assets required to operate its European website business to that cost-sharing agreement. Then effective Treas. Reg. § 1.482-7(g)(2) provided that AEHT owed Amazon US a buy-in payment for the “pre-existing intangibles” that Amazon US contributed. Although AEHT made a buy-in payment for that contribution of over $100 million, the IRS determined that the buy-in should have been $2.7 billion higher.
At trial, the parties submitted competing valuations of the contributed pre-existing intangibles—the taxpayer used comparable uncontrolled transactions (CUTs) to separately price the website technology, marketing intangibles, and European customer information that Amazon US contributed; the Commissioner used a discounted-cash-flow (DCF) method to determine the present value of the projected future income that AEHT would earn using the contributed intangibles. Underlying the methodological differences between the parties, however, is a fundamental dispute about the scope of the pre-existing intangibles for which AEHT owed a buy-in payment.
The taxpayer’s position was that AEHT owed a buy-in payment for only those intangibles enumerated in the definition of “intangible” in Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b), which definition does not expressly include so-called “residual” business assets like goodwill and going-concern value, and that the taxpayer’s CUT method accurately priced the enumerated intangibles that Amazon US contributed. The Commissioner argued that despite not explicitly naming residual business assets, any such assets are included in the definition of “intangible” in Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b)(6) and that only his DCF method captured the value of those residual business assets. He also argued that the bundle of compensable pre-existing intangibles that Amazon US made available in the cost-sharing arrangement included its “culture of continuous innovation” and other unspecified “growth options.”
Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b) provides that “[f]or purposes of section 482, an intangible is an asset that comprises any of the following items and has substantial value independent of the services of any individual—” and then lists 28 specified intangibles in the first five subparagraphs (like patents and trademarks) and concludes with a sixth subparagraph that states that the definition encompasses “[o]ther similar items.” That subparagraph goes on to say that “[f]or purposes of section 482, an item is considered similar to those listed in paragraph (b)(1) through (5) of this section if it derives its value not from its physical attributes but from its intellectual content or other intangible properties.”
The Tax Court sided with the taxpayer’s reading of Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b), concluding that the Commissioner’s DCF included the value of residual business assets that were not “pre-existing intangibles” under the cost-sharing regulations. The Tax Court made some material adjustments to the taxpayer’s CUTs, ultimately finding that AEHT owed a higher buy-in, albeit nowhere near the size of the Commissioner’s proposed adjustment. The government appealed the Tax Court’s decision on legal grounds, arguing that the pertinent Treasury Regulations do not foreclose the DCF method that was the basis for the Commissioner’s adjustments. The government argued in its brief that “[t]he Treasury Regulations broadly define intangibles and do not exclude residual-business assets from the scope of the buy-in requirement.” Oral argument at the Ninth Circuit was held before the three-judge panel of Judges Fletcher, Callahan, and Christen. (The video is available here.)
Plain Language of the Regulation
Government counsel started oral argument by asserting that the plain language of Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b) favored the government’s position because the regulatory definition of “intangible” was so broad that it must include residual business assets like “growth options” and “corporate culture.” In support, she argued that the sixth regulatory category of “other similar items” is “written so broadly to include any item that derives its value from anything other than physical attributes.”
Amazon’s counsel responded that the government’s argument proves too much. If the definition of “intangible” truly encompassed any asset that is not tangible, then it would belie the regulation’s enumeration of 28 items that count as “intangibles” under the regulatory definition. As Amazon argued in its brief, “[i]f Treasury intended to capture all intangibles, there would have been no reason to specify any particular types of intangibles, let alone list 28 of them.” Amazon’s brief went on to argue that the court should be guided by the interpretive canon of ejusdem generis. That canon requires the court to “focus ‘on the common attribute’ of the list of items that precedes the catch-all.”
This meant, however, that Amazon’s counsel had to explain what that “common attribute” is. He argued that the 28 listed items share characteristics that the residual business assets do not have—the 28 listed items are independently transferable and created by expenditures, but residual intangibles are not independent of the business and are the product of the operation’s income-producing success. As for why the list includes only items that are independently transferable, taxpayer’s counsel argued that only those assets that can be transferred independent of the entire business are susceptible to valuation while residual business assets like goodwill or so-called “growth options” were inextricable from the entire business and impossible to value with any precision.
But the panel questioned Amazon’s invocation of ejusdem generis. Judge Callahan asked why the court should apply that canon here where the regulation defines what it means to be similar (providing that “an item is considered similar to those listed in paragraph (b)(1) through (5) of this section if it derives its value not from its physical attributes but from its intellectual content or other intangible properties”). And in his only remarks of the day, Judge Fletcher called the taxpayer’s ejusdem generis argument “somewhat peculiar.” He went on to remark that he understood Amazon counsel’s explanation of what the 28 enumerated items had in common “but it’s not the one the text gives me,” going on to state that if he were “a pure textualist, you lose.” (Judge Fletcher’s remarks may not indicate how he will vote; he prefaced his remarks with the assertion that “I’m not sure that in the end that I would disagree with your position.”)
The description of “other similar items” was not the only regulatory language that drew the panel’s attention. Judge Christen questioned government counsel about how to reconcile the government’s reading of “other similar items” to include residual business assets like “corporate culture” with the regulation’s limitation that the universe of intangibles was limited to only those assets that have “substantial value independent of the services of any individual.” (That language played a role in the Tax Court’s decision; it found that residual business assets like goodwill and growth options “often do not have ‘substantial value independent of the services of any individual.’”) Amazon made the same point in its brief, arguing that its purported “culture of innovation” is “inseparable from the individuals in the company’s workforce.” And Judge Christen appeared unmoved by government counsel’s attempt to explain away that language by arguing that while the “value” of the intangible needs to be independent of services, the “intangible itself” does not need to be independent and that other expressly listed items—like “know-how”—were not entirely independent of services.
Regulatory History
Taxpayer’s counsel attacked the government’s case as based on reading the regulatory language in the abstract, divorced entirely from its context and history. The applicable definition of “intangibles” in Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(b) was the result of regulatory changes in 1994. Before making those regulatory changes, Treasury asked for comments on whether it should “expand” the definition of “intangibles” to include observed assets like goodwill and going concern. It received comments that the definition should not be expanded, and when Treasury issued revised regulations, it noted that it added language to the “other similar items” subparagraph but described the change as a “clarifi[cation].” Amazon’s counsel recounted this history and argued that since Treasury acknowledged that the definition would have to be expanded to include residual business assets, “Treasury could not thereafter ‘clarify’ that these intangibles had been included all along.” This was, in the words of taxpayer’s counsel, a classic case of “regulator’s remorse.”
In questioning government counsel, both Judge Callahan and Judge Christen recounted the same regulatory history and observed that Treasury asked if it should expand the definition and ultimately called its change a clarification. Judge Callahan asked whether the government could point the panel to specific language where Treasury said it intended to expand its definition to include residual business assets.
Government counsel acknowledged that Treasury used the word “clarified” in the preamble but offered a different history of the regulatory language. She argued that some initial Treasury guidance included “goodwill, consumer acceptance, and market share” as intangibles (all of which could not be transferred independent of the business) and pointed to other statutory changes and another court decision as narrowing the definition beyond what Treasury initially intended.
Government counsel also had to explain why, if Treasury had in fact expanded the definition of “intangibles” to include residual business assets, it did so by amending the definition of “other similar items” rather than just adding residual business assets to the list. She argued that Treasury opted for the latter because merely listing residual business assets like “goodwill” would just precipitate fights about whether intangibles (like the so-called “growth options” that the government says Amazon US contributed to its cost-sharing agreement) fell within the scope of the listed residual business assets. Judge Callahan acknowledged that potential issue but replied that if Treasury had expressly included “goodwill” or “going concern” the taxpayers “wouldn’t have had as good of an argument” that the disputed residual business assets here are excluded, and government counsel conceded that it was less likely that the taxpayer would have won below in that circumstance.
Subsequent Statutory Changes
In the tax reform legislation enacted in 2017 (the TCJA), Congress took steps to address the concern that government counsel raised at oral argument—the transfer of residual business assets without compensation. Congress amended section 936(h) (which is the operative definition of “intangible” for purposes of section 482 by cross-reference) to expressly include goodwill and going concern. Government counsel acknowledged that with the TCJA, “Congress has codified our interpretation of” the “other similar items” provision.
Judge Callahan observed that Congress did not say that they were clarifying what has always been true, and government counsel agreed. And Judge Callahan rehearsed Amazon’s argument that if Congress needed to amend that definition, then it’s reasonable to infer that—contrary to the government’s interpretation—the definition did not always include those residual business assets. She then gave Amazon’s counsel the opportunity to identify what he thought was the best indication in the legislative history that the statutory addition of goodwill and going concern value is a revision and not a clarification of the definition of “intangible.” He answered that the best indicator is the conference report’s description of the change as a “revision” of the definition. He then went on to argue that given the statutory language, no one could “realistically think that isn’t a vast shift” in the definition’s scope. And he added that because the TCJA effected an enormous rewrite to the Code, it is only reasonable to think that the change to add goodwill and going concern was a substantial revision.
But the legislative change did not categorically favor Amazon’s case. Although Judge Christen remarked that the legislative history for the TCJA change is “compelling,” she pressed Amazon’s counsel on the tension between, on the one hand, the new statutory requirement to include the value of goodwill and going concern as pre-existing intangibles and, on the other hand, Amazon’s argument that Treasury opted to exclude those assets from the definition of “intangibles” because they are “impossible” to value independent of the entire business. And government counsel tried to capitalize on this tension in her rebuttal, arguing that although it is difficult to value residual business assets, the DCF—which values all intangibles together—is the panacea to this problem and that is why the government seeks the Ninth Circuit’s endorsement of that method.
Cost Sharing and the Arm’s-Length Standard
One cornerstone of government counsel’s argument was that the government’s interpretation of the definition of intangible must be correct because “nothing of value can be transferred for free.” And the government—both on brief and in oral argument—made much of the taxpayer’s expert’s admission on cross-examination that parties at arm’s length would have paid for all the value associated with residual business assets because “‘no company is going to give away something of value without compensation.’” The government tried to tie this admission in with the arm’s length principle that is the lodestar of section 482. The government argued on brief that the Tax Court was “not free to disregard” the arm’s-length principle, which meant, according to the government, that the Tax Court was required to adopt a valuation that included residual business assets.
Amazon observed in its brief, however, that the arm’s-length principle also arguably supports its position. The Commissioner conceded that residual business assets “generally cannot be transferred independently from the business enterprise” and thus are not independently transferred in an arm’s-length transaction (absent the extraordinary alternative of selling the entire business), thus making it all the more plausible to think that Treasury did not contemplate taxpayers valuing them and paying a buy-in for those residual business assets in a cost-sharing agreement.
At oral argument, taxpayer’s counsel observed that the government’s argument is hard to reconcile with the very existence of the safe harbor created by the cost-sharing regulations. He argued that those regulations contemplated precisely what happened here—AEHT paid a buy-in for static intangibles, the parties shared R&D and other costs for developing new and better intangibles going forward “in a way that’s formulaic,” and then the parties benefitted from those co-developed intangibles according to that formula. Government counsel flatly disputed the notion that the 1986 and 1994 changes created a safe-harbor for cost-sharing arrangements. Although it didn’t receive significant attention at oral argument, whether the Ninth Circuit agrees with the taxpayer or the government on this point might be pivotal in the outcome.
The Nature and Life of the Residual Business Assets
One interesting feature of the government’s argument—both on brief and at oral argument—was its attempt to articulate the precise nature of the residual business assets that Amazon US transferred to its cost-sharing agreement “for free.” Counsel closely hewed to the brief’s description of those assets in oral argument, saying that the “other similar items” category was broad enough to include residual business assets like “growth options” and “corporate culture” (although the latter of these raises the obvious question of whether that culture can be independent of the services of any individual).
Amazon raised other problems with these purported assets in its brief, including the observation that the residual business assets (at least as the government conceives them) have apparently perpetual useful lives. If the government were to conceive of the assets as having unlimited useful lives, then its theory runs headlong into caselaw and the common-sense notion that no asset, however valuable, lasts forever. The government nevertheless bit the bullet on this issue, arguing in its brief that “[q]uite simply, existing technology begets new technology.” Judge Christen asked government counsel to answer for this position, and government counsel conceded that the government’s argument assumes perpetual lives for “certain assets in the bundle,” stating that under the government’s theory, “the corporate culture will last as long as the corporation is there.” But government counsel tried to downplay this concession, arguing that the terminal value of the perpetual assets was very small and that the Tax Court could have done with those residual assets what it had done with some marketing intangibles in the case—limit their useful lives to something like 20 years.
Taxpayer’s counsel reminded the panel of this useful-life problem in the context of responding to the government allegations that taxpayer transferred assets to the cost-sharing agreement for free. He argued that the Tax Court assigned substantial value to the intangibles that Amazon US contributed to the cost-sharing agreement, and in so doing, characterized those assets “static intangibles” with values that will ultimately dissipate.
Other Issues
A couple of other items from oral argument are worth noting. First, the government had argued on brief that the IRS’s interpretation of the regulation was owed deference. Perhaps wary that this deference principle may disappear in a few months when the Supreme Court decides the Kisor case (see our reports here), government counsel was quick to downplay that argument when Judge Callahan probed the topic: “That is a back-up argument; I don’t think the court needs to get there.” And the panel took issue with the fact that the government had no argument for the reasonableness of the IRS’s interpretation other than pointing to Congress’s 2017 change to the pertinent law as after-the-fact evidence. It was clear that deference argument did not sit well with Judge Callahan or Judge Christen, both of whom questioned how taxpayers were conceivably on notice of the interpretation of “other similar items” that the government was advocating in this case.
Second, Judge Callahan expressed a keen interest in how the court’s decision would affect other taxpayers, including those without Amazon’s “firepower.” Government counsel conceded that if the government were to prevail, the IRS could pursue other taxpayers using the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of the 1994 regulations. Amazon’s counsel argued that the “entire business community” relied on the understanding that residual business assets were not compensable and structured their cost-sharing arrangements accordingly. But when the panel asked whether a reversal would affect taxpayers in all years before the TCJA, he acknowledged that the 2009 changes to the cost-sharing regulations that require a buy-in for “platform contributions,” which arguably already include some residual business assets.
Finally, at oral argument, government counsel repeatedly raised the “realistic alternatives” principle (which is now part of section 482 and was in the 482 regulations already), arguing that principle is “central to the arm’s-length standard” because no entity is going to accept a price that is less than one of its realistic alternatives and that the Tax Court’s opinion amounted to a “rewriting” of that principle. But on brief, the government posed no alternative transaction that achieved the ends of the cost-sharing agreement. Instead, it argued that the “realistic alternative” to the cost-sharing arrangement was “not entering into the cost-sharing arrangement and continuing to operate the European Business as it had before.” The taxpayer’s brief took this point head on, arguing that the regulations implementing the realistic-alternatives principle “did not allow the Commissioner to consider alternatives to cost-sharing itself.” The Tax Court had rejected the Commissioner’s argument at trial, finding that empowering the Commissioner to use the realistic-alternatives principle to price the transaction as if it never happened at all would “make the cost sharing election, which the regulations explicitly make available to taxpayers, altogether meaningless.”
On balance, the panel’s questions and remarks appear to favor affirmance of the Tax Court. But both parties faced hard questions at oral argument. There is no deadline for the court’s ruling, and it will likely be several months before a decision is issued.
Ninth Circuit to Hear Oral Argument in Amazon Transfer-Pricing Dispute Friday
April 10, 2019
We wanted to alert our readers that oral argument in the Ninth Circuit in Amazon.com Inc. v. Commissioner will be held this Friday. Similar to Veritas Software Corp. v. Commissioner, this transfer-pricing dispute is about the value of intangibles that the U.S. parent contributed to a cost-sharing arrangement with a foreign subsidiary. In particular, the parties dispute whether particular intangibles, like goodwill and going concern values, are compensable and thus require a buy-in payment upon their contribution to a cost-sharing arrangement. The government lost in the Tax Court.
The briefs are below. The Ninth Circuit will stream the oral arguments (held in Seattle) live on its website here; Amazon is the last of five oral arguments to be heard beginning at 9:00 a.m. Pacific/12:00 p.m. Eastern Friday. There are 90 minutes of oral argument scheduled before Amazon (see the schedule here). You can also watch or listen to oral arguments after the fact in the Ninth Circuit’s archive here.
Amazon.com Government Opening Brief
Amazon.com Taxpayer Response Brief
Amazon.com Government Reply Brief
Divided Tax Court Decides E&P Computation Issue in Eaton
March 12, 2019
In Eaton Corp. v. Commissioner, 152 T.C. No. 2 (2019), a divided Tax Court decided (by a 10-2 margin) that the CFC partners in a U.S. partnership must increase earnings and profits (E&P) for the partnership’s subpart F inclusions. Members in the taxpayer’s group owned several CFCs (the “CFC partners”) that were partners in a U.S. partnership. That partnership in turn owned several lower-tier CFCs (the “lower-tier CFCs”) that generated subpart F income. There was no dispute that the U.S. partnership had to include the subpart F income of the lower-tier CFCs. The question before the Tax Court on motions for summary judgment was whether the CFC partners were required to increase their E&P in the amount of the U.S. partnership’s income inclusions (which ultimately determined whether the U.S. parent must include income from a section 956 investment in U.S. property by the CFC partners).
In an opinion by Judge Kerrigan, the majority held that the law required the CFC partners to increase E&P for the U.S. partnership’s income inclusions. Although the opinion does not expressly state so, it appears to adopt the IRS’s arguments for increasing the CFC partners’ E&P.
The court began with the language of section 964(a), which provides that “[e]xcept as provided in section 312(k)(4), for purposes of this subpart the earnings and profits of any foreign corporation…for any taxable year shall be determined according to rules substantially similar to those applicable to domestic corporations, under regulations prescribed by the Secretary….” (emphasis added). The court then held that because the rules “applicable to domestic corporations” are those in section 312 and its accompanying regulations, the computation of foreign corporation E&P under 964(a) should be made under the “elaborate, technical rules” of section 312 and its regulations.
The court observed that under Treas. Reg. § 1.312-6(b), the computation of E&P includes “all items includible in gross income under section 61….” Although there “is no explicit rule in section 312, section 964, or their accompanying regulations specifying how a CFC’s distributive share of partnership income…should be treated for purposes of computing its E&P,” the court looked to “the general rules set forth in subpart F and section 312.” Under those general rules, the court reasoned that the CFC partners should compute gross income “as if they were domestic corporations,” which meant including their distributive share of partnership income under section 702. And since the U.S. partnership’s gross income “includes subpart F income and section 956(a) inclusions from the lower-tier CFCs,” the court concluded that the CFC partners must increase their E&P by the subpart F amounts that are included in their gross income.
According to the court, the taxpayer’s “primary argument” was that “the section 964 regulations supply a freestanding, self-contained, and comprehensive system for determining the E&P of a foreign corporation” without need for recourse to section 312 or its regulations. Specifically, the taxpayer relied on Treas. Reg. § 1.964-1(a)(1), which provides that the E&P of a foreign corporation is computed “as if such corporation were a domestic corporation by” following three enumerated steps. The court portrayed the taxpayer’s argument as interpreting “the preposition ‘by’ in an extremely narrow sense, to mean ‘by doing these three things and nothing else.’”
The court rejected that reading of Treas. Reg. § 1.964-1(a)(1) on the grounds that the three enumerated steps in that regulation are insufficient for computing E&P. To compute E&P at all, it is necessary to know how corporate transactions and events—like property distributions, stock distributions, redemptions, discharge of indebtedness income, and depreciation—affect E&P. And since the regulations under section 964 address none of these transactions or events, the court held that they cannot alone determine foreign corporation E&P. Rather, recourse to section 312 and its regulations is necessary. The court also observed that the section 964 regulations specifically provide that the depreciation rules in section 312(k) do not apply in computing foreign corporation E&P. And the court inferred that this meant that section 312 and its regulations must apply in computing foreign corporation E&P, otherwise there would be no need to explicitly bar the application of the section 312(k) depreciation rules.
Presumably because it dismissed the taxpayer’s primary argument, the court took the opportunity to explain what the three steps enumerated in Treas. Reg. § 1.964-1(a)(1) are meant to do if they are not—as the taxpayer’s argument maintained—the sole mechanism for computing foreign corporation E&P. The court referred to paragraph (ii) of that regulation, which provides that foreign corporation E&P requires conforming the foreign corporation’s P&L statement to U.S. GAAP. The court concluded that the three steps under Treas. Reg. § 1.964-1(a)(1) “specify a preliminary process by which a foreign corporation’s P&L statement is conformed to, or made to resemble, that of a domestic corporation by making a series of tax accounting adjustments.”
The court also addressed the taxpayer’s other argument that the CFC partners’ subpart F inclusions “do not increase the dividend[-]paying capacity of the upper[-]tier CFC partners.” The court observed that “[t]here are many instances in which E&P are increased when amounts are included in income but no cash is received,” citing original issue discount and income accrual as examples.
Most of the rest of the Tax Court joined Judge Kerrigan’s opinion, with Judge Pugh abstaining and Judge Morrison writing a brief concurrence (in which he clarifies his opinion that it is the language in Treas. Reg. § 1.964-1(a)(1)—and not, as the majority stated, the language in section 964(a)—that imports section 312 and its regulations into the computation of foreign corporation E&P). Judge Foley, however, wrote a dissent in which Judge Gustafson joined.
The brunt of that dissent is that if Treasury wanted to import the section 312 regulations into the computation of foreign corporation E&P under section 964, then it should have done so expressly. After criticizing the majority’s inference about the 312(k) depreciation rules excluded under section 964(a), the dissent offers support for the taxpayer’s primary argument that the regulations under 964 are the exhaustive source of instruction on computing foreign corporation E&P. The dissent observes that there were previously five steps under Treas. Reg. § 1.964-1(a)(1) and that the calculation of E&P “was complete upon the conversion to U.S. dollars.” Moreover, the dissent argues that Treasury could have expressly incorporated the rules under section 312 but did not do so. (The majority held that the language under 964(a) instructing that foreign corporation E&P is computed “under regulations prescribed by the Secretary” could be “reasonably read to include regulations promulgated under section 312,” even if those regulations predate section 964(a). The dissent disagreed, asserting that the majority’s analysis “sets bad precedent and is a rickety analytical construct.”)
Given that it involves a purely legal issue and a divided Tax Court, the case seems destined for appeal, so stay tuned for further updates.
Briefing Completed in SIH Partners
December 14, 2018
The final briefs have now been filed in the SIH Partners case. The government’s response to the taxpayer’s opening brief is long, but hammers extensively on one point — namely, that the regulation is “categorical” in establishing that a loan guarantee issued by a CFC will be treated as taxable. (The word “categorical” appears 29 times in the government’s brief.). And the government maintains that this “bright-line” rule flows directly from the statutory text. Given that premise, the government is able to give most of the taxpayer’s arguments short shrift.
In particular, the government says that the settled legal landscape made it easy for tax planners. If the taxpayer chose to use its CFC to guarantee the loan, then it should accept the predictable tax consequences of that choice, rather than allegedly seeking a “sea change” in the governing rules that would replace a bright-line rule with a facts and circumstances inquiry. Whether or not the loan guarantee reflects something like an “actual repatriation,” or was actually necessary for credit purposes, or is affected by other guarantors are all “wholly irrelevant” in the government’s view.
The government similarly disposes of the taxpayer’s administrative law argument. It states that the statutory text established a categorical rule and the commenters did not argue that Treasury should adopt a non-categorical rule; therefore, the relatively sparse explanation for the regulation was not problematic. In the government’s words, “that an explanation is brief does not mean that it is inadequate.” Interestingly, the government goes on to make a fallback argument that it acknowledges was not presented to the Tax Court. It argues that, even if the regulation is invalid for failure to comply with the APA, the outcome of the case would not change because the statute is “self-executing,” and therefore the statute itself would make the loan guarantee a taxable event.
Finally, the government states that the taxpayer has provided no sound reason for the court not to follow Rodriguez and other lower court decisions that reach the same result, and therefore the taxpayer is not entitled to be taxed at the lower qualified dividend rate.
The taxpayer begins its reply brief by citing to a notice of proposed rulemaking issued 11 days before the government’s brief was filed. The proposed regulations would “reduce the amount determined under section 956” in certain instances in light of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The taxpayer argues that the reasoning in the notice contradicts the government’s position because the notice describes the IRS’s “longstanding practice” as trying to “conform the application of section 956 to its purpose,” and thus to try to achieve symmetry between section 956 taxation and actual repatriations of earnings.
Apart from the new proposed regulations, the taxpayer argues that the statutory language governing guarantees did not establish a categorical rule, but rather left the proper tax treatment to be determined by regulation. Therefore, Treasury had to make a choice and was required to explain the bright-line choice that it made. And similarly, regulation was required, and the statute cannot be treated as self-executing.
With respect to the dividend rate issue, the taxpayer urges the court not to follow Rodriguez. In that connection, it states that the Rodriguez court mistakenly believed that Congress specifically designates when section 951 inclusions are to be treated as dividends, when in fact there are Treasury regulations that treat inclusions as dividends without specific statutory authorization.
Third Circuit to Consider Validity of Subpart F Regulations Governing Loan Guarantees
October 25, 2018
In SIH Partners v. Commissioner, the Tax Court upheld the IRS’s determination that loan guarantees by two controlled foreign corporations (CFCs) resulted in income inclusions subject to taxation in the U.S. as ordinary income under subpart F. The CFC earnings were actually distributed to the U.S. shareholder in 2010 and 2011 and reported then as qualified dividends taxable at 15 percent. But the IRS determined that, under the section 956 regulations, those earnings should have been taxed at the 35 percent ordinary income rate in 2007 and 2008 when the CFCs served as co-guarantors of loans.
The taxpayer raised three basic objections to the Commissioner’s determination. First, it argued that the regulations implementing Code section 956(d)—the regulations under which the IRS treated the loan guarantees as investments in U.S. property to be included in U.S. income—were invalid under the Administrative Procedure Act. Second, it argued that even if the regulations were valid, there should be no income inclusion under the particular facts and circumstances of the guarantees. Third, it argued that, in any event, the Subpart F income should be taxed at the lower qualified dividend rate because the underlying theory of the section 951 income inclusion is that the guarantee is deemed to be a dividend.
The Tax Court rejected all three arguments. It discussed at length the taxpayer’s argument that Treasury failed “the reasoned decisionmaking and reasoned explanation requirements” of Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29 (1983), because it did not explain the regulatory treatment of guarantees when it issued the regulations back in 1963-64. (Compliance with State Farm has increasingly become an issue in tax cases in recent years. The Tax Court identified a State Farm problem with the cost-sharing regulations in Altera because of Treasury’s failure to address particular comments in the rulemaking (see our report on the Tax Court’s Altera decision here), and the Federal Circuit struck down on State Farm grounds a section 263A capitalization regulation in the Dominion Resources case (see our report here)).
The Tax Court found that the regulatory process for the section 956 regulations complied with State Farm’s reasoned decisionmaking requirement, describing this case as distinguishable from State Farm for several reasons, including that: (1) it “did not reverse previously settled agency policy”; (2) the regulations “were not promulgated contrary to facts or analysis that supported a different outcome”; (3) “Treasury’s decision did not (and could not) purport to rely on findings of fact”; and (4) “no substantive alternatives to the final rules were presented for Treasury’s consideration during the rulemaking process.” The Tax Court was untroubled by the lack of explanation for the regulatory determinations, rejecting the notion that “an on-the-record consideration of any particular factors is required for rulemaking under section 956(d).”
The Tax Court also ruled that the regulations were not “arbitrary and capricious” in imposing a blanket rule that treats any CFC guarantor as holding U.S. property equal to the principal value of the obligation guaranteed. The court stated that the legislative history indicated that “Congress itself thought extensively about which transactions should be treated the same as repatriations of CFCs’ earnings,” and there was nothing to suggest that “Congress expected Treasury to craft ad hoc exceptions based on some sort of facts-and-circumstances test.” Thus, even though the court acknowledged that the blanket rule led to illogical results in some cases where the full amount of the guarantee cannot reasonably be viewed as a repatriation, the court concluded that it “is not manifestly contrary to the statute or unreasonable that the agency would choose a broad baseline rule for pledges and guarantees as opposed to a less administrable case-by-case approach.” Finally, the court observed that it was “relevant,” albeit not dispositive, that the regulations in question had been on the books for nearly 50 years before the guarantee transactions.
Having upheld the validity of the regulations, the Tax Court gave short shrift to the taxpayer’s other contentions. The taxpayer argued convincingly that the circumstances of the guarantees, including the existence of other guarantors, were such that there clearly was no equivalent to an actual repatriation in the full amount of the guarantees. The court declared this evidence “irrelevant” because the regulations were categorical and made “no provision for reducing the section 956 inclusion by reference to the guarantor’s financial strength or its relative creditworthiness.” With respect to denying the lower qualified dividend rate, the court relied on its prior decision in Rodriguez v. Commissioner, 137 T.C. 174 (2011), aff’d, 722 F.3d 306 (5th Cir. 2013), which held that treating a CFC’s investment in U.S. property “as if it were a dividend” under section 956 does not mean that the tax rate for actual dividends should apply. See our prior coverage of Rodriguez here.
The taxpayer has appealed to the Third Circuit, raising the same basic three arguments. In challenging the validity of the regulations, the taxpayer argues primarily that the regulations are arbitrary and “ignore both congressional intent and economic reality” by creating “broad-brush rules” that treat “every CFC guarantor of a U.S. person’s loan as though it has made the full amount of the guaranteed loan.” The taxpayer maintains that even the IRS in its past administrative guidance had recognized that it is arbitrary to ignore particular facts and circumstances showing that a guarantee is not equivalent to a repatriation; hence, the government is staking out new ground with its current position requiring strict adherence to the letter of the regulation. Secondarily, the taxpayer argues that Treasury’s failure to provide a sufficient reasoned explanation for the regulatory rule violated State Farm principles.
Assuming that the regulations are valid, the taxpayer argues that the court of appeals should follow prior IRS guidance and remand the case to the Tax Court to examine the particular facts and circumstances “to determine whether, in substance, there was a repatriation of CFC earnings.” Finally, the taxpayer argues that the Rodriguez case was wrongly decided and therefore the included income should be taxed at no higher than the qualified dividend rate. The taxpayer points out that the government’s theory for accelerating the recognition of income from the actual repatriation date to the earlier guarantee date is that the guarantees were “an investment in U.S. property that is substantially equivalent to a dividend.” If so, the taxpayer argues, the government cannot “simultaneously argu[e] that they are not substantially equivalent to a dividend for purposes of the applicable rate.”
The government’s answering brief is due November 16.
Altera Case Submitted for Decision
October 22, 2018
The reargument of the Altera case was held on October 16. Chief Judge Thomas, who penned the original majority decision, was quiet during the argument, asking only one question. But both Judge O’Malley, who wrote the original dissent, and Judge Graber, who is the new judge on the panel and who might reasonably be expected to cast the deciding vote, were very active questioners. A video tape of the argument can be viewed at this link.
The oral argument was not quite the last gasp in the parties’ presentations to the panel. At the end of the week, counsel for Altera filed a post-argument letter further addressing some of the points that were raised at the argument. The letter stated that some of the statements made by government counsel at the argument were contrary to the provisions of Treas. Reg. § 1.482-4(f)(2)(ii), and that these departures from the existing regulations underscored why adminstrative law principles “do not permit an abandonment of arm’s-length evidence and the parity principle, even if the statute permitted it, without complying with the rules governing administrative procedure.” The government filed its own letter in response, asserting that its counsel’s statements did “not contradict any Treasury regulations” and did not implicate the administrative law principles referenced by Altera.
These letters are attached below.
The case is now submitted for decision. Ordinarily, one would expect several months to elapse after argument before a decision from the Ninth Circuit would issue in a complex case. (The original opinion in this case was issued more than nine months after the oral argument.) Given that Judges Thomas and O’Malley have already written opinions in the case, however, it is very possible that a decision could come much sooner.
Altera – Altera post-argument letter
Altera – Government post-argument letter
Supplemental Briefing Completed in Altera
October 10, 2018
Attached are the four supplemental briefs filed by the parties in the Altera case. First, in anticipation of the reargument of the case, with Judge Graber now sitting on the panel in place of the deceased Judge Reinhardt, the court invited the parties to file supplemental briefs limited to half of the length of a normal court of appeals brief. This briefing opportunity was designed to give the parties the chance to restate or add to their arguments on the issues previously addressed in the case, having now had the opportunity to read the competing opinions of Judges Reinhardt and O’Malley that had been vacated. Although the court’s order took pains to tell the parties that they were “permitted, but not obligated,” to file “optional” supplemental briefs, it will surprise no one that both parties took advantage of the option and filed supplemental briefs on September 28 that pressed right up against the 6500 word limit. In addition to the parties’ briefs, four supplemental amicus briefs were filed by: 1) the Chamber of Commerce; 2) a group of trade associations; 3) Cisco; and 4) a group of law school professors, with that last one being in support of the government.
This deluge of paper, however, was not enough for the panel. On the same day that the supplemental briefs were due, the court issued the following order inviting another set of supplemental briefs on the question whether Altera’s suit was barred by the statute of limitations:
“The parties should be prepared to discuss at oral argument the question as to whether the six-year statute of limitations applicable to procedural challenges under the Administrative Procedure Act, 28 U.S.C. 2401(a), applies to this case and, if it does, what the implications are for this appeal. Perez-Guzman v. Lynch, 835 F.3d 1066, 1077-79 (9th Cir. 2016), cert. denied, 138 S. Ct. 737 (2018). Additionally, the parties are permitted, but not obligated, to file optional simultaneous supplemental briefs on this question on or before October 9, 2018. The briefs should be no longer than 6,500 words [that is, half the length of an ordinary appellate brief].”
The court’s injection of this new issue into the case was potentially a very significant development. If the court were to conclude that Altera’s APA challenge was barred by the statute of limitations, the Ninth Circuit decision in Altera would not shed any light on any of the important issues thought to be presented involving the APA or the substance of the cost-sharing regulations.
In the end, however, it appears that the court’s latest order will not amount to anything. Altera filed a full-fledged supplemental brief in response to the court’s order in which it raised several objections to the court’s suggestion, including an argument that the government had waived any possible statute of limitations claim.
More significantly, the government did not embrace the court’s suggestion either. The government simply filed a short letter brief in which it stated that any prepayment suit filed by Altera within the six-year limitations period would have been barred by the Tax Anti-Injunction Act. (In this connection, the government cited to its brief in the Chamber of Commerce case; see our coverage of that appeal here.) Hence, the government acknowledged that it would be “unfair” to Altera if that six-year period were held to bar its later suit because that would have the effect of depriving Altera of any ability to sue in the Tax Court. Moreover, the government noted that the limitations period is not “jurisdictional” and therefore, even if it would otherwise be applicable, the government had waived its right to invoke a limitations defense just as Altera argued in its brief. The government concluded by stating its position that the six-year statute of limitations that is generally applicable to APA challenges “does not apply to this case.” Thus, there is no realistic possibility that the Ninth Circuit will toss the case on statute of limitations grounds, and it can be expected to address the important issues presented by the Tax Court’s opinion.
The oral argument is scheduled for October 16.
Altera – Altera Supplemental Brief
Altera – Government Supplemental Brief
Altera – Altera Statute of Limitations Supplemental Brief
Altera – Government Statute of Limitations Letter Brief
Altera Opinion Withdrawn
August 7, 2018
In a surprising move, the Ninth Circuit announced today that it has withdrawn its opinion in Altera “to allow time for the reconstituted panel to confer on this appeal,” even though no petition for rehearing has been filed yet. See our prior report on the Altera decision here. The mention of the “reconstituted panel” refers to an order issued by the court last week that appointed Judge Graber as a replacement judge for Judge Reinhardt, who passed away in March.
At the time, the order appointing Judge Graber seemed to be an exercise in closing the barn door after the horse is gone. But it now appears that Judge Graber is being asked to review the case and give her independent judgment regarding the issues, notwithstanding the decision issued in July. If so, that would place the outcome in doubt again, since the two other living judges, Chief Judge Thomas and Judge O’Malley, differed on their views of the case.
In some courts, the death of a judge while a case is under consideration automatically means that the judge’s vote will not count. Unless the remaining two judges agree, that death would necessitate appointing a third judge to render a decision. But the Ninth Circuit does not follow that approach. The now-withdrawn opinion recited that “Judge Reinhardt fully participated in this case and formally concurred in the majority opinion prior to his death.” For whatever reason, the court now seems to have decided on its own that it made a mistake in allowing Judge Reinhardt to cast the decisive vote from the grave in such an important case.
Altera – Ninth Circuit order substituting Judge Graber
Altera – Ninth Circuit order withdrawing opinions
Chamber of Commerce Appeal Dismissed
July 27, 2018
We reported earlier that it was likely the government would dismiss its appeal in the Chamber of Commerce case once final regulations were issued addressing inversion transactions. Those regulations were issued on July 11. Yesterday, the government moved to dismiss the appeal with prejudice as moot (without specifying the final regulations as the cause), and the court immediately entered an order dismissing it. Thus, there will be no appellate review of the novel issues raised by the district court’s decision in this case regarding temporary regulations and the Administrative Procedure Act. See our prior report here.
It is possible that the government will consider asking the district court to vacate its decision because the appeal became moot. Vacatur might have been appropriate under the old rule of United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36 (1950). But because the mootness was caused by the government’s own action of issuing final regulations, a motion to vacate likely will not be granted under the current standard set forth in U.S. Bancorp Mortgage Co. v. Bonner Mall Partnership, 513 U.S. 18 (1994).
Chamber of Commerce – Fifth Circuit Order Dismissing Appeal
Chamber of Commerce – Government Motion to Dismiss
Ninth Circuit Reverses Altera and Revives Cost-Sharing Regulations
July 24, 2018
The Ninth Circuit today by a 2-1 vote reversed the Tax Court’s Altera decision that had invalidated Treasury regulations requiring taxpayers to include employee stock options in the pool of costs shared under a cost-sharing agreement. See our previous reports here. The court’s decision (authored by Chief Judge Thomas) held that the regulations were a permissible interpretation of Code section 482 in imposing that requirement even in the absence of any evidence that taxpayers operating at arm’s length actually share such costs in similar arrangements. The court also held that Treasury’s rulemaking did not violate the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
The court’s opinion follows the structure of the government’s brief in first analyzing section 482, even though the Tax Court decision rested on the APA. The court began with a detailed history of the development of section 482 and the related regulations. Quoting a law review article, the court stated that Congress and the IRS gradually realized in the years after 1968 that the arm’s-length standard “did not work in a large number of cases” and therefore they made “a deliberate decision to retreat from the standard while still paying lip service to it.” Relying heavily on legislative history, the court stated that the addition of the “commensurate with income” language in the 1986 Act was intended “to displace a comparability analysis where comparable transactions cannot be found.”
Armed with that conclusion, the court found that there was no violation of the APA. The court explained that the commenters had attacked the regulation as inconsistent with the arm’s-length standard, but Treasury in its notice had “made clear that it was relying on the commensurate with income provision”; therefore, the comments in question were just “disagree[ing] with Treasury’s interpretation of the law,” and there was no reason for Treasury to address those comments in any detail. The taxpayer argued that the notice of rulemaking indicated that Treasury would be applying the arm’s-length standard and therefore the Chenery principle of administrative law did not permit the regulations to be defended on the ground that the arm’s-length standard did not apply. See our prior summary of the parties’ arguments here. The court rejected this argument in cursory fashion, stating that it “twists Chenery . . . into excessive proceduralism.” It maintained that the citation of legislative history in the notice was a sufficient indication that Treasury believed that it could dispense with comparability analysis, and therefore the regulations were not being upheld on a different ground from the one set forth by the agency.
Having concluded that there was no APA violation in issuing the regulations, the court then applied the Chevron standard of deferential review to analyze the regulations, and it concluded that they were a reasonable interpretation of the statute. Pointing to the legislative history, the court ruled that the “commensurate with income” language was intended to create a “purely internal standard . . . to ensure that income follows economic activity.” The court added that “the goal of parity is not served by a constant search for comparable transactions.” Rather, by amending section 482 in 1986, Congress had “intended to hone the definition of the arm’s length standard so that it could work to achieve arm’s length results instead of forcing application of arm’s length methods.”
Finally, the court rejected the argument that the new regulations were inconsistent with treaty obligations. It remarked that “there is no evidence that the unworkable empiricism for which Altera argues is also incorporated into our treaty obligations,” describing the arm’s-length standard as “aspirational, not descriptive.”
Judge O’Malley (of the Federal Circuit, sitting by designation) dissented. She approached the case along the lines of the taxpayer’s argument and concluded that the Tax Court had correctly found an APA violation because “[i]n promulgating the rule we consider here, Treasury repeatedly insisted that it was applying the traditional arm’s length standard and that the resulting rule was consistent with that standard.” And “Treasury never said . . . that the nature of stock compensation in the [cost-sharing] context rendered arm’s length analysis irrelevant.” Accordingly, “Treasury did not provide adequate notice of its intent to change its longstanding practice of employing the arm’s length standard.” Finally, Judge O’Malley also noted her disagreement with the majority’s conclusion on the merits that the regulations are consistent with section 482. She explained that the plain language of the commensurate with income provision restricts its application to a “transfer (or license) of intangible property,” which would not encompass a cost-sharing agreement, even if the agreement relates to joint development of intangibles.
It is likely that the taxpayer will seek rehearing of the decision by the full Ninth Circuit, especially since such a rehearing petition was successful a decade ago in Xilinx. A rehearing petition would be due on September 7. If the taxpayer elects not to seek rehearing, a petition for certiorari would be due October 22.
Altera – Ninth Circuit opinion
Briefing Delays in Chamber of Commerce Could Portend Dismissal of Appeal
May 18, 2018
The government’s appeal in the Chamber of Commerce case raises important issues of administrative law (see our previous report here), but it seems increasingly unlikely that the court of appeals will ever reach those issues.
The government’s opening brief was filed in March. That brief (linked below) addresses several issues—including standing, the Anti-Injunction Act, and the authority of temporary regulations issued without notice-and-comment. At the time, the government had sought to avoid having to file its brief at all, filing a motion shortly before the (already extended) due date that asked the court of appeals to stay the briefing schedule indefinitely to await the “imminent” issuance of final regulations addressing inversions. The motion explained that, “having completed notice and comment, Treasury and IRS plan to finalize the proposed regulation,” and stated that the government would then “reevaluate whether it should proceed with this appeal.” As an alternative to a complete stay of the briefing, the government asked for an additional 45-day extension until April 30 to file its brief, and the plaintiffs consented to that extension request.
The court of appeals, however, did not act on the extension request before the due date, and the government accordingly filed its brief on March 16. It thus appeared for a time that the court of appeals might move forward towards deciding the case without waiting for the issuance of final regulations. That is no longer the case.
The court first granted the plaintiffs a fairly routine 45-day extension until May 31. But today the court granted the plaintiffs an additional 60-day extension until July 30. This extension, to which the government consented, is expressly linked to the issuance of the final regulations. Treasury has announced that those regulations will be issued in June, and the plaintiffs state in their motion that the extension is necessary to “facilitate the parties’ efforts to determine whether the final rule will cause the Government to dismiss its appeal or will otherwise affect the presentation of the issues.”
Although the government’s original motion back in March did not commit it to dismissing the appeal, it strongly signaled that the government is inclined towards that course of action once the final regulations are in place. Under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 42, an appellant can voluntarily dismiss its appeal as long as it pays certain costs to the appellee. Thus, even if the plaintiffs would want the appeal to continue in order to obtain an appellate decision on the broad administrative law issues, they cannot prevent the government from dismissing the appeal if it chooses to do so.
Chamber of Commerce – Appellees Request for Extension
Chamber of Commerce – Opening Brief for US
Chamber of Commerce – US motion for stay
Fifth Circuit Poised to Consider Validity of Temporary Regulations Aimed at Curbing Inversions
March 7, 2018
We present here a guest post by our colleague Katherine Zhang.
In Chamber of Commerce v. Internal Revenue Service, the Fifth Circuit will consider whether “tax exceptionalism” exists in the context of temporary regulations. At issue in the case are Treasury regulations that provide special rules for calculating the “ownership fraction” for entities engaged in inversion transactions. The district court set aside the regulations as promulgated in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and the government has appealed.
Since the Supreme Court consigned the broad notion of “tax exceptionalism” to the scrap heap in Mayo Foundation, 562 U.S. 44 (2011) (see our prior reports here and here), by applying Chevron deference principles to Treasury regulations, the courts have increasingly grappled with the extent to which the APA constrains the promulgation of Treasury regulations. The Altera case pending in the Ninth Circuit presents another important facet of the general interplay between the APA and Treasury regulations (see our reports on Altera here). In this case, the focus is on APA constraints on the issuance of temporary regulations.
Generally, an “inversion transaction” occurs where a foreign corporation replaces the U.S. parent of a multinational group. If the transaction meets certain criteria, then Code section 7874 applies to impose adverse U.S. tax consequences on the parties involved. One key criterion is that, after the transaction, former shareholders of the U.S. parent hold at least 60 percent of the stock of the new foreign parent. This percentage is commonly referred to as the “ownership fraction,” and it may be measured by either vote or value. If the ownership fraction is at least 60 percent and less than 80 percent, then in the ten-year period after the transaction, U.S. tax is imposed on income or gain recognized in this period from transfers or licenses that are part of the transaction or that are made to foreign related persons after the transaction. The resulting liability cannot be reduced by tax attributes such as net operating losses or foreign tax credits. If the ownership fraction is at least 80 percent, then the new foreign parent is treated as a domestic corporation.
In April 2016, the Treasury Department invoked its broad regulatory authority under section 7874 to adopt special rules for calculating the ownership fraction. Under one of these rules, the denominator of the ownership fraction (by value) disregards stock of the foreign corporation attributable to certain prior domestic entity acquisitions. As a result, the ownership fraction increases, and the 60 percent threshold brings more transactions within the ambit of section 7874. The rule is designed to prevent companies from using a series of transactions to safely achieve an inversion that would fall within section 7874 if done all at once or as part of a single plan. The rule was issued both as a temporary regulation that was effective immediately and as a proposed regulation.
This rule is the central focus of Chamber of Commerce. In August 2016, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Texas Association of Business filed suit in the Western District of Texas, arguing that the rule was invalid for failure to meet the requirements of the APA. The government contested both the plaintiffs’ power to bring suit and the merits of the APA objections.
The district court first rejected the government’s jurisdictional challenges that were raised in a motion to dismiss. A plaintiff generally must establish standing by demonstrating that it suffered an “injury in fact” that was caused by the defendant’s conduct and that likely would be redressed by a favorable decision. But an association has standing to bring suit on behalf of its members if, among other elements, the members would have standing to sue in their own right. The court agreed that both plaintiffs had standing because Allergan plc was a member of each trade association.
Shortly after Treasury and the IRS issued the rule in April 2016, Allergan announced the cancellation of a previously announced merger with Pfizer Inc. According to the plaintiffs, the rule eliminated the tax benefits of the merger—because Allergan’s “corporate composition” included several prior acquisitions of domestic corporations, the rule would have applied to cause the entity resulting from the merger to be treated as a domestic corporation subject to U.S. federal income tax. On this basis, the court found that Allergan would have standing to sue in its own right. Although Allergan did not have a specific transaction pending, there was no need for it to “engage in futile negotiations” for a transaction that the rule has “altogether foreclosed or made economically impracticable.” Instead, it was sufficient that Allergan “identified a specific transaction that was thwarted by the Rule and asserted that it would actively pursue other inversions if this court were to set aside the challenged Rule.” The court went on to conclude that the plaintiffs demonstrated “injury in fact” by showing that Allergan was the “targeted object” of the rule. Therefore, the plaintiffs “have alleged an actual, concrete injury, that is fairly traceable to implementation of the Rule, and that would be redressed by a decision setting aside that Rule.”
The court also determined that the suit was not barred by the Anti-Injunction Act, which prohibits suits “restraining the assessment or collection of any tax.” According to the court, the plaintiffs’ suit did not seek to restrain the assessment or collection of tax. Citing Direct Marketing Association v. Brohl, 135 S. Ct. 1124 (2015), which analyzed the analogous Tax Injunction Act applicable to state taxes, the court reasoned that “[a]ssessment and collection of taxes does not include all the activities that may improve the government’s ability to assess and collect taxes.” Here, rather than trying to restrain the assessment or collection of tax, the plaintiffs merely challenged the validity of a rule “so that a reasoned decision can be made about whether to engage in a potential future transaction that would subject them to taxation under the Rule.” The rule itself did not constitute the assessment or collection of tax, but only determined who was subject to tax and facilitated the assessment or collection of tax.
The court then turned to the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, which raised the substantive claims of an APA violation. Broadly speaking, the APA governs agency actions and judicial review of such actions. Provisions of the APA governing agency rulemaking require agencies to publish a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register and to provide “interested persons” with an opportunity to comment. The proposed rule must be published no less than 30 days before its effective date, to allow for adequate opportunity to comment. The APA also directs a reviewing court to “hold unlawful and set aside” certain types of agency action, including actions that exceed statutory jurisdiction, actions that are arbitrary and capricious, and actions taken without procedure required by law. The plaintiffs challenged the rule on all three of these grounds.
The district court rejected the plaintiffs’ first two arguments, finding that the rule did not exceed Treasury and the IRS’s statutory jurisdiction and did not constitute arbitrary and capricious rulemaking. The court reached a different result, however, with respect to the plaintiffs’ third argument, ruling that issuance of the rule as an immediately effective temporary regulation violated the APA’s notice-and-comment requirements.
The government argued for a form of “tax exceptionalism” based on Code section 7805(e), which states that Treasury can issue temporary regulations (subject to automatic expiration after three years), as long as those temporary regulations are accompanied by proposed regulations that are subject to notice and comment. Although that provision contains no language restricting temporary regulations from becoming effective immediately, the court was not persuaded. The APA specifically contemplates that subsequent statutes might override its notice-and-comment requirements, but it requires that statutes make this change “expressly.” 5 U.S.C. § 559. According to the court, section 7805 did not make any such change “expressly”—it refers to effective dates of regulations in connection with limitations on retroactivity in section 7805(b), but “neither explicitly states nor suggests congressional intent to allow a regulation to become effective earlier in relation to publication than provided for in the APA.” The court also declined to look for any such intent in the legislative history, saying that it “will not disregard explicit directives of the APA in favor of legislative history.”
The court also held that the rule did not qualify for the APA’s exception for “interpretative” rules, which exempts such rules from notice-and-comment requirements. 5 U.S.C § 553(b)(A). As described by the court, an interpretative rule advises the public as to the “agency’s construction of the statutes and rules which it administers,” while a substantive rule “affects individual rights and obligations” and “is issued by an agency pursuant to statutory authority.” The court determined that the rule at issue was a substantive rule—it was promulgated pursuant to subsections of section 7874 that authorized Treasury to issue regulations to provide for “adjustments to the application of this section” and to “treat stock as not stock.” These types of rules are “modifications to the application of the statute,” not mere interpretations.
The impact of the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Chamber of Commerce could extend well beyond its effect on the particular inversion rule that is directly at issue. If the court of appeals agrees with the district court’s approach, its decision could well cast doubt on the validity of all temporary Treasury regulations. Conversely, the court of appeals may decide that, under section 7805, tax still is exceptional in at least one important respect.
The government’s opening brief is due March 16.
Chamber of Commerce – District Court opinion
Ninth Circuit Briefing Completed in Altera
January 25, 2017
The parties have now completed briefing in the Ninth Circuit in the Altera case, in which the Tax Court struck down Treasury regulations that require taxpayers to include employee stock options in the pool of costs shared under a cost-sharing agreement. As described in our previous reports, the Tax Court’s decision implicated both the specific issue of whether the cost-sharing regulations are a lawful implementation of Code section 482 and the more general administrative law issue of the constraints placed on Treasury by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in issuing rules that involve empirical conclusions.
The government’s opening brief focuses only on the specific section 482 issue, maintaining that the Tax Court erred in believing that the challenged regulations involved empirical conclusions. Specifically, the government relies heavily on what it terms the “coordinating amendments” to the regulations promulgated in 2003. Those amendments, which purport to apply the “commensurate with income” language added to section 482 in 1986 for intangible property, state in part that a “qualified cost sharing arrangement produces results that are consistent with an arm’s length result . . . if, and only if, each controlled participant’s share of the costs . . . of intangible development . . . equals its share of reasonably anticipated benefits attributable to such development.” Treas. Reg. § 1.482-7(a)(3). By its terms, this regulation states that determining whether a cost-sharing agreement meets the longstanding section 482 “arm’s length” standard has nothing whatsoever to do with how parties actually deal at “arm’s length” in the real world. On that basis, the government argues that the APA rules are not implicated because the regulations did not rest on any empirical conclusions. And for the same reason, the government argues that the Ninth Circuit’s earlier decision under the prior cost-sharing regulations, Xilinx v. Commissioner, 598 F.3d 1191 (9th Cir. 2010), is irrelevant since that decision was premised on the understanding (now allegedly changed by the amended regulations) that how parties actually deal at “arm’s length” was relevant to whether the section 482 “arm’s length” standard was met under those prior regulations, which did not explicitly provide a rule for stock-based compensation. Finally, the government defends the validity of the regulation’s approach to “arm’s length” in the cost-sharing context as being in line with statements made in the House and Conference Reports on the 1986 amendments to section 482, which noted the general difficulty in finding comparable arm’s-length transfers of licenses of intangible property.
In its response brief, the taxpayer takes the government to task for relying on a “new argument” rather than directly addressing the reasoning of the Tax Court. The taxpayer first observes that Treasury never took the position in the rulemaking that the traditional “arm’s-length” standard in section 482 can be completely divorced from how parties actually operate at arm’s length—a position that assertedly “would have set off a political firestorm.” Accordingly, the taxpayer argues that the government’s position on appeal violates the bedrock administrative law principle of SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80 (1943), that courts must evaluate regulations on the basis of the reasoning contemporaneously given by the agency, not justifications later advanced in litigation. And in any event, the taxpayer argues, this position cannot be sustained because it is an unexplained departure from Treasury’s longstanding position that the 1986 amendments to section 482 “did not change the arm’s-length standard, but rather supplied only a new tool to be used consistently with arm’s-length analysis rooted in evidence.”
The taxpayer describes the government’s reliance on the “coordinating amendments” in the regulations as “circular reasoning” that simply purports to define “arm’s length” to mean something other than “arm’s length.” Even if that is what the regulations say, the taxpayer continues, the regulations could not be sustained because they depart “from the recognized purpose of Section 482 to place controlled taxpayers at parity with uncontrolled taxpayers” and conflict with “the arm’s-length analysis implicit in the statute’s first sentence.”
The government’s reply brief criticizes the taxpayer for not even arguing that its cost-sharing agreement clearly reflects income, and it therefore characterizes the taxpayer as arguing that “the arm’s-length standard gives related taxpayers carte blanche to mismatch their income and expenses.” With respect to the correct interpretation of section 482, the government repeats its position from the opening brief, maintaining that the term “arm’s length” does not necessarily connote equivalence with real-world transactions. Instead, the government argues that it is the taxpayer that departs from the statute by failing to give proper effect to the “commensurate with the income attributable to the intangible” language added in 1986.
The government responds to the Chenery argument by denying that it is arguing a different ground for the regulation than that advanced by Treasury. Rather, the government states that its brief simply further develops the basis advanced by Treasury because it was clear in the regulations that emerged from the rulemaking that Treasury was rejecting the position that an “arms-length” standard can be applied only by looking at empirical evidence of transactions between uncontrolled taxpayers.
Although the briefs are quite long, the basic dispute can be stated fairly succinctly. The parties purport to agree that an “arm’s-length” standard must govern. The taxpayer says that application of this standard always depends on analyzing actual transactions between uncontrolled parties, where available. The government says no; in its view, “arm’s length” does not necessarily require reference to such transactions. Instead, according to the government, in the cost-sharing context “Treasury prescribed a different means of ascertaining the arm’s-length result,” one that “is determined by reference to an economic assumption rather than by reference to allegedly comparable uncontrolled transactions.”
The intense interest in this case is illustrated by the filing of many amicus briefs. The government, which rarely benefits from amicus support in tax cases, is supported by two different amicus briefs filed by groups of law professors—six tax law professors joining in one of the briefs and 19 other tax and administrative law professors joining the second brief. The taxpayer’s position is supported by seven amicus briefs—including one from the Chamber of Commerce and one from a large group of trade associations. Four briefs were filed by individual companies—Cisco, Technet, Amazon, and Xilinx. The seventh brief was filed by three economists—a business school professor (who testified as an expert witness for the taxpayer in Xilinx), a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a managing director at the Berkeley Research Group. They profess no financial interest in the outcome but argue, based on their experience in dealing with issues relating to stock-based compensation, that, as a matter of economics, the government’s approach is not consistent with how parties acting at arm’s length would proceed.
Notwithstanding the interest in the case, no decision is expected in the near future. The Ninth Circuit has a backlog of cases awaiting the scheduling of oral argument. In recent years, oral arguments in tax cases typically have not been scheduled until at least a year after the briefing is concluded, and often closer to 18 months. Thus, oral argument in this case should not be expected before next winter. And then it will likely be several months after the argument before the court issues its decision. So at this point, it would be surprising if there were a decision in Altera before mid-2018.
Tax Court Overrules Its BMC Software Decision in Analog Devices
December 5, 2016
In its recent reviewed decision in Analog Devices, the Tax Court revisited and overruled its decision in BMC Software. We previously covered the BMC Software decision and the Fifth Circuit’s reversal of the Tax Court here. Analog Devices involves facts nearly identical to those in BMC Software: The taxpayer claimed a one-time dividends received deduction under section 965 for its 2005 tax year. Pursuant to a 2009 closing agreement with respect to some section 482 adjustments, the taxpayer elected to establish accounts receivable via a closing agreement under Rev. Proc. 99-32 in order to repatriate amounts included in U.S. income for the 2005 tax year (among others). And just as it did in BMC Software, the IRS determined that the retroactive creation of those accounts receivable for 2005 constituted related party indebtedness under section 965(b)(3) for the 2005 tax year, thus reducing the taxpayer’s dividends received deduction for 2005.
Analog Devices is appealable to the First Circuit, and therefore the Fifth Circuit’s decision in BMC Software is not binding precedent under the Golsen rule. Nevertheless, the Tax Court’s decision begins with an explanation of why the court was willing to reconsider its prior decision in BMC Software. Acknowledging the importance of stare decisis, the Tax Court stated that it was “not capriciously disregarding” its prior analysis and held that the principles that it articulated in BMC Software are “not entrenched precedent.” The Tax Court also observed that while its BMC Software decision implicates contract rights (specifically, closing agreements under Rev. Proc. 99-32), it was “unlikely” that the IRS would have relied on BMC Software in structuring later closing agreements.
The Tax Court then proceeded to follow the Fifth Circuit on both issues presented in the case. One issue was whether, as a statutory matter, section 965 required the parties to treat the accounts receivable as related party indebtedness. Following the Fifth Circuit, the Tax Court held that there was no such statutory requirement because section 965(b)(3) looks only to indebtedness “as of the close of the taxable year for which the [section 965] election . . . is in effect.” Because the taxpayer’s closing agreement did not create the accounts receivable until 2009—long after the testing period for the taxpayer’s 2005 year—the Tax Court held that the accounts receivable did not constitute related party indebtedness under section 965.
The other issue was whether the parties had agreed to treat the accounts receivable as related party indebtedness under the closing agreement. In what the Tax Court termed an “introductory phrase,” the closing agreement provided that the accounts receivable were established “for all Federal income tax purposes.” The Commissioner argued that with this language, the parties had agreed to treat the accounts receivable as related party indebtedness for purposes of section 965. But looking to the facts and circumstances of the closing agreement, the Tax Court concluded that the taxpayer made no such agreement. The Tax Court cited law for the principle that each closing agreement is limited to the “matters specifically agreed upon and mentioned in the closing agreement” as well as some self-limiting language in the agreement itself. Since there is no specific mention of section 965 in the agreement, the Tax Court held that to treat the accounts receivable as related party indebtedness would be to ignore the intent of the parties.
But the introductory phrase in the closing agreement in BMC Software—which had the phrase “for Federal income tax purposes”— was different from that in Analog Devices—“for all Federal income tax purposes.” Four judges on the Tax Court concluded that this difference was material and dissented. The dissent invoked interpretive canons for giving effect to the word “all” and addressed the equities of the situation, stating that even if the parties did not bargain over the wording of the introductory phrase, the “wording was not foisted on an unrepresented or unsuspecting taxpayer, or rendered in fine print, or hidden in a footnote, or even inserted in the midst of other terms of the agreement.” Several judges joined in a concurring opinion stating that the dissent “points to a distinction without a difference” and observing that the phrase “for Federal income tax purposes” means the same thing as the phrase “for all Federal income tax purposes.”
If the government appeals Analog Devices (which it may well do given the dissent), we will cover that appeal.
Analog Devices Tax Court Opinion
Government Files Notice of Appeal in Altera
February 23, 2016
We have previously reported on the Tax Court’s important decision in Altera, which has significant implications both for IRS regulation of cost-sharing agreements under the transfer pricing rules and, more broadly, for how the Administrative Procedure Act might operate as a constraint on rulemaking by the Treasury Department in the tax area. Although there were some tactical considerations that could have made the government hesitant to seek appellate review from its defeat in Altera (see here), the government has now filed a notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit.
The court of appeals will issue a briefing schedule in due course, and we will keep you posted on the progress of the appeal.
Altera Decision Now Ripe for Appeal
December 2, 2015
We reported earlier on the Tax Court’s important decision in Altera, which invalidated a transfer-pricing regulation for failure to satisfy the “reasoned decisionmaking” standard for rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act. At the time, there were outstanding issues that prevented the Tax Court from entering a final decision. The parties have now submitted agreed-upon computations, and on December 1 the Tax Court entered a final decision. The government has 90 days to file a notice of appeal from that decision.
As we noted previously, the government will be motivated to appeal this decision both because of its specific impact on the regulation of cost-sharing agreements and, more broadly, because it could open the door to APA challenges to other regulations, including but not limited to other transfer pricing rules. On the other hand, the government could make a judgment that this particular case is not an ideal vehicle for litigating the broader APA issue, in part because an appeal would go to the Ninth Circuit where the Xilinx precedent on cost-sharing is on the books (see here for a report on Xilinx). It might then make the tactical choice to forego appeal in this case and await a stronger setting in which to litigate the APA issue for the first time in an appellate court. The Department of Justice will be weighing these competing considerations, and its conclusion should be evident when the 90-day period expires next March.
Tax Court Relies on APA to Invalidate the Cost-Sharing Regulation Governing Stock-Based Compensation
October 2, 2015
We present here a guest post from our colleagues Patricia Sweeney and Andrew Howlett. A longer version of this post is published here.
In Altera Corp. v. Commissioner, 145 T.C. No. 3 (July 27, 2015), the Tax Court put the IRS and Treasury on notice that, when promulgating regulations premised on “an empirical determination,” the factual premises underlying those regulations must be based on evidence or known transactions, not on assumptions or theories. Otherwise, the regulations do not comply with the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. § 551 et seq. Applying the arm’s-length standard of Code section 482, the Altera decision provides another example of transfer-pricing litigation being decided on the basis of evidence of actual arm’s-length dealings rather than economic theories. Looking more broadly beyond the section 482 context, the decision is an important reminder to the IRS and Treasury that, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Mayo Foundation (562 U.S. 44 (2011), see our prior reports on the decision and oral argument in that case here and here), tax regulations are subject to the same APA procedures as regulations issued by other federal agencies. As a result, Treasury cannot ignore the evidence and comments submitted during the rulemaking process. If it is to reject that evidence, Treasury must engage in its own factfinding, and it must explain the rationale for its decision based upon the factual evidence.
Because of its specific impact on the regulation of cost-sharing agreements and, more generally, because it could open the door to APA challenges to other regulations, including but not limited to other transfer pricing rules, the government will strongly consider an appeal of this decision to the Ninth Circuit. A notice of appeal will be due 90 days after the Tax Court enters its final decision, but there is not yet a final, appealable order in Altera.
The Context for the Dispute. Code section 482 authorizes the Commissioner to allocate income and expenses among related parties to ensure that transactions between them clearly reflect income. Treas. Reg. § 1.482-1(b)(1) provides that “the standard to be applied in every case is that of a taxpayer dealing at arm’s length with an uncontrolled taxpayer.” In 1986, Congress amended section 482 to provide that, “in the case of any transfer (or license) of intangible property . . ., the income with respect to such transfer or license shall be commensurate with the income attributable to the intangible.” As noted by the Tax Court, Congress enacted this amendment to section 482 in response to concerns regarding the lack of comparable arm’s-length transactions, particularly in the context of high-profit-potential intangibles. Congress did not intend, however, to preclude the use of bona fide cost-sharing arrangements under which related parties that share the cost of developing intangibles in proportion to expected benefits have the right to separately exploit such intangibles free of any royalty obligation. See H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 99-841 (Vol. II), at II-637 to II-638 (1986).
In 1995, Treasury issued detailed new cost-sharing regulations that generally authorized the IRS “to make each controlled participant’s share of the costs . . . of intangible development under the qualified cost sharing arrangement equal to its share of reasonably anticipated benefits attributable to such development.” In Xilinx, Inc. v. Commissioner, 598 F. 3d 1191 (9th Cir. 2010), the Ninth Circuit affirmed the Tax Court’s holding that the regulations did not require the taxpayer to include employee stock options (“ESOs”) granted to employees engaged in development activities in the pool of costs shared under the cost-sharing arrangement. The court reasoned that the term “costs” in the regulation did not include ESOs because that would not comport with the “dominant purpose” of the transfer pricing regulations as a whole, which is to put commonly controlled taxpayers at “tax parity” with uncontrolled taxpayers. Because of the overwhelming evidence that unrelated parties dealing at arm’s length in fact do not share ESOs in similar co-development arrangements, the court concluded that such tax parity is best furthered by a holding that the ESOs need not be shared. (For a more detailed examination of Xilinx, see our contemporaneous analysis here.)
In 2003 (prior to the Xilinx decision), Treasury had amended the transfer pricing regulations that were applicable to the years at issue in Xilinx. The amended regulations explicitly address the interaction between the arm’s-length standard and the cost-sharing rules, as well as the treatment of ESOs. Treas. Reg. § 1.482-1(b)(2)(i) now states that “Treas. Reg. § 1.482-7 provides the specific methods to be used to evaluate whether a cost sharing arrangement . . . produces results consistent with an arm’s length result.” Contrary to Xilinx, Treas. Reg. § 1.482-7(d)(2), as amended, specifically identifies stock-based compensation as a cost that must be shared.
Altera did not include ESOs or other stock-based compensation in the cost pool under the cost-sharing agreement it entered into with a Cayman Islands subsidiary. In accordance with the 2003 regulations, the IRS asserted that those costs should be included in the pool, and that, as a result, Altera’s income should be increased by approximately $80 million in the aggregate.
The Tax Court’s Analysis. Ruling on cross motions for summary judgment, the Tax Court, in a 14-0 decision reviewed by the full court, agreed with the taxpayer that the 2003 amendments to the cost-sharing regulations were invalid under the APA because Treasury did not adequately consider the evidence presented by commentators during the rulemaking process that stock-based compensation costs are not shared in actual third-party transactions.
The Tax Court first addressed the threshold issue of whether the 2003 regulations were governed by the rulemaking requirements of section 553 of the APA. To that end, it analyzed whether the regulations were “legislative” (regulations that have the force of law promulgated by an administrative agency as the result of statutory delegation) or “interpretive” (mere explanations of preexisting law). (This legislative/interpretive distinction under the APA is different from the distinction between legislative and interpretive Treasury regulations that was applied for many years in tax cases, but rendered largely obsolete by the Supreme Court’s Mayo decision.) Relying on Hemp Indus. Ass’n v. DEA, 333 F.3d 1082 (9th Cir. 2003), the Tax Court found that the 2003 cost-sharing regulations were legislative because there would be no basis for the IRS’s position that the cost of stock-based compensation must be shared under section 482 absent the regulation and because Treasury invoked its general legislative rulemaking authority under Code section 7805(a) with respect to the regulation.
APA section 553 generally requires the administrative agency to publish a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register, to provide interested persons an opportunity to participate in the rulemaking through written comments, and to incorporate in the adopted rules a concise general statement of their basis and purpose. APA section 706(2)(A) empowers courts to invalidate regulations if they are “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law.” The Tax Court cited Motor Vehicles Mfrs. Ass’n v. State Farm, 463 U.S. 29 (1983), as holding that this standard requires “reasoned decisionmaking” and that a regulation may be invalidated as arbitrary or capricious if it is not based on consideration of the relevant factors and involves a clear error of judgment.
The Tax Court found that the stock-based compensation rule did not comply with the reasoned decisionmaking standard because the rule lacked a factual basis and was contrary to evidence presented to Treasury during the rulemaking process. The Tax Court stated that, although the preamble to the 2003 rule stated that unrelated parties entering into cost-sharing agreements typically would share ESO costs (thereby relating the regulation to the arm’s-length requirement of section 482), Treasury had no factual basis for this assertion. Commentators had provided substantial evidence that stock-based compensation costs were not shared in actual third-party agreements, which the Tax Court itself had found (and which the government conceded) in Xilinx. Treasury could draw no support from any of the submitted comments nor did it engage in any of its own factfinding to support its position. Absent such factfinding or other evidence, the Tax Court concluded that “Treasury’s conclusion that the final rule is consistent with the arm’s-length standard is contrary to all of the evidence before it.”
The Tax Court also stated that Treasury’s failure to respond to any of the comments submitted was evidence that the regulation did not satisfy the State Farm standard, stating “[a]lthough Treasury’s failure to respond to an isolated comment or two would probably not be fatal to the final rule, Treasury’s failure to meaningfully respond to numerous relevant and significant comments certainly is [because m]eaningful judicial review and fair treatment of affected persons require an exchange of views, information and criticism between interested persons and the agencies.” As a result, the final rule failed to satisfy State Farm’s reasoned decisionmaking standard.
Challenges for Treasury. The Altera decision highlights the limitations of the Treasury Department’s rulemaking authority when the regulation is based on a factual determination. In that situation, the deference normally given to Treasury because of its expertise as an administrative agency carries little weight unless it is supported by specific factfinding Treasury has done with respect to the rule at issue. In other words, Treasury cannot expect tax regulations that seek to implement a fact-based standard to be upheld simply because Treasury believes that they reach the right theoretical result. Instead, Treasury must explicitly cite the evidence and explain how that evidence provides a rational basis for the regulation.
The Altera decision should motivate Treasury to incorporate responses to submitted comments in its descriptions of final regulations. By specifically citing Treasury’s failure (1) to respond to comments or (2) to engage in independent factfinding as being important components of judicial review under the APA, the Tax Court’s decision effectively directs Treasury to spend more resources during the rulemaking process.
More broadly, the Altera decision underscores the constraints placed on Treasury and other administrative agencies under the APA. Although Mayo announced that Chevron deference principles would apply to Treasury regulations in the future, that was not a radical shift in the law because Treasury regulations had always been subjected to a deference analysis that bore considerable similarity to Chevron. By contrast, as the Tax Court noted, Treasury regulations have not traditionally been measured by APA standards, and Treasury’s notice-and-comment procedures have not been analyzed under State Farm. The Tax Court’s unanimous decision in Altera shows that judicial review under the State Farm standard is more than a mere paper tiger; where Treasury does not demonstrate that it adequately considered the relevant factors, including submitted comments, its regulation is at risk of being overturned. Although Altera as of now is binding authority only in Tax Court cases, challenges to Treasury regulations in other forums likely will cite its reasoning with respect to what constitutes reasoned decisionmaking for purposes of judicial review under the APA.
Considerations for Taxpayers. Absent reversal on appeal, Altera will have an impact on all related-party cost-sharing agreements. Although cost-sharing agreements governed by the 2003 regulations typically have provided for a sharing of stock-based compensation, they often have provided for a retroactive adjustment back to the start of the agreement if there is any relevant change in law. Taxpayers with cost-sharing agreements should carefully review their agreements and tax positions to determine whether their agreement provides for an adjustment mechanism or whether if claims for refund for open years are appropriate based on the Altera holding.
In addition, taxpayers should consider whether Altera has opened the door for additional regulatory challenges, both in the transfer pricing arena and elsewhere, in contexts where the regulations were premised on factual or theoretical assumptions by Treasury that lack sufficient evidentiary support. The Altera case already has been brought to the attention of the district court handling the Microsoft summons litigation in the Western District of Washington as relevant to determining whether the Treasury regulations at issue there are valid, and the case will likely also be cited in cases involving the validity of other transfer pricing regulations, such as the regulations currently under review by the Tax Court in 3M Co. et al. v. Commissioner; No. 005816-13. In addition, the transfer pricing regulations governing services transactions, which were developed following the regulations at issue in Altera, also define the term “cost” to include stock-based compensation and therefore may be vulnerable to reasoning similar to that in Altera.
Finally, taxpayers and other commentators should consider the Tax Court’s reasoning in Altera in developing comments to proposed regulations. Altera demonstrates that such comments can be important in laying a foundation for future judicial challenge even if the commentators are not successful in persuading Treasury to adopt their position.
Fifth Circuit Reverses Tax Court in BMC Software
March 17, 2015
The Fifth Circuit reversed the Tax Court’s decision in BMC Software yesterday. As we speculated that it might at the outset of the case here, the Fifth Circuit’s decision hinged on how far to take the legal fiction that the taxpayer’s accounts receivable created under Rev. Proc. 99-32 were deemed to have been established during the taxpayer’s testing period under section 965(b)(3). While the Tax Court treated that legal fiction as a reality that reduced the taxpayer’s section 965 deduction accordingly, the Fifth Circuit treated that legal fiction as just that—a fiction that had no effect for purposes of section 965: “The fact that the accounts receivable are backdated does nothing to alter the reality that they did not exist during the testing period.” The Fifth Circuit based its decision on a straightforward reading of the plain language of the related-party-indebtedness rule under section 965, holding that for that rule “to reduce the allowable deduction, there must have been indebtedness ‘as of the close of’ the applicable year.” And since the deemed accounts receivable were not created until after the testing period, the Fifth Circuit held that the taxpayer’s deduction “cannot be reduced under § 965(b)(3).”
The Fifth Circuit also rejected the Commissioner’s argument that his closing agreement with the taxpayer mandated treating the deemed accounts receivable as related-party indebtedness. Here, the Fifth Circuit found that the interpretive canon that “things not enumerated are excluded” governed in this case. Because the closing agreement “lists the transaction’s tax implications in considerable detail,” the absence of “a term requiring that the accounts receivable be treated as indebtedness for purposes of § 965” meant that the closing agreement did not mandate such treatment.
BMC Software Fifth Circuit Opinion
Second Circuit Summarily Affirms in Barnes
November 5, 2014
The Second Circuit did not make the parties wait very long to learn the outcome of the Barnes Group’s appeal from the Tax Court’s imposition of dividend treatment on its multi-step transaction that enabled it to use in the United States cash that was located in Singapore. See our prior reports here and here. Little more than a month after oral argument, the court of appeals today issued a summary order affirming the Tax Court in all respects. The first page of such unpublished orders recites that they “do not have precedential effect,” but they can be cited in future cases pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 (albeit only in limited circumstances in the Second Circuit, see 2d Cir. Local Rule 32.1.1). In any event, the court issued a nine-page opinion briefly touching on the issues.
First, the court of appeals quickly agreed with the Tax Court that the IRS had not run afoul of the principle that it should not argue against its own revenue rulings. Even though Barnes had relied on Rev. Rul. 74-503 in determining the tax consequences of a key step in the transaction, the court of appeals accepted the Tax Court’s explanation that Rev. Rul. 74-503 could be disregarded because it “addressed the tax treatment of an isolated exchange of stock, and therefore provided no guidance on when the individual steps in an integrated series of transactions will be disregarded under the step transaction doctrine.”
The court then upheld the application of the step-transaction doctrine, agreeing with the Tax Court that the intermediate steps would have been fruitless unless they were part of a single integrated plan. The court rejected the taxpayer’s argument that the doctrine should not apply because the steps had a valid business purpose, finding that the Tax Court’s contrary finding of no valid business purpose was not clearly erroneous. Specifically, the court of appeals stated that “any non-tax benefit of including the financing subsidiaries was, at best, a mere afterthought.” Similarly, the court held that the Tax Court did not clearly err in premising its constructive dividend conclusion on a finding that Barnes failed to show that certain interest or preferred dividend payments were ever made.
Finally, the court of appeals upheld the imposition of the 20% accuracy-related penalty. It ruled that its previous distinction of Rev. Rul. 74-503 as not applying to a situation involving multiple steps also made that ruling unavailable as “substantial authority” that could eliminate the penalty. And it ruled that Barnes had no “reasonable cause and good faith” defense because the PwC opinion on which it had relied “does not advise as to the tax consequences of the entire series of transactions transferring funds from ASA to Barnes.”
Barnes – Second Circuit opinion
Briefing Completed in Barnes
June 16, 2014
All of the briefs have now been filed in the Barnes case. The government’s response brief defends the Tax Court’s decision as a run-of-the-mill application of substance over form principles. Quoting from True v. Commissioner, 190 F.3d 1165 (10th Cir. 1999), it argues that the step-transaction doctrine applies because the “Bermuda/Delaware exchanges did not ‘make[ ] any objective sense standing alone’ without contemplation of the other steps.” In arguing that these steps served no business purpose, the government relies heavily on evidence that the “reinvestment plan” was based on tax planning that the taxpayer’s accountants had previously done for another client. The government asserts that “Barnes and PwC went to great lengths to create out of whole cloth a business purpose for a tax-avoidance plan that originated in PwC’s database.” Rather than a legitimate business plan, the government alleges that “the entire repatriation scheme consists of essentially nothing more than a circular flow of funds among Barnes and its wholly owned subsidiaries.”
The government’s brief also notes that, if the court of appeals is unpersauded by the Tax Court’s opinion, it should remand for additional factual determinations to resolve two alternative government arguments that were not reached by the Tax Court: 1) that the transaction had the principal purpose of tax evasion and therefore deductions could be disallowed under Code section 269; and (2) that the Delaware preferred stock was held under the anti-abuse rule of Treas. Reg. § 1.956-1T(b)(4).
With respect to the issue discussed in our previous post regarding the taxpayer’s argument that the government was prohibited from disavowing Rev. Rul. 74-503, the brief largely tracks the Tax Court’s discussion. In other words, the government does not question the soundness of the principle stated in Rauenhorst that the IRS cannot argue against its Revenue Rulings. Rather, the brief simply doubles down on the step-transaction point and argues that the taxpayer could not reasonably rely on that ruling here because this case does not involve “bona fide § 351 exchanges.”
With respect to the penalty issue, the government again criticizes PwC’s role, arguing that PwC had a “conflict of interest” in issuing an opinion regarding the transaction because it had an interest in a favorable tax result that would allow PwC to “market [the tax plan] to other corporations seeking to repatriate funds from a controlled foreign corporation.” Accordingly, the government argues that the taxpayer could not reasonably rely on the PwC letter for “objective advice.” The government also argues that the taxpayer could not reasonably rely on the opinion because “PwC did not opine on the integrated repatriation scheme as a whole.”
The taxpayer’s reply brief argues that the government’s brief “mischaracterizes the substance of the plan” because the Bermuda and Delaware subsidiaries did not operate as conduits for a dividend payment. Instead, it accuses the government of making a policy-based argument that would “impermissibly convert Section 956 into an anti-abuse rule.” The brief then disputes in detail the government’s description of the transaction and underlying facts.
With respect to the penalty issue, the reply brief states that the government “essentially rewrites the Tax Court’s factual findings” in criticizing reliance on the PwC opinion. The brief notes that PwC was Barnes’ long-time tax advisor and did not market the transaction to Barnes. It also states that the Tax Court held that the PwC advisor “was a competent professional who had sufficient expertise to justify reliance” and that Barnes “provided necessary and accurate information to the advisor.” In particular, the reply brief responds to the government’s “conflict of interest” accusation against PwC by noting that the Tax Court specifically observed that there was nothing “nefarious” about PwC keeping tax planning ideas in a database and by asserting that “the government’s unfounded assertions that PwC did not provide an adverse opinion in order to sell the transaction to others is ludicrous and without any factual basis.” The reply brief also argues that the government is incorrect in stating that the PwC opinion did not address the entire transaction, quoting the PwC opinion itself as stating that it “is premised on all steps of the proposed transaction.”
Oral argument has not yet been scheduled.
Barnes – Government’s Response Brief
Barnes – Taxpayer’s Reply Brief
Taxpayer’s Reply Brief Filed in BMC Software
May 5, 2014
The taxpayer filed its reply brief in the BMC Software case last week. As in its opening brief, BMC cites Fifth Circuit precedent for the tax law definition of “indebtedness” as an “existing unconditional and legally enforceable obligation to pay.” BMC argues that it is undisputed that the accounts receivable created under Rev. Proc. 99-32 do not meet that definition—they neither existed nor were legally enforceable during the testing period for related-party indebtedness under section 965. (BMC observes that instead of disputing this point, the Commissioner tried to distinguish that case law, much of which comes from the debt-equity context. And BMC points out that the Commissioner’s argument implies different definitions of “indebtedness” may apply depending on the posture of the case.) In our first post on this case, we speculated that the outcome in this case may depend on whether the Tax Court took the legal fictions in Rev. Proc. 99-32 too far. That issue lurks beneath this definitional dispute: That the accounts receivable are deemed to have arisen during the testing period does not settle whether those accounts were “indebtedness” during the testing period.
BMC then turns to the closing agreement, which makes no mention of section 965 or the term “indebtedness.” BMC therefore relies on the legal principle that closing agreements must be construed to bind the parties “only to the matters expressly agreed upon.” BMC also addresses the Commissioner’s other arguments based on the closing agreement.
Finally, BMC makes a strong policy argument against the result in the Tax Court. BMC observes that the Commissioner concedes that the clear purpose of the related-party-indebtedness rule in section 965 is that it is meant to ensure “that a dividend funded by a U.S. shareholder, directly or indirectly, and that does not create a net repatriation of funds, is ineligible for the benefits” of section 965. Of course, no taxpayer could fund a dividend by way of deemed accounts receivable created after the dividend was paid. Therefore, BMC concludes, the case does not implicate the underlying purpose of the related-party-indebtedness rule under section 965.
We will provide updates once oral arguments are scheduled.
BMC Software – Taxpayer’s reply brief
Commissioner’s Brief filed in BMC Software
April 4, 2014
The Commissioner filed his brief in the BMC Software case last week. The brief hews closely to the Tax Court’s decision below. The brief primarily relies on the parties’ closing agreement and trumpets the finality of that agreement.
The Commissioner argues that BMC’s problem is of BMC’s own making—BMC chose to avail itself of the relief available under Rev. Proc. 99-32 and signed a closing agreement under which the accounts receivable were deemed established during the relevant testing period for the related-party indebtedness rule under section 965. And as if to suggest that BMC deserves the reduction in its section 965 deduction, the Commissioner repeatedly asserts that the underlying adjustments that precipitated BMC’s use of Rev. Proc. 99-32 resulted from BMC’s “aggressive” transfer-pricing strategies.
The Commissioner briefly addresses BMC’s primary argument on appeal, which is that the relevant definition of “indebtedness” for purposes of section 965 is the definition established in case law and not—as the Tax Court had found below—the Black’s Law definition. The Commissioner’s brief argues that most of the cases on which BMC relies for a definition of “debt” are inapplicable because they arise in the context of debt-equity disputes or other settlements where the Commissioner was challenging the taxpayer’s characterization of an amount as debt. According to the Commissioner’s brief, those cases address whether the underlying substance of an instrument or payment was truly debt but that “[f]actual inquiries to ascertain whether, and when, debt was created by the parties’ dealings are irrelevant here.”
The brief also addresses BMC’s arguments that the Tax Court misinterpreted the closing agreement. The Commissioner argues that parol evidence is irrelevant because the agreement is unambiguous and that in any event, the extrinsic evidence does not support BMC’s position.
BMC’s reply brief is due April 28.
BMC Software – Commissioner’s brief
Briefing Underway in Barnes as Second Circuit Considers Application of Step-Transaction Doctrine to Impose Dividend Treatment on Movement of Foreign Cash
February 21, 2014
In Barnes Group v. Commissioner, the Tax Court (Goeke, J.) looked askance at the taxpayer’s strategy for minimizing the tax consequences of a movement of foreign cash to U.S. affiliates. As the taxpayer explained it, its foreign subsidiary in Singapore had excess cash and borrowing capacity that Barnes wanted to use to finance international acquisitions. For the time being, however, there was no suitable acquisition target, and the cash was earning only 3% in short-term deposit accounts while it could have been used more profitably in the U.S. to reduce Barnes’s expensive long-term debt. Barnes hired PricewaterhouseCoopers to help it develop an approach to allow the foreign cash to be used in the U.S. without incurring the adverse U.S. tax consequences of a direct loan or distribution to the U.S. parent.
The resulting “reinvestment plan” involved the creation of two new subsidiaries, one in Bermuda and one in Delaware, and two successive contributions of cash in section 351 exchanges – first from Singapore to Bermuda and second from Bermuda to Delaware. The Delaware subsidiary then loaned the cash to Barnes. Feel free to examine the opinion linked below for the details of the transaction, but suffice it to say here that a linchpin of the tax planning was reliance on Rev. Rul. 74-503, which concluded that when two corporations exchange their own stock under circumstances similar to the section 351 exchange between the Bermuda and Delaware subsidiaries, they take a zero basis in the stock received. (Rev. Rul. 74-503 was revoked by Rev. Rul. 2006-2, but the earlier ruling is still relevant in this case because Rev. Rul. 2006-2 is prospective and provides that the IRS will not challenge positions already taken by a taxpayer that reasonably relied on Rev. Rul. 74-503.) Although Bermuda’s ownership of stock in its Delaware affiliate was an investment in U.S. property under section 956 and therefore would typically result in adverse U.S. tax consequences similar to a distribution, Barnes argued that Bermuda’s basis was zero and therefore that its section 956 inclusion should be zero.
The Tax Court disagreed, holding that the U.S. tax consequences of the transaction were different from those anticipated by Barnes. The court first determined that Rev. Rul. 74-503 did not preclude the IRS from challenging the taxpayer’s position, giving two reasons. First, the court briefly stated that, because it believed that “the substance of the reinvestment plan was a dividend from [Singapore] to Barnes” (as it would explain later in the opinion), the court did not “respect the form of the reinvestment plan” and therefore the ruling was irrelevant. Second, the court said that the ruling was irrelevant in any event because of the “substantial factual differences” between the ruling and this case. The court acknowledged that the section 351 exchanges, “considered alone, do have factual similarities to the revenue ruling,” but noted that they also were different in that they involved new subsidiaries, including a controlled foreign corporation. In addition, the Tax Court emphasized that the Barnes transaction was more complex than the one described in the ruling and listed seven “vast factual disparities” between the two situations. The court, however, devoted little attention to explaining why these factual differences were material to whether the principle of the ruling should apply here. Instead, the court simply recited the factual differences and then concluded that, “because the reinvestment plan far exceeded the scope of the stock-for-stock exchange addressed in Rev. Rul. 74-503,” the IRS was not precluded from challenging the taxpayer’s position.
The court then applied a step-transaction analysis to support its holding that “the substance of the reinvestment plan was a dividend” from Singapore to Barnes and should be taxed as such. According to the court, the step-transaction doctrine provides that “a particular step in a transaction is disregarded for tax purposes if the taxpayer could have achieved its objective more directly but instead included the step for no other purpose than to avoid tax liability.” The court stated that the doctrine applies if any of three tests are satisfied: (1) the binding commitment test; (2) the end result test; and (3) the interdependence test. Finding the third test to be the most appropriate, the Tax Court concluded that the various steps were “so interdependent that the legal relations created by one step would have been fruitless without completion of the later steps.” The key premise underlying that ultimate conclusion was the court’s determination that there was no “valid and independent economic or business purpose . . . served by the inclusion of Bermuda and Delaware in the reinvestment plan.” This analysis is an aggressive application of the step-transaction doctrine, taking it beyond its usual sphere, given that the steps ignored by the court were not transitory and that the characterization of the transaction as a dividend did not leave the parties in an economic position consistent with their legal rights and obligations following the actual transaction.
The court further found that Barnes did not “respect the form of the reinvestment plan” as Barnes made no interest payments to Delaware on the loan (even though interest had been accrued) and did not provide sufficient evidence that Delaware made any preferred dividend payments to Bermuda.
Finally, the court rejected the taxpayer’s contention that the reinvestment plan was intended to be a temporary structure under which the Singapore funds would ultimately be invested overseas when the right target appeared, noting that Barnes did not return any funds to Singapore.
The Tax Court also upheld the government’s imposition of a 20% accuracy-related penalty. The taxpayer raised two defenses to the penalty, arguing that its position was based on “substantial authority” and that it reasonably and in good faith relied on the PwC opinion letter. The court gave the “substantial authority” argument short shrift, simply repeating that Rev. Rul. 74-503 was “materially distinguishable” and hence should be afforded little weight. In response to the taxpayer’s additional citation of a 1972 General Counsel Memorandum, the court stated that GCMs “over 10 years old are afforded very little weight.” Given that taxpayers are generally invited to rely on the legal principles set forth in revenue rulings as precedent (see Treas. Reg. § 601.601(d)(2)(v)(d)), the court’s perfunctory dismissal of the taxpayer’s reliance on Rev. Rul. 74-503 as substantial authority – and consequent imposition of a penalty – appears fairly harsh.
With respect to reliance on the PwC opinion, the court rested its decision on its finding that Barnes and its subsidiaries did not respect the structure of the reinvestment plan by failing to pay loan interest or preferred stock dividends. In the court’s view, “by failing to respect the details of the reinvestment plan set up by PwC, . . . [the taxpayer] forfeited any defense of reliance on the opinion letter.”
The taxpayer’s opening brief contends that all of these determinations by the Tax Court are erroneous. The first and longest section of the brief criticizes the court’s step-transaction analysis and ultimate conclusion that the transactions simply amounted to a dividend from Singapore to Barnes. In the taxpayer’s view, the court’s analysis “invent[s] a new step” of a constructive dividend that “fails to account for all of the commercial realities that continue to this day for the four legally separate corporate entities.” For example, the taxpayer argues that the evidence showed that Barnes intended to repay the loans and therefore it could not be a constructive dividend. Much of this portion of the taxpayer’s brief argues that the Tax Court’s key factual findings were clearly erroneous – namely, that the two new subsidiaries lacked a non-tax business purpose; that Barnes paid no interest to Delaware; that no preferred dividends were paid; and that the reinvestment plan was not intended to be temporary.
Second, the brief argues that the government impermissibly disavowed Rev. Rul. 74-503. The taxpayer points to Rauenhorst v. Commissioner, 119 T.C. 157 (2002), for the proposition that the IRS cannot challenge the legal principles set forth in its own revenue rulings. It then argues that the factual differences identified by the Tax Court are irrelevant to the rationale for Rev. Rul. 74-503 and thus provide no basis for the government’s failure to abide by that rationale.
It will be interesting, and instructive for other cases, to see how the government deals with this point. If it is true that revenue rulings are supposed to provide guidance on legal principles on which taxpayers can rely, and if the IRS is constrained to some extent by its own rulings, it would seem apparent that merely identifying factual differences is not enough of a justification for disregarding the legal principles articulated in a revenue ruling. There are always going to be factual differences, especially when the ruling at issue contains only a brief and generic description of the facts, like Rev. Rul. 74-503. Will the government question the premise of the taxpayer’s argument in any way? Or will it accept the taxpayer’s statements about Rauenhorst and limit itself to defending the Tax Court’s position that the facts at issue are so materially different that the rationale of Rev. Rul. 74-503 cannot reasonably be applied here? Will it try to buttress the Tax Court’s reliance on the “vast factual disparities” between the two situations or will it simply focus on the argument that the tax effect of any individual step viewed in isolation is irrelevant (and therefore so is the ruling) because the transactions in substance amounted to a dividend?
Third, the taxpayer contests the court’s penalty determination. With respect to “substantial authority” the taxpayer relies primarily on the earlier discussion in the brief and maintains that it was reasonable to rely on the revenue ruling. With respect to the good faith argument, the taxpayer repeats its earlier discussion disputing the Tax Court’s finding that it did not respect the form of the transaction. It also argues that the PwC opinion, in any event, did not even address the loan and preferred dividend details on which the Tax Court rested its findings, and therefore the taxpayer’s alleged failures regarding those details do not undermine its claim of reasonable reliance on the PwC opinion. Finally, the taxpayer argues broadly that the Tax Court could not rest its good cause determination “on events that occurred after the returns were filed.”
The government’s brief is due May 15.
Barnes – Taxpayer Opening Brief
Taxpayer’s Opening Brief Filed in BMC Software
January 28, 2014
The taxpayer filed its opening brief in the Fifth Circuit appeal of BMC Software v. Commissioner. As we described in our earlier coverage, the Tax Court relied on the legal fiction that accounts receivable created pursuant to Rev. Proc. 99-32 in a 2007 closing agreement were indebtedness for earlier years (2004-06) in order to deny some of the taxpayer’s section 965 deductions. There are three main avenues of attack in the taxpayer’s brief.
First, the taxpayer argues that the Tax Court incorrectly treated those accounts receivable as “indebtedness” as that term is used in the exception to section 965 for related-party indebtedness created during the testing period. The taxpayer contends that the Tax Court looked to the Black’s Law definition of “indebtedness” when it should have looked to the tax law definition. And the taxpayer argues that the tax law definition—that “indebtedness” requires “an existing unconditional and legally enforceable obligation to pay”—does not include the fictional accounts receivable created under Rev. Proc. 99-32. The taxpayer argues that those accounts did not exist and were not legally enforceable until 2007 (after the section 965 testing period) and therefore did not constitute related-party indebtedness during the testing period for purposes of section 965.
Second, the taxpayer argues that the Tax Court was wrong to interpret the 2007 closing agreement to constitute an implicit agreement that the accounts receivable were retroactive debt for purposes of section 965. The taxpayer observes that closing agreements are strictly construed to bind the parties to only the expressly agreed terms. And the taxpayer argues that the parties did not expressly agree to treat the accounts receivable as retroactive debt for section 965 purposes. Moreover, the taxpayer argues that the Tax Court misinterpreted the express language in the agreement providing that the taxpayer’s payment of the accounts receivable “will be free of the Federal income tax consequences of the secondary adjustments that would otherwise result from the primary adjustments.” The taxpayer then makes several other arguments based on the closing agreement.
Finally, the taxpayer makes some policy-based arguments. In one of these arguments, the taxpayer contends that the Tax Court’s decision is contrary to the purpose of section 965 and the related-party-indebtedness exception because the closing agreement postdated the testing period and therefore cannot be the sort of abuse that the related-party-indebtedness exception was meant to address.
BMC Software – Taxpayer’s Opening Brief
Fifth Circuit to Address Section 965 Deduction in BMC Software Appeal
October 25, 2013
In BMC Software v. Commissioner, 141 T.C. No. 5, the Tax Court was faced with considering the effect that some legal fictions (created under a Revenue Procedure regarding transfer pricing adjustments) have on the temporary dividends-received deduction under section 965. And while both the section 965 deduction and the legal fictions under the Revenue Procedure appear to have been designed to benefit taxpayers by facilitating tax-efficient repatriations, the Tax Court eliminated that benefit for some repatriated amounts. The taxpayer has already appealed the decision (filed on September 18) to the Fifth Circuit (Case No. 13-60684), and success of that appeal may hinge in part on whether the Tax Court took the legal fictions in the Revenue Procedure too far.
First, some background on the section 965 deduction: In 2004, Congress enacted the one-time deduction to encourage the repatriation of cash from controlled foreign corporations on the belief that the repatriation would benefit of the U.S. economy. To ensure that taxpayers could not fund the repatriations from the United States (by lending funds from the U.S. to the CFC, immediately repatriating the funds as dividends, and then later treating would-be dividends as repayments of principal), Congress provided that the amount of the section 965 deduction would be reduced by any increase in related-party indebtedness during the “testing period.” The testing period begins on the earliest date a taxpayer might have been aware of the availability of the one-time deduction—October 3, 2004—and ends at the close of the tax year for which the taxpayer elects to take the section 965 deduction. Congress thus established a bright-line test that treated all increases in related-party debt during the testing period as presumptively abusive, regardless of whether the taxpayer had any intent to fund the repatriation from the United States.
BMC repatriated $721 million from a controlled foreign corporation (BSEH) and claimed the section 965 deduction for $709 million of that amount on its 2006 return. On that return, BMC claimed that there was no increase in BSEH’s related party indebtedness between October 2004 and the close of BMC’s 2006 tax year in March 2006. In the government’s view, however, this claim became untrue after the IRS reached a closing agreement with the IRS in 2007 with respect to BMC’s 2003-06 tax years.
That agreement made transfer pricing adjustments that increased BMC’s taxable income for the 2003-06 tax years. The primary adjustments were premised on the IRS’s theory that the royalties BMC paid to its CFC were too high. By making those primary adjustments and including additional amounts in income, BMC was deemed to have paid less to its CFC for tax purposes than it had actually paid.
The typical way of conforming BMC’s accounts in this circumstance is to treat the putative royalty payments (to the extent they exceeded the royalty agreed in the closing agreement) as deemed capital contributions to BSEH. If BMC were to repatriate those amounts in future, they would be treated as taxable distributions (to the extent of earnings and profits). But Rev. Proc. 99-32 permits taxpayers in this circumstance to elect to repatriate the funds tax-free by establishing accounts receivable and making intercompany payments to satisfy those accounts. The accounts receivable created under Rev. Proc. 99-32 are, of course, legal fictions—the taxpayer did not actually loan the funds to its CFC. BMC elected to use Rev. Proc. 99-32 and BSEH made the associated payments.
To give full effect to the legal fiction, Rev. Proc. 99-32 provides that each account receivable is “deemed to have been created as of the last day of the taxpayer’s taxable year for which the primary adjustment is made.” So although BMC’s accounts receivable from BSEH were not actually established until the 2007 closing agreement, those accounts receivable were deemed to have been established at the close of each of the 2003-06 tax years. Two of those years (those ending March 2005 and March 2006) fell into the testing period for BMC’s section 965 deduction. The IRS treated the accounts receivable as related-party debt and reduced BMC’s section 965 deduction by the amounts of the accounts receivable for those two years, which was about $43 million.
BMC filed a petition in Tax Court, arguing (among other things) that the statutory rules apply only to abusive arrangements and that the accounts receivable were not related-party debt under section 965(b)(3). The government conceded that BMC did not establish the accounts receivable to exploit the section 965 deduction, but argued that there is no carve-out for non-abusive transactions and the accounts receivable were indebtedness under the statute.
The court held that the statutory exclusion of related-party indebtedness from the section 965 deduction is a straightforward arithmetic formula devoid of any intent requirement or express reference to abusive transactions. The court also held that the accounts receivable fall under the plain meaning of the term “indebtedness” and therefore reduce BMC’s section 965 deduction under section 965(b)(3). So even though both the section 965 deduction and Rev. Proc. 99-32 were meant to permit taxpayers to repatriate funds with little or no U.S. tax impact, the mechanical application of section 965(b)(3) and Rev. Proc. 99-32 eliminated that benefit for $43 million that BMC repatriated as a dividend.
This does not seem like the right result. And here it seems the culprit may be the legal fiction that the accounts receivable were established during the testing period. The statute may not expressly address abusive intent, but that is because Congress chose to use the testing period in the related-party-debt rule as a blunt instrument to stamp out all potential abuses of the section 965 deduction. This anti-abuse intent is baked into the formula for determining excluded related-party debt because the opening date of the testing period coincides with the earliest that a taxpayer might have tried to create an intercompany debt to exploit the section 965 deduction. BMC did not create an intercompany debt during the testing period; the accounts receivable were not actually established until after the close of the testing period. Perhaps the court took the legal fiction that the accounts receivable were established in 2005 and 2006 one step too far. And perhaps the Fifth Circuit will address this legal fiction on appeal.
BMC Software – Tax Court Opinion
Fifth Circuit Rules for Government in Rodriguez
July 12, 2013
The Fifth Circuit has issued its opinion in Rodriguez, unanimously affirming the Tax Court in an opinion authored by Judge Prado. As forecasted in our earlier report on the oral argument (see here), the Court saw no way for the taxpayer to get around the technical obstacle that a section 951 inclusion is neither an actual dividend nor expressly denominated by Congress to be a “deemed dividend.” On the first point, the court stated that “actual dividends require a distribution by a corporation and receipt by the shareholder; there must be a change in ownership of something of value.” Hence, “Section 951 inclusions do not qualify as actual dividends because no transfer occurs.” On the second point, the court stated that the taxpayers’ “deemed dividends” argument was “unpersuasive . . . because, when Congress decides to treat certain inclusions as dividends, it explicitly states as much,” pointing to several provisions where Congress has explicitly stated that certain amounts should be treated as dividends.
The court did not express much angst over the unfairness argument made by the taxpayers — namely, that they could have obtained qualified dividend treatment through the formal declaration of a dividend had they only known that Congress was going to implement a more favorable rate for such dividends. The court recognized that fact, but did not agree that it led to a “harsh and unjust result.” To the contrary, the court said that the taxpayers had the opportunity to declare a dividend, or take other steps with the accumulated earnings, and those would have carried different tax implications. But they could not “now avoid their tax obligation simply because they regret the specific decision they made.” The court also gave short shrift to the taxpayers’ reliance on language in earlier legislative history and IRS pronouncements that described “a conceptual equivalence” between section 951 inclusions and dividend income.” The court said that these pronouncements carried little weight because the distinction between these inclusions and formal dividends “was treated loosely at the time because it did not carry tax implications” until 2003 when the preferential rate for qualified dividends was implemented.
The taxpayers have 45 days from the July 5 date of decision to seek rehearing, and 90 days to seek certiorari, though there is no reason to believe that either of those avenues for further review would prove to be fruitful.
Rodriguez – Fifth Circuit Opinion
Both Parties Questioned Extensively at Rodriguez Oral Argument
June 28, 2013
The Fifth Circuit held oral argument in the Rodriguez case before Circuit Judges DeMoss, Dennis, and Prado. As we have previously reported here and here, the issue in this case is whether the taxpayers can receive qualified dividend income treatment for amounts included in their income under section 951. Taxpayers’ counsel stated that he had three main arguments: (1) section 951 is just an anti-deferral statute, not concerned with characterizing the income as dividend or ordinary income; (2) Private Letter Rulings and other Executive Branch announcements had previously characterized section 951 inclusions as “deemed dividends”; and (3) it was unfair, akin to a penalty, to deny dividend treatment to these income inclusions when the taxpayers concededly would have received qualified dividend treatment if they had actually made the distribution that was being imputed.
The court’s questioning at first focused on challenging the taxpayers’ basic point that the section 951 inclusion is essentially indistinguishable from a dividend. The court pointed out that at best what was involved was something “similar” to a dividend, not an actual dividend, noting that there was no actual distribution. When taxpayers’ counsel argued that the Code deems other kinds of income to be dividends even in the absence of a distribution, the court rejoined that these examples were distinguishable because they involved explicit statutory language providing that the income should be treated as a dividend. The taxpayers’ argument appeared to get more traction on the fairness point. The court observed that the taxpayers probably received legal advice and ought to suffer the consequences if they failed to make a dividend distribution and instead allowed the money to stay in the CFC and be subject to section 951 inclusion. But this position appeared to soften when taxpayers’ counsel explained that this choice would not have been apparent at the relevant time because it was not until the Bush-era tax cuts were enacted (including the reduced tax rate for qualified dividends) that it made any difference whether the inclusion was treated as a dividend or not.
Government counsel was met with questions as soon as she took the podium and overall had to entertain more questions than did taxpayers’ counsel. The court initially focused on the fairness point, remarking that the taxpayers had just done what was normally done at the time (before the Bush-era tax cuts) and wondering why they ought not to get the same treatment as if they had actually distributed the dividend. Government counsel acknowledged that Congress had no specific intent to impose a penalty on people in the taxpayers’ situation, but maintained that there was no basis for giving the taxpayers the relief they seek. Congress wanted to establish a reduced rate for dividends, but this was not a dividend nor any kind of distribution; it was just imputed income. Later, government counsel emphasized that there were other respects (apart from the reduced qualified dividend rate) in which the income included under section 951 is not treated as a dividend, such as the effect on earnings and profits. In response to a question about Congress’s understanding, she argued that Congress did understand that section 951 inclusions were not being treated as dividends and chose not to change that, pointing to a bill that did not get very far that would have explicitly treated them as dividends. Before the government’s argument concluded, however, the court returned to its starting point, and government counsel conceded that the taxpayers would have received the reduced tax rate if they had just formally distributed the included amount as a dividend.
On rebuttal, the court suggested to taxpayers’ counsel that the taxpayers perhaps ought to live with the consequences of their failure to take advantage of the option of declaring a dividend. The court also confirmed that the taxpayers could not cite to any binding precedent on point, but instead relied primarily on district court decisions from other jurisdictions.
Given the relative balance in the court’s questioning, neither affirmance nor reversal would be startling. If I were to hazard a guess, however, the most likely outcome appeared to be the conclusion that the reduced rate applies to “dividends,” and section 951 inclusions, while they may be similar, are not technically “dividends” nor have they been deemed dividends by statute. If so, the taxpayers may be out of luck.
Supreme Court Rules for Taxpayer in PPL
May 20, 2013
[Note: Miller & Chevalier filed a brief in this case in support of PPL on behalf of American Electric Power Co.]
The Supreme Court this morning unanimously ruled in favor of PPL in its case involving the creditability of the U.K. Windfall tax. See our prior coverage here. The opinion was authored by Justice Thomas, with Justice Sotomayor adding a separate concurring opinion.
The Court’s opinion is fairly succinct. Viewing the government’s position as more formalistic, the Court stated that it would “apply the predominant character test [of the foreign tax credit regulations] using a commonsense approach that considers the substantive effect of the tax.” The Court stated that the regulatory test looks to “the normal manner is which a tax applies,” and “the way a foreign government characterizes its tax is not dispositive with respect to the U.S. creditability analysis.”
Applying this approach, the Court held that “the predominant character of the windfall tax is that of an excess profits tax,” which makes it creditable. By contrast, the Court found that the government’s attempt to characterize the tax as being imposed on the difference between two values was unrealistic, noting that the U.K. statute’s “conception of ‘profit-making value’ as a backward-looking analysis of historic profits is not a recognized valuation method,” but instead “is a fictitious value.” The Court agreed with PPL’s argument that the equivalency of the tax with a more typical excess profits tax could be demonstrated through an algebraic reformulation of the formula for computing the tax. The Court addressed this point in some detail, putting this opinion near or at the top of the rankings in the category of most algebraic formulas found in a single Supreme Court opinion. Declaring that it must look at “economic realities, not legal abstractions,” the Court concluded that it must “follow substance over form and recognize that the windfall tax is nothing more than a tax on actual profits above a threshold.”
Justice Sotomayor’s separate concurring opinion focused on an issue that featured prominently in the oral argument (see our report here) — namely, how the analysis is affected by the way the tax applied to a few “outlier” taxpayers who did not operate for the full four-year period governed by the tax. Echoing the position taken in an amicus brief filed by a group of law school professors, Justice Sotomayor stated that the treatment of these outliers indicated that “the windfall tax is really a tax on average profits” and ought to be viewed as a tax on a company’s value, not net income. Justice Sotomayor acknowledged, however, that her position “cannot get off the ground” unless the Tax Court was wrong in stating in Exxon Corp. v. Commissioner, 113 T.C. 338, 352 (1999), that “a tax only needs to be an income tax for ‘a substantial number of taxpayers’ and does not have to ‘satisfy the predominant character test in its application to all taxpayers.'” Since the government indicated at oral argument that it did not disagree with the Tax Court on that point, Justice Sotomayor concluded that she should not base her analysis of the case on her “outlier” argument and instead would join the Court’s opinion. Interestingly, Justice Kagan did not join the concurrence even though she was the Justice who appeared at the oral argument to advocate most strongly for the “outlier argument” made in the amicus brief.
For its part, the majority briefly noted this argument in a footnote at the end of its opinion, and stated that it would “express no view on its merits” since the government had not preserved the argument. Notwithstanding that disclaimer, the body of the Court’s opinion provides ammunition for persons who might wish to oppose Justice Sotomayor’s position in future cases. The Court stated that the predominant character test means that “a foreign tax that operates as an income, war profits, or excess profits tax in most instances is creditable, even if it may affect a handful of taxpayers differently.” Another item in the opinion that could find its way into briefs in future foreign tax credit cases is the Court’s observation that the 1983 regulation at issue “codifies longstanding doctrine dating back to Biddle v. Commissioner, 302 U.S. 573, 578-79 (1938).” In its court of appeals briefing in PPL, the government had denigrated the relevance of pre-regulation case law, stating that the regulations merely “incorporate certain general standards from those cases,” and arguing that PPL “cannot rely on pre-regulation case law—to the exclusion of the specific regulatory test—to make its case.” The Court’s opinion will lend support to litigants who want to rely on pre-regulation case law in future foreign tax credit cases.
The Court’s opinion in PPL effectively resolves the Entergy case as well. As we have reported, the government filed a protective petition for certiorari in Entergy, but it has never suggested that PPL and Entergy should be decided differently. Thus, in the near future, probably next Tuesday, the Court can be expected to issue an order denying that certiorari petition and thereby finalizing Entergy’s victory in the Fifth Circuit.
When Characterizing Golfer’s Endorsement Income, Image Matters
May 7, 2013
As a follow-up to our posts on the Goosen case regarding sourcing of a golfer’s income from sponsors (see here), we provide this update on the case involving golfer Sergio Garcia. While they were not technically related cases, the significant overlap in issues and facts—not to mention witness testimony—meant that the outcome in Goosen partially determined the outcome in Garcia.
Both cases involved the character of the golfers’ endorsement income. Coincidentally, the golfers each had an endorsement contract with the same brand—TaylorMade. The golfers both argued that the lion’s share of the endorsement income was royalty income (i.e., paid for the use of the golfer’s name and likeness) and not personal services income (which is typically subject to a higher tax rate than royalties because of tax treaties).
Garcia had sold the rights to his image to a Swiss corporation (of which Garcia owned 99.5%) that in turn assigned the rights to a Delaware LLC (of which Garcia owned 99.8%). Garcia’s amended endorsement agreement assigned 85% of the contract payments to the LLC as payments for the use of his image rights. So Garcia argued that at least 85% of the endorsement payments were royalty income by virtue of the terms of the endorsement agreement. The Service originally argued that none of endorsement payments were royalty income and that all of the payments were for personal services. But the Service later tempered its position and argued that the “vast majority” of payments were for personal services.
Thanks to some testimony by the TaylorMade CEO that undermined the allocation in the agreement, the Tax Court declined to follow the 85/15 allocation in the amended endorsement agreement. But the Tax Court also rejected the Service’s argument that the “vast majority” of payments were for personal services. And the Tax Court determined that a 50/50 split was unwarranted.
In rejecting the 50/50 split, the Court tied the outcome in Garcia directly to the outcome in Goosen. As we wrote before, the Court opted for a 50/50 split between royalties and personal services for Goosen’s endorsement income. But expert testimony in Goosen contrasted Goosen’s endorsement income with Garcia’s. The expert in Goosen (Jim Baugh, formerly of Wilson Sporting Goods) had testified that, while Goosen had better on-course results than Garcia, Garcia had a bigger endorsement deal because of Garcia’s “flash, looks and maverick personality.” Consequently, the Court found that Garcia’s endorsement agreement “was more heavily weighted toward image rights than Mr. Goosen’s” and decided on a royalty/personal services split of 65/35.
The Tax Court also rejected the Service’s argument that Garcia’s royalty income was taxable in the U.S. under the U.S.-Swiss treaty. Perhaps the IRS will appeal that legal issue. Will Garcia appeal? The Tax Court’s decision is a victory for Garcia relative to the outcome in Goosen. On the other hand, if Garcia’s brand hinges on his “maverick personality,” then perhaps the “maverick” thing to do is to roll the dice with an appeal. Decision has not yet been entered under Rule 155, so we will wait to see whether there is an appeal.
Justices Explore a Variety of Topics in PPL Oral Argument
February 25, 2013
[Note: Miller & Chevalier filed a brief in this case in support of PPL on behalf of American Electric Power Co.]
Seven Justices (all but Justices Thomas and Alito) asked questions in the oral argument in PPL on February 20, but they did not obviously coalesce around any particular view of the case. Even in cases where the questioning can be more neatly categorized, it is always hazardous to try to predict the outcome based on the questioning at oral argument. At this point, the parties’ work is done, and they are reduced to waiting for a decision, which is likely to come down in May or June — certainly no later than the end of June.
Former Solicitor General Paul Clement argued first on behalf of PPL. Justice Sotomayor began the questioning of Mr. Clement and asked him the most questions. She pressed him on why the tax could not be regarded as a tax on value. She also expressed “fear” over what she saw as the breadth of the taxpayer’s position, characterizing PPL as seeking a rule that a tax is creditable “anytime a tax uses estimates of profits.” Mr. Clement responded that this “emphatically” was not the taxpayer’s position, explaining that normal valuation is prospective and hence taxes that use future estimates for valuation will always fail the realization requirement for creditability. In response to Justice Sotomayor’s suggestion that using actual profits was a reasonable way to “find the original flotation value,” Mr. Clement responded that “you would never do that in any normal valuation” because “the first rule of thumb” for those kinds of historical valuations “is to avoid hindsight bias.”
Several other Justices also asked questions of Mr. Clement, focusing on different issues of interest to them. Justice Kennedy asked a series of questions exploring the significance of the tax being labeled as a tax on value, or reasonably viewed in part as “a tax on low value,” notwithstanding that it is also logically seen as a tax on profits. Mr. Clement responded that the substance of the tax is “exactly like a U.S. excess profits tax” but did not “look at a normal rubric of value” because “the only measure of value here is by looking at retrospective earnings over a 4-year period.” Justice Ginsburg asked whether there were other examples of taxes like the U.K. Windfall Tax. Justice Breyer asked a series of questions exploring the operation and rationale of the tax as it applied to companies that had not been in operation for the full four-year period in which historical profits were measured. Mr. Clement stated that even these companies did not pay an amount of tax that exceeded their profits and, moreover, that creditability is to be determined by the “normal circumstances in which it applies,” not by the outliers.
One perhaps surprising aspect of the argument was the attention paid to the amicus brief filed by a group of law professors. Justice Kagan’s extensive questioning of Mr. Clement focused on an argument introduced by that amicus brief – namely, that the tax should not be treated as an income tax because of the way it treats the “short-period” outliers by looking to their average profits, not total profits, in determining the amount of the taxable “windfall” received. Specifically, the tax rate on those few companies who did not operate for the entire four-year period was higher than for the vast majority of the companies. Mr. Clement noted that the reason for this was because the taxing authorities “were trying to capture the excess profits during a period in which there is a particular regulatory environment” conducive to excess profits; for the short-period taxpayers the way to do this was to “hit them with a reasonably tough tax in year one but year two, three, and four they were in a favorable regulatory environment and they get no tax at all.” (Justice Breyer later stated that, “because time periods vary, rates will vary, but I don’t know that that matters for an income tax.”) Mr. Clement also emphasized here, as he did later to Justice Breyer, that the outlier case does not control creditability, which is determined based on the normal circumstances in which the tax applies. The amicus brief was also mentioned briefly by Justice Sotomayor.
After Assistant to the Solicitor General Ann O’Connell took the podium, Chief Justice Roberts engaged her on the amicus brief as well, pointing out that the argument discussed by Justice Kagan was “not an argument that you’ve made.” When Ms. O’Connell agreed, but pointed to the amicus brief, the Chief Justice remarked that “I don’t think we should do a better job of getting money from people than the IRS does.” In response to Justice Sotomayor, Ms. O’Connell sought to clarify the government’s position by distinguishing between two different points made in the amicus brief. With respect to the “aspect of the amicus brief that says if it’s bad for one, it’s bad for all,” that is not the government’s position; the government agrees with PPL that outliers do not control credibility. But with respect to the argument of the amicus that Justice Kagan had discussed in connection with the outliers – namely, that “it taxes average profits, not total profits” – Ms. O’Connell maintained that she was not saying that the argument was wrong, only that the government’s “principal argument” was that the predominant character of the tax “is not an income tax because of the way that it applies to everybody else.” Justice Kagan took the opportunity to state that she believed the argument developed in the amicus that had formed the basis for her questioning was “the right argument.”
Apart from the amicus brief discussion, Ms. O’Connell was questioned by Justices Scalia and Breyer on whether true valuations are based on historical profits, rather than direct market evidence of value. She responded that this was a good way to determine the value of the companies at the time of flotation. In response to questioning from the Chief Justice about how to treat a tax laid on income, Ms. O’Connell stated that a tax just “based on last year’s income” would be an income tax regardless of its label, but if the income were multiplied by a price/earnings ratio, it would be a tax on value. The topic of deference also made a brief appearance, with Justice Breyer suggesting that deference might be owed to the experts at the Tax Court and Justice Ginsburg wondering whether deference was owed to the government’s interpretation of its own regulations. The Chief Justice responded to the latter point by remarking that there did not appear to be a major dispute about the meaning of the regulatory language and hence that sort of deference “does not seem to move the ball much.”
Justice Breyer chimed in with a detailed discussion of the mechanics of the tax, suggesting that this indicated that the “heart of the equation in determining this so-called present value is nothing other than taking average income over the four-year period.” Ms. O’Connell disagreed, and after considerable back-and-forth, Justice Breyer remarked that he had “said enough” and he would go back and study the transcript to decide who was right.
Towards the end of the argument, Justice Ginsburg asked whether the regulation could be changed “so it wouldn’t happen again” if the taxpayer prevailed. Ms. O’Connell said that perhaps it could be made “even more clear than it already is,” but Justice Breyer wondered why it should be changed to make American companies “in borderline cases have to pay tax on the same income twice.” Ms. O’Connell disputed that characterization, stating that the taxpayer did get a foreign tax credit for payments it made of the standard British income tax and it would still get a deduction for the U.K. Windfall Tax payments if the government prevailed. Ms. O’Connell closed her argument by stating that the tax was “written as a valuation formula, and it’s not just written that way, but that’s the substance of what it’s trying to do.”
Briefing Complete in PPL
February 13, 2013
[Note: Miller & Chevalier filed an amicus brief in this case on behalf of American Electric Power Co. in support of PPL.]
PPL has filed its reply brief in the Supreme Court, thus completing the briefing. The brief responds at length to the government’s contention that the U.K. Windfall Tax should be viewed as a tax on value because it assertedly resembles “familiar” and “well-established” methods of measuring value. In fact, the reply brief maintains, the tax “is a tax on value in name only.” The reply brief observes that the tax involves “a backward-looking calculation driven entirely by actual, realized profits” and that it is “imposed on the income-generating companies themselves,” rather than on “the holder of the valuable asset.” The reply brief then states that the rest of the government’s arguments “all depend on the flawed premise that form trumps substance when it comes to the base of a foreign tax.” The difficulties with that premise were addressed extensively in PPL’s opening brief and are further addressed in the reply brief.
Oral argument is set for February 20.
PPL – Taxpayer’s Supreme Court Reply Brief
Amicus Brief Filed in Support of the Government in PPL
February 3, 2013
[Note: Miller & Chevalier filed amicus briefs in this case on behalf of American Electric Power Co. in support of PPL in both the Third Circuit and the Supreme Court.]
A group of legal academics, led by Professor Michael Graetz of Columbia who authored the brief, has filed an amicus brief in PPL in support of the government. The brief argues that the UK tax should be treated as a tax on value, in line with the labels attached to it by Parliament, because it “was designed to redress both undervaluation at privatization . . . and subsequent lax regulation.” Maintaining that adopting PPL’s position “would open the door to claims of foreign tax credits for foreign levies based on value, not income,” the brief advances a somewhat creative policy rationale for affirming the Third Circuit that goes beyond anything argued by the government. Taking a perhaps unduly optimistic view of the political process, the brief claims that a reversal by the Supreme Court “would provide a road map to foreign governments, encouraging them to shift the costs of privatization to U.S. taxpayers by initially undervaluing public assets and companies sold to private interests and subsequently imposing a retroactive levy to compensate for the previous undervaluation.”
Although he has spent most of his career in academia (serving stints at Treasury from 1969-72 and 1990-92), Professor Graetz is not without Supreme Court experience. He briefed and argued Hernandez v. Commissioner, 490 U.S 680 (1989) on behalf of the taxpayer, arguing (unsuccessfully) for the position that adherents of the Church of Scientology were entitled to a charitable contribution deduction for payments made to the Church for “auditing” and “training” services.
Also linked below is the amicus brief filed by Patrick Smith, et al., which was noted in an earlier post, but was not available in an electronic version at the time.
PPL – Supreme Court Amicus Brief of Law Professors in Support of the Government
PPL – Supreme Court Amicus Brief of Patrick Smith, et al. in Support of PPL
Government Brief Filed in PPL
January 15, 2013
[Note: Miller & Chevalier filed amicus briefs in this case on behalf of American Electric Power Co. in support of PPL in both the Third Circuit and the Supreme Court.]
The government has filed its response brief in the Supreme Court in PPL. The arguments in the brief do not closely track the analysis of the Third Circuit’s opinion. Indeed, the government pointedly distances itself from the Third Circuit’s heavy reliance on Treas. Reg. § 1.901-2(b)(3)(ii), Ex. 3. The Third Circuit had suggested that PPL’s position was foreclosed by Example 3, but the government’s Supreme Court brief suggests only that the example provides a “useful analogy,” while acknowledging that “the example is not directly applicable because it analyzes imputed gross receipts rather than actual gross receipts.” [See our prior observations on Example 3 here.]
Instead, the government’s brief asks the Supreme Court to accept the characterization of the U.K. Windfall Tax as “a tax on value,” rather than an income tax. According to the government, “[t]hat is so both because the U.K. government wrote it as a tax on value and because a company’s windfall tax liability is determined pursuant to a method of valuing property that is familiar to U.S. tax law,” where “it is common to calculate the value of property by taking into account the property’s ability to generate income.” The brief stops short of declaring that the label attached to the tax by Parliament is “determinative,” but asserts that “the ‘labels’ and ‘form’ that a foreign government uses to formulate a tax are relevant.”
PPL’s reply brief is due February 13, with oral argument scheduled for February 20.
PPL- Supreme Court Brief for the Commissioner
Supreme Court Briefing Underway in PPL
January 4, 2013
[Note: Miller & Chevalier filed amicus briefs in this case on behalf of American Electric Power Co. in both the Third Circuit and the Supreme Court.]
The taxpayer has filed its opening brief in the Supreme Court in PPL Corp. v. Commissioner, No. 12-43, a foreign tax credit case that we have covered extensively on its journey to the Court. PPL’s brief heavily criticizes the formalism of the government’s position, stating that “the Commissioner would have the labels and form a foreign country employs, and not the substance of the tax it imposes, determine how the tax should be treated for purposes of U.S. tax law.” Once that formalistic approach is rejected, PPL argues, this becomes an “easy case” because “[t]here is no real dispute that the U.K. windfall tax is, in substance, an excess profits tax in the U.S. sense.”
Two other companies with current disputes regarding the creditability of the U.K windfall tax — Entergy Corp. and American Electric Power Co. — filed amicus briefs in support of PPL. The Entergy brief contains a detailed description of how the U.K. windfall tax came to be enacted in its particular form, and it states that the Third Circuit decision “disregards the real operation of the tax at issue.” The AEP brief contains a detailed description of the prior administrative treatment of excess profits taxes and argues that the operation and effect of the U.K. windfall tax is akin to that of a traditional U.S. excess profits tax that has always been regarded as creditable.
Another amicus brief was filed by the Southeastern Legal Foundation, the Chamber of Commerce, the Cato Institute, and the Goldwater Institute. That brief criticizes the government’s position as “opportunistic and inconsistent with the government’s usual emphasis on substance over form.” Patrick Smith also filed an amicus brief focusing on the operation of the regulations.
The government’s brief in response is due January 14. Oral argument has been scheduled for February 20.
PPL – Supreme Court opening brief for PPL
PPL – Supreme Court Amicus Brief of American Electric Power Co.
PPL – Supreme Court Entergy Amicus Brief
PPL – Supreme Court Amicus Brief of Southeastern Legal Foundation, et al.
Opening Briefs Filed in Rodriguez
November 21, 2012
The parties have now filed their opening briefs in the Fifth Circuit in Rodriguez, an appeal from the Tax Court’s decision that section 951 inclusion income is not to be taxed at the lower rate applicable to qualified dividends. See our prior report here.
As they argued in the Tax Court, the taxpayers emphasize a policy argument, stating that “Subpart F’s general purpose and mechanics should govern” and “Subpart F treats the amount included in the U.S. shareholder’s gross income essentially like a dividend.” The taxpayer also invokes substance vs. form principles and statements in the legislative history of Subpart F characterizing section 951 inclusions as deemed dividends. The taxpayers also point to GCMs, private letter rulings, and Internal Revenue Manual sections that support deemed dividend treatment.
The government’s response, like the Tax Court, focuses mostly on the text of the Code. It argues that the section 951 inclusion income is not literally a dividend; that the Code decrees that it should be treated as a dividend for other purposes but makes no such provision concerning the qualified dividend tax rate; and that there are some contexts in which section 951 inclusion income is not treated as a dividend, such as the earnings and profits calculation.
With respect to policy, the government asserts that the policy underlying enactment of the favorable tax rate for qualified dividends was to provide “an incentive for corporations to distribute their earnings to shareholders instead of retaining them.” Accordingly, the government argues, it does not advance that policy to provide the preferential tax rate in a situation where the corporation did not distribute the earnings.
Finally, the government urges the court to ignore the taxpayers’ argument that the IRS had previously treated section 951 inclusions as dividends in prior pronouncements. It states that those pronouncements did not specifically address the preferential tax rate question at issue here and that they are not the kind of IRS pronouncements that can be cited as authoritative precedent. In any event, the government states, the Commissioner “may change an erroneous administrative interpretation if he determines that such a position is incorrect.”
Rodriguez – Taxpayers’ Opening Brief
Rodriguez – Government’s Response Brief
Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Foreign Tax Credit Issue in PPL
October 29, 2012
The Supreme Court this morning granted PPL’s petition for certiorari and will decide the question of the availability of the foreign tax credit for payments of the U.K. Windfall Tax on which we have reported extensively before. See here and here. The Court took no action on the government’s petition for certiorari in the companion Entergy case from the Fifth Circuit. That is a common practice for the Court when two cases present the same issue. The Court will “hold” (that is, continue to take no action on it) the Entergy petition until it issues a decision in PPL, and then it will dispose of the Entergy petition as appropriate in light of the PPL decision.
PPL’s brief is due December 13. The case likely will be argued in February or March, and a decision can be expected before the end of June.
(In case you are wondering why the Court is issuing orders on a day when the rest of Washington is shut down because of a hurricane, it is something of a Court tradition to stay open when the rest of the government is closed. In 1996, the Court heard oral arguments (as it is also doing today) on a day when the city was hit with a paralyzing blizzard. The Court sent out four-wheel drive vehicles to bring the Justices to the Court.)
Supreme Court Expected to Act on Windfall Tax Petitions in Late October
October 4, 2012
In our previous post discussing the pending requests for Supreme Court review of the question of the creditability of the U.K. Windfall Tax, we noted that the Court had scheduled consideration of the PPL cert petition for its October 5 conference. The Court has now postponed that consideration until its October 26 conference. The reason for the change is to allow the Court to consider the PPL petition in tandem with the government’s petition in Entergy.
This postponement allows the Court to consider the issue with the benefit of an adversarial presentation. As you will recall, the government “acquiesced” in PPL’s cert petition on the theory that the Court should resolve the circuit conflict, and therefore there are no briefs in that case arguing that the Court should deny certiorari. The same is not true in Entergy, where the taxpayer vigorously argues that the Court should deny certiorari in both cases because the issue is not sufficiently significant to warrant Supreme Court review. Entergy notes that there are only three taxpayers directly affected by the Windfall Tax issue and asserts that the Third Circuit and Fifth Circuit, though reaching different outcomes on the specific issue, do not disagree “on matters of fundamental principle” regarding the foreign tax credit provisions. Rather, Entergy characterizes the circuit conflict as reflecting “an exceedingly narrow and technical disagreement” limited to how those principles should apply to the U.K. Windfall Tax. In its reply brief, the government acknowledges that there are only three directly affected taxpayers, but argues that there is a difference between the two circuits on the “proper analytical approach” to foreign tax credit issues that could potentially lead to disparate results in cases involving other foreign taxes.
As a result of the schedule change, the Court will likely announce whether it will review the issue on its October 29 order list. It is possible, if certiorari is granted, that the Court would make that announcement on October 26 in order to give the parties a head start on the briefing.
Entergy – Taxpayer’s Brief in Opposition to Certiorari
Entergy – Government Reply Brief in Support of Certiorari
Government Urges Supreme Court to Consider Foreign Tax Credit Issue
September 5, 2012
As previously reported here a few weeks ago, PPL filed a petition for certiorari asking the Supreme Court to review the Third Circuit’s decision denying a foreign tax credit for U.K. Windfall Tax payments. Given that the Fifth Circuit had decided the same issue in the opposite way in the Entergy case, there was a significant possibility that the government would not oppose certiorari, but instead would urge the Court to resolve the circuit conflict.
The government has now decided that its interests in resolving the conflict and potentially securing a reversal in Entergy outweigh its interest in preserving its victory in PPL, and accordingly it has filed an “acquiescence” in PPL urging the Court to hear the case. In that brief, the Solicitor General makes his case for why he believes PPL was correctly decided and also for why the issue is sufficiently important to justify Supreme Court review.
On the first point, the government’s brief rejects the characterization of the U.K. Windfall Tax as an “excess profits” tax. Instead, the government says, it is “a tax on the difference between the price at which each company was sold at flotation and the price at which it should have been sold, based on its ability to generate income.”
On the latter point, the government acknowledges both that the “specific question presented in this case is . . . unlikely to recur or to have significance for a large number of U.S. taxpayers” and that, “[b]y their nature, issues regarding the regulatory tests set forth in 26 C.F.R. 1.901-2(b) will necessarily arise in cases involving specific foreign tax laws that are unlikely to affect a large number of Americans.” But the government concludes that, “[n]evertheless, this Court’s guidance on the correct analytical approach for evaluating foreign taxes under Section 901 and the Treasury regulation may have significant administrative importance beyond the specific foreign tax law at issue here” and that the interest in uniform enforcement of the tax laws further justifies Supreme Court review.
Concurrent with its filing in PPL, the government filed a “protective” petition for certiorari in Entergy. In accordance with the Solicitor General’s common practice in situations where two different cases present the same issue, that document does not ask the Court to take immediate action. Instead, it asks the Court to hold the petition and to dispose of it as appropriate in light of the final disposition of the PPL case. The Court is likely to follow that advice, which means that if the PPL petition is denied, or if the decision is overturned, the Court will just deny the Entergy petition. If the PPL decision is affirmed, the Court would then grant the Entergy petition, vacate the Fifth Circuit’s decision, and remand the case for reconsideration in light of the Court’s intervening decision in PPL.
But that is getting ahead of things. First, the Court must decide whether to hear the issue at all. It has no obligation to do so, even though both parties recommend certiorari. Presumably, the Justices have not been dreaming about the opportunity to wade through the foreign tax credit regulations, and their inherent interest (or lack thereof) in the subject matter could tip the balance if they believe the question of importance of Supreme Court review is a close call.
The PPL petition is scheduled to be considered at the Court’s October 5 conference. An announcement of whether certiorari will be granted will most likely issue either on that date or on October 9.
PPL – Government Brief Acquiescing in Certiorari
Entergy – Government Petition for Certiorari
Fifth Circuit to Consider Whether Section 951 Inclusions Are Qualified Dividends
August 6, 2012
The taxpayers have appealed to the Fifth Circuit from the Tax Court’s decision in Rodriguez v. Commissioner, No. 13909-08 (Dec. 7, 2011), which rejected qualified dividend treatment for certain amounts included in their income pursuant to Code Section 951. In 2003, Congress established a preferential tax rate for “qualified dividend income,” which includes dividends received from a qualified foreign corporation. Separately, section 951 contains provisions designed to limit tax deferrals by a “controlled foreign corporation” (CFC). Section 951 requires a taxpayer to include in income earnings of a CFC that are derived from investments in U.S real estate. The taxpayers in this case included such earnings in their income but sought to have them taxed at the favorable qualified dividend rate. In a comprehensive opinion, the Tax Court held that they were not “dividends” and hence should be taxed as ordinary income.
The taxpayers’ position was largely policy-based, arguing that the effect of the income inclusion was similar to that of a dividend, but their argument lacked strong direct support in the statutory text. As the Tax Court noted, legislative history and case law had described the section 951 inclusions as substantially equivalent to receiving dividends. See, e.g., Gulf Oil Corp. v. Commissioner, 87 T.C. 548, 571 (1986) (“Subpart F treats the amount of the increased investment much like a constructive dividend to the U.S. shareholders”). But the Tax Court concluded that this similarity did not resolve the case, observing that “to say that section 951 treats a CFC’s investments in U.S. property ‘much like’ a constructive dividend is a far cry from saying that such amounts actually constitute dividends.”
Instead, the Tax Court focused on a textual analysis. First, the court said that the section 951 inclusion did not meet the statutory definition of a dividend (Code section 316(a)) because there was no “distribution” by the corporation; a distribution cannot occur unless there is a “change in ownership of corporate property.” The court noted that the Code expressly provides that section 951 inclusions should be treated as a dividend for certain other purposes, but there is no such express provision for qualified dividend rates. See I.R.C. §§ 851(b), 904(d)(3)(G), 960(a)(1). The court also pointed to several provisions directing that other kinds of non-dividend income, such as redemptions and undistributed foreign personal holding company income, should be treated as dividends. See, e.g., I.R.C. §§ 302(a), 551(b). Given these examples of explicit dividend treatment elsewhere in the Code, the Tax Court concluded that the lack of an explicit textual basis for dividend treatment was a fatal flaw in the taxpayers’ position.
The Tax Court acknowledged that the taxpayers’ position drew support from the original 1962 Senate Report, which explained that, under Subpart F, “earnings brought back to the United States are taxed to the shareholders on the grounds that this is substantially the equivalent of a dividend being paid to them.” S. Rep. No. 1881, 87th Cong., 2d Sess. 794 (1962). But the court found that this sentence was not controlling, pointing to other ways in which treatment of section 951 inclusions differs from dividends (for example, effect on earnings and profits). The court added that affording qualified dividend treatment would not advance the stated legislative purpose for the preferential interest rate.
The impact of this decision is not necessarily confined to the context of qualified dividends. Rather, its reasoning seems applicable to other contexts in which one might argue that section 951 inclusions should be treated as dividends, but where there is no explicit provision to that effect. And the shoe might be on the other foot. For example, the new health care surtax on investment income for taxpayers earning more than $250,000 defines “net investment income” as including “income from interest, dividends, annuities, royalties, and rents.” I.R.C. § 1411(c)(1)(A)(i). If the IRS would like to impose the surtax on section 951 inclusion income, its victory in Rodriguez would appear to pose an obstacle to that position.
Supreme Court Asked to Resolve Circuit Split on Foreign Tax Creditability of U.K. Windfall Tax
August 1, 2012
[Note: Miller & Chevalier filed an amicus brief on behalf of American Electric Power in the PPL case.]
We have fallen behind in updating the progress of the litigation concerning the creditability of the U.K. Windfall Tax that was imposed on British utilities in the 1990s. As we previously reported, the Tax Court held in two companion cases that this tax was equivalent to an income tax in the U.S. sense of the term and hence creditable. The government took two appeals — to the Third Circuit in PPL and to the Fifth Circuit in Entergy. Those courts reached opposite conclusions, and PPL has now asked the Supreme Court to grant certiorari to resolve the conflict. (See here and here for previous posts on the parties’ briefing in these cases.)
The Third Circuit was first to rule, in December 2011, and it rejected the Tax Court’s decision in an opinion that rested in large part on arguments not made in the government’s brief. The Third Circuit focused heavily on the details of the three-part test set forth in the regulations, stating that, in focusing on the “predominant character” language in those regulations, the Tax Court had erroneously suggested that the regulation “appl[y] a ‘predominant character standard’ independent of the three requirements.” In that connection, the Third Circuit dismissed the relevance of case law that predated those regulations, notwithstanding language in the preamble indicating that Treasury did not intend to depart from that prior case law. The Third Circuit also criticized PPL’s position that the “flotation value” component of the calculation was not relevant to the three-part test because it merely defined what part of the company’s profits would be taxed as “excess.” The Third Circuit did not deny that this approach would appear to prevent any “excess profits” tax from meeting the test, but it explained that “this argument merely suggests that the regulation misinterprets the statute,” and it was too late for PPL to argue that the regulation is invalid. Finally, the court surprisingly held that the Tax Court’s decision could not be squared with Treas. Reg. § 1.901-2(b)(3)(ii), Ex. 3, an example that illustrates how the gross receipts part of the regulatory test applies in a situation where the tax base is derived indirectly from a quantity that is “deemed” to reflect gross receipts. This example is of dubious relevance to the Windfall Tax, which was based on actual profits, not a “deemed” quantity; the example was not raised in the Tax Court proceedings and was mentioned only tangentially in the government’s brief.
The Fifth Circuit had heard oral argument in Entergy a couple of months before PPL was decided, but did not issue its opinion until June 2012. The Fifth Circuit stated that “the Commissioner’s assertion that we should rely exclusively, or even chiefly, on the text of the Windfall Tax” was contrary to settled case law establishing that the form of the foreign tax is not determinative. “Viewed in practical terms,” the court continued, “the Windfall Tax clearly satisfies the realization and net income requirements.” With respect to the gross receipts part of the test, the Fifth Circuit was “persuaded by the Tax Court’s astute observations as to the Windfall Tax’s predominant character” – namely, to claw back the utilities’ excess profits.
The Fifth Circuit then addressed itself directly to the Third Circuit’s PPL decision, characterizing the latter court’s reasoning as exemplifying “the form-over-substance methodology that the governing regulation and case law eschew.” The example in the regulations relied upon by the Third Circuit is “facially irrelevant,” the Fifth Circuit observed, because “[t]he Windfall Tax relies on no Example 3-type imputed amount, nor indeed on any imputation, for calculating gross receipts.” Thus, although noting that it is “always chary to create a circuit split,” the Fifth Circuit concluded that it had to disagree with the Third Circuit and find the Windfall Tax creditable.
After its petition for rehearing en banc was denied, PPL filed a petition for certiorari on July 9. The petition emphasizes the need to resolve the circuit conflict in order to achieve uniform administration of the tax law and heavily criticizes the Third Circuit for elevating the form of the tax over its substance. For its part, the government has chosen not to seek rehearing in Entergy, bringing the schedules of the cases closer together again. A petition for certiorari in Entergy is now due on September 4. The government’s response to PPL’s cert petition is currently due August 8, but a 30-day extension is likely, which would make the response due on September 7.
The position that the government decides to take in these cases is an important factor in assessing the prospects for a grant of certiorari. Most federal tax cases heard by the Supreme Court involve clear conflicts in the circuits, and it is impossible to deny the existence of such a conflict here. But the Court does not hear every tax case that involves a circuit conflict. Rather, it agrees to hear a case only when it believes that resolution of the conflict is sufficiently important, particularly to the uniform administration of the tax laws. Historically, the Court has afforded considerable deference to the government’s advice on the question of importance. As a repeat litigant at the Court, the government is very selective in asking for Supreme Court review, on the theory that if it does not ask too often, the Court is more likely to grant its requests when it really matters. And the Court does grant a high percentage (in the neighborhood of 70%) of the government’s petitions for certiorari. Thus, in deciding whether to ask the Court to resolve this conflict, the government will weigh its own interests, including estimating its prospects for success if the Court hears the case, and make a judgment about whether it views this issue as important enough to tax administration or to the government’s bottom line to justify using one of its precious “chits.”
Although one might think that the government’s monetary interests could induce it to oppose certiorari in PPL even if were to file a cert petition in Entergy, the Solicitor General’s long-term interest in maintaining credibility with the Supreme Court would trump those short-term monetary interests. Thus, there are two likely courses of action open to the government. Either it will oppose PPL’s petition and not push for Supreme Court review in Entergy or it will file a certiorari petition in Entergy and not oppose PPL’s petition. Unless there are additional extensions, we should know in early September how the government will approach the conflict. The Supreme Court will give its answer several weeks after that.
Entergy Fifth Circuit Decision
Service Appeals Goosen Tax Court Decision to D.C. Circuit
January 4, 2012
We posted in November 2011 about the Tax Court’s decision on the character and source of golfer Retief Goosen’s endorsement income. The Service appealed that decision to the D.C. Circuit in December. The D.C. Circuit case number is 11-1478. We’ll post updates as the appeal progresses.
Tax Court Addresses Character and Sourcing Issues for Golfer’s Endorsement Income
November 1, 2011
In what appears may be the first in a series of cases on the endorsement income of non-resident aliens, the Tax Court was tasked with characterizing and sourcing the endorsement income for golfer Retief Goosen. The court’s decision may impact how other athletes and entertainers structure their endorsement deals and indicates how taxpayers should expect the IRS to source royalty income in similar cases.
Goosen, a native South African who is a U.K. resident, is subject to U.S. tax because playing professional golf in the U.S. amounts to engaging in a U.S. trade or business. He had endorsement agreements with Acushnet (which makes Titleist golf balls), TaylorMade, and Izod to use or wear their products while playing golf (these are the “on-course” endorsements). He also had endorsement agreements with Rolex, Upper Deck, and Electronic Arts (the “off-course” endorsements).
There were three main issues before the Tax Court:
(1) Was Goosen’s on-course endorsement income personal services income or royalty income or some combination of the two? (The parties agreed that all of the off-course endorsement income was royalty income.) The personal services income of nonresident aliens is subject to regular U.S. tax rates; they typically owe less U.S. tax on royalty income under tax treaties.
(2) What portion of Goosen’s royalty income was U.S.-source income? Under section 872, the gross income of nonresidents includes U.S.-source income.
(3) What portion, if any, of that U.S.-source royalty income was effectively connected to a U.S. trade or business? While U.S.-source royalties are generally subject to a flat 30% withholding tax, if royalties are effectively connected to a U.S. trade or business, they are subject to the graduated rates that apply to U.S. residents.
On the first issue, Goosen argued that the on-course endorsements were paid for the use of his name and likeness, which is classic royalty income. The IRS argued that because the on-course endorsement agreements required Goosen to make personal appearances and to play in a minimum number of golf tournaments (all while using Titleist balls and TaylorMade clubs and wearing Izod), the on-course endorsements were paid for personal services. The court split the difference, deciding that the sponsors paid for both the use of Goosen’s image and likeness and for personal services.
On the one hand, the court found that the sponsors were paying for more than just Goosen’s golfing—that the sponsors wanted to be associated with Goosen’s image. The court cited the morals clause in a couple of Goosen’s endorsement agreements as evidence that the sponsorship was about more than just golfing. (This morals-clause discussion enabled the court—and, conveniently, this blog entry—to meet the requirement that anything written about golf must mention Tiger Woods.)
The court also cited expert testimony from Jim Baugh (formerly of Wilson Sporting Goods) for the proposition that image is sometimes more important than performance. Baugh testified that while Goosen has won more and consistently been ranked higher than golfer Sergio Garcia, the two have effectively identical endorsement agreements with TaylorMade. Baugh attributed this to Garcia’s “flash, looks and maverick personality.” This is notable testimony because Garcia has his own Tax Court case pending, which is set for trial in Miami in March 2012. By detailing this testimony, the court gifts Garcia with a tailor-made argument that, relative to Goosen, a greater portion of Garcia’s TaylorMade endorsement income is royalty income.
On the other hand, the court held that the endorsement income could not be solely attributable to Goosen’s image. After all, the on-course endorsements required Goosen to make personal appearances and to play in a specified number of tournaments, all while wearing or using the sponsors’ products. Acknowledging that precision in allocating between royalty and personal service income was unattainable, the court settled on a straightforward 50-50 split.
As for the second issue, the court was left to decide what portion of Goosen’s royalty income was U.S.-source income. Generally, the source of royalty income from an intangible is where the property (in this case, Goosen’s image) is used. With respect to the Upper Deck and EA endorsements, the court looked to the relative U.S.-to-worldwide sales percentages of Upper Deck’s golf cards (92% in the U.S.) and EA’s video games (70% in the U.S.) and then sourced Goosen’s royalty income accordingly. For the three on-course endorsements and the Rolex endorsement, the court determined that while Goosen was marketed worldwide, the U.S. constitutes about half of that worldwide golf market. The court therefore treated half of the income from those four endorsements as U.S.-source income.
Finally, the court had to decide whether any of that U.S.-source income was effectively connected to a U.S. trade or business. The court held that only the on-course endorsement royalty income was effectively connected to a U.S. trade or business. The court found that since the off-course endorsements didn’t require Goosen to play golf tournaments or to be physically present in the U.S., that royalty income was not effectively connected to the U.S.
The aspect of the decision that seems to have scared some practitioners (other than the existence of a worldwide market for collectible golf cards, which maybe scares only this practitioner) was how the court sourced royalty income according to the U.S.-to-worldwide sales percentages. The fear is that the IRS will simply apply those percentages in every case, and taxpayers will have no room to negotiate a more favorable allocation.
We’ll keep an eye on where this case heads and will post updates on the Sergio Garcia case.
Briefing Completed in PPL
July 7, 2011
[Note: Miller & Chevalier represents amicus curiae American Electric Power Co. in this case.]
The PPL case is now fully briefed in the Third Circuit and ready for oral argument, which has been tentatively scheduled for September 22. PPL’s response brief addresses in detail the considerable evidence presented to the Tax Court regarding the operation and effect of the U.K. windfall tax, arguing that the evidence conclusively shows that the tax operated like a typical U.S. excess profits tax and therefore should qualify for a foreign tax credit. Amerian Electric Power Co. filed an amicus curiae brief in support of PPL that focuses primarily on discussing the precedents that call for courts to consider the kind of extrinsic evidence introduced by PPL. The government’s reply brief, like the one it filed in the companion Entergy case (see here), backs away from its previous argument that the court cannot ever consider extrinsic evidence. The government maintains, however, that PPL’s evidence was not probative and that the Tax Court should have denied creditability because the UK windfall tax describes the tax as being on “value.”
PPL – Taxpayer’s Response Brief
PPL – Government’s Reply Brief
Briefing Completed in Entergy
June 14, 2011
The government has filed its reply brief in the Fifth Circuit in Entergy. (See our initial report on the case here.) The reply brief puts forth a somewhat less disapproving attitude towards the examination of extrinsic evidence in foreign tax credit cases than previously advanced, stating as follows: “The Commissioner does not contend (as he did below) that extrinsic evidence has no relevance in determining creditability under Treas. Reg. § 1.901-2(b). Rather, our argument is that it was improper for the Tax Court to supplant an analysis of the windfall-tax statute with an analysis of extrinsic evidence.”
The bottom line, however, is the same. The government maintains that the text of the U.K. Windfall Tax statute, by describing the tax using the term “value,” conclusively establishes that the tax is not an “income” tax in the U.S. sense and therefore is not creditable.
The case will now await an order from the Fifth Circuit setting a date for the oral argument, which is likely a few months away.
Entergy – Government’s Reply Brief
Government Brief Filed in PPL
May 23, 2011
The government has filed its brief in the Third Circuit in PPL. The brief is virtually identical to the brief filed a few weeks ago in the Fifth Circuit in Entergy that addresses the same issue of the creditability of the U.K. Windfall Tax under Code section 901. See our initial report here. The only significant differences are addressing PPL’s facts instead of Entergy’s and placing more weight on Third Circuit precedent instead of Fifth Circuit precedent. The essence of the government’s argument is that the section 901 determination should be based entirely on the text of the foreign statute, and therefore the Tax Court erred in considering extrinsic evidence of how the tax operates. Because the U.K. statute uses the term “profit-making value,” the government says that it is a tax on “value,” not an “income” tax, and therefore it should not be creditable.
PPL’s brief is due June 9.
PPL – Government’s Opening Brief
Taxpayer Brief Filed in Entergy
May 13, 2011
The taxpayer has filed its answering brief in Entergy defending the Tax Court’s decision that the U.K. windfall tax is a creditable tax for purposes of the foreign tax credit under Code section 901. See our original report here. According to the taxpayer, the essence of the government’s argument is that “the creditability of a foreign tax can be determined only by the literal text of the foreign tax statute, and that the consideration of any other evidence is legal error.” This position, the taxpayer argues, is rebutted by “overwhelming authority establishing that the predominant character of a foreign tax is measured by its intent and effect,” which requires resort to evidence beyond the text of the foreign statute.
The taxpayer also argues that the government has mischaracterized the Tax Court’s decision in stating that the court ignored the three-part regulatory test for creditability. Instead, the Tax Court correctly heard evidence of the intent and effect of the U.K. tax to determine its predominant character — namely, a tax on excess profits — and then applied the three-part test to that predominant character.
The government’s reply brief is due May 31.
Entergy – Taxpayer’s Answering Brief
Fifth Circuit Affirms in Container
May 3, 2011
The Fifth Circuit yesterday issued a short, unpublished opinion affirming the Tax Court’s decision in Container. As discussed in more detail in our earlier post, the issue is the sourcing of guarantee fees charged by a Mexican parent to guarantee notes issued by its U.S. subsidiary. The Fifth Circuit ruled that the issue turned to a considerable extent on the Tax Court’s factual findings concluding that the fees were payments for services, which it found were not clearly erroneous. The Fifth Circuit concluded that the Tax Court’s ultimate characterization of the fees as foreign-source income was correct because they were payments for a service that was performed in Mexico — namely, the parent’s provision of the guarantee. The government had argued that the guarantee fees were more in the nature of interest that should be sourced to the United States.
This decision is of limited significance going forward. As we previously noted, Congress has already acted to reverse the result of this case for future years by enacting legislation specifically providing that a guarantee fee paid by a U.S. company is U.S.- sourced income. And the opinion resists making broad pronouncements about sourcing analysis, largely confining the discussion to the facts of the case. Indeed, by declining to publish the opinion, the Fifth Circuit has deliberately sought to minimize its precedential value. Under Fifth Circuit Rule 47.5.4, unpublished decisions may be cited, but they “are not precedent, except under the doctrine of res judicata, collateral estoppel or law of the case.”
A petition for rehearing, should the government choose to file one, would be due on June 16.
Government Opening Brief Filed in Entergy
April 14, 2011
The government has filed its opening brief in the Fifth Circuit in Entergy, seeking reversal of the Tax Court’s holding that the U.K. windfall tax is a “creditable” tax for purposes of the U.S. foreign tax credit. See our previous report here. The government argues that the Tax Court misapplied a three-part test set forth in the regulations for determining whether a foreign tax is creditable. That test assesses whether the foreign tax has the “predominant character” of an income tax by examining whether it satisfies each of three requirements — relating to “realization,” “gross receipts,” and “net income.” According to the government, the U.K. windfall tax did not meet any of the three requirements because the tax was imposed on “value,” not realized “income,” and because gross receipts and expenses were not “components of the tax base.” The brief goes on to criticize the Tax Court for investigating the legislative purpose of the tax, rather than restricting its inquiry to the text of the statute.
The taxpayer’s brief is due May 16.
Entergy- Government’s Opening Brief
Briefing Schedules Line Up on UK Tax Creditability Issue
March 3, 2011
The Third Circuit has now issued a briefing schedule in the PPL case that makes the government’s opening brief due on April 5. This schedule should have the case marching along in fairly close parallel with Entergy, the companion case presenting the same UK tax creditability issue to the Fifth Circuit. (See our previous post here.) In Entergy, the government recently requested an extension to file its opening brief. The court granted an extension, but for less time than requested. The brief is now due April 13, after a 30-day extension. That date will likely hold, since the court has already cut back an unopposed extension request. In PPL, by contrast, it is quite possible that the government will get some additional time.
Two Circuits to Consider Creditability of U.K. Windfall Tax
February 8, 2011
We present here a guest post from our colleague Kevin Kenworthy, who has considerable experience representing taxpayers on the issue of creditable foreign taxes.
The Tax Court’s two companion decisions in PPL Corp. v. Commissioner, 135 T.C. No. 8 (Sept. 9, 2010) and Entergy v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2010-166 (Sept. 9, 2010), raise an important question concerning whether a 1997 Windfall Tax imposed by the U.K. government on previously privatized industries is a creditable income tax under U.S. rules. The cases were tried separately before Judge Halpern and addressed in companion opinions issued simultaneously that ruled for the taxpayer (with the analysis contained in the PPL opinion). The opinions are linked below. The government has now appealed these cases to the Third and Fifth Circuits respectively. (The Tax Court cases, in opinions issued a few weeks earlier, also addressed an issue concerning the appropriate recovery period for depreciation of an electric utility’s lighting assets, but it appears at this point that the government does not plan to contest that issue on appeal.)
Under section 901 of the Code and related provisions, a U.S. taxpayer can elect to credit, rather than deduct, qualifying income taxes paid to a foreign country. Only income taxes are eligible for this credit; non-income taxes can only be deducted in computing taxable income. In determining whether a foreign tax is creditable, the ultimate inquiry is whether the levy is an income tax in the U.S. sense of the term. The governing regulations provide a specific framework for assessing whether a foreign tax meets this test, including requirements that the foreign tax meet a three-part test aimed at determining whether the tax will reach net gain in the ordinary circumstances in which it applies. Treas. Reg. § 1.901-2.
The U.K. Windfall Tax is an unconventional levy in some respects, resulting in part from its unique origins in British politics. In the early 1990s, Conservative governments continued a policy of privatizing what had previously been government-owned monopolies, including regional electricity companies, through a series of public stock offerings. The privatizations were anathema to traditional Labour Party tenets. Moreover, the newly privatized entities, although they continued to be subject to price regulation, proved to be quite profitable in the years following privatization. In 1997, the new Labour government announced a tax aimed at “windfall profits” previously realized by the formerly government-owned enterprises. The tax was justified by assertions that windfall profits resulted from the prior government’s decision to sell off the companies at too low a price, compounded by its failure to subject the privatized companies to adequate regulation.
The Windfall Tax was designed as a one-time, retrospective tax imposed on the privatized utilities. The new tax was imposed on the basis of a unique formula that started with the average book profits of these enterprises over the first four years following privatization multiplied by nine, an amount characterized by the statute as the “value in profit-making terms.” Tax at a rate of 23% was then imposed on the excess of this artificial earnings multiple over the initial market capitalization (the “flotation value”) of the shares. The tax was imposed on the companies directly, rather than on the initial private shareholders, many of whom had long ago sold their shares.
The taxpayers argued that the creditability of the Windfall Tax could be established by examining the actual operation and effect of the tax. The taxpayers showed that the statutory formula could be restated algebraically to reveal that the Windfall Tax operated in almost all cases equivalently to a tax imposed at a rate of roughly 50% on profits realized over a four-year period. Based in large part on this equivalence, the taxpayers argued that the Windfall Tax was essentially an income tax and satisfied the regulatory test for creditability. The IRS countered that the creditability of the Windfall Tax could be evaluated only by reference to the statutory language and that resort to extrinsic evidence of the type offered by the taxpayers was inappropriate. Further, the IRS argued that the statute’s apparent reference to valuation principles, rather than to conventional measures of net income, leads to the conclusion that the Windfall Tax is not creditable. Drawing ample support from the regulations themselves and from prior court decisions, the Tax Court refused to limit the creditability inquiry in this manner and found the Windfall Tax to be creditable.
The government’s opening brief in Entergy is due March 14, 2011. No briefing schedule has yet been established in PPL.
Oral Argument Scheduled in Container
January 20, 2011
The Fifth Circuit has scheduled the oral argument in Container for Thursday March 3, 2011, in New Orleans. The identity of the three-judge panel will be announced at a future time.
The Curious Non-Appeal of Veritas
December 6, 2010
Veritas Software Corp. v. Commissioner, 133 T.C. No. 14 (2009) was the first cost sharing buy-in case to go to trial. The question before the court was the value to place on the transfer by Veritas to its Irish subsidiary of the right to use technical and marketing intangibles related to software development. Veritas argued that the valuation should be based on an adjusted comparable uncontrolled transaction (CUT) analysis (involving licenses of the same or similar property). The IRS argued that it should be based on an aggregate discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis that valued the hypothetical transfer of a portion of Veritas’ business to the Irish sub; i.e., an “akin to a sale” theory.
The Tax Court held for the taxpayer in substantial part. Finding that the IRS’s “akin to a sale theory was akin to a surrender,” it rejected the IRS position that the “synergies” supposedly effectuated by considering as an aggregate various finite-lived intangibles (many of which were not even transferred) caused the whole to live forever. This is Gunnery Sergeant Hartman’s valuation method:
Marines die, that’s what we’re here for. But the Marine Corps lives forever. And that means you live forever. Full Metal Jacket (1987).
Rejecting this method, the Court dismantled the IRS’s DCF valuation which, through the application of unrealistic useful lives, growth rates, and discount rates, purported to value the transfer of assets as if it was valuing the sale of a business enterprise.
The Tax Court is correct. The Gunny’s method doesn’t work in IP valuation and, although it sounds good, it doesn’t really work with respect to the Marine Corps either. The whole doesn’t become everlasting simply because of the very important, historic sacrifices made by its earlier parts. Current and future success depends on the valor (or value) of the current parts as much as, and often more than, that of the former. Showing an understanding of this principle, the Tax Court found that a significant contributor to the anticipated future success of the Irish business was old-fashioned hard work by Veritas Ireland and its foreign affiliates. Accordingly, the Court held that the taxpayer’s CUT method, with certain adjustments, properly reflected the value of the transferred intangibles based on their expected useful lives.
In the ordinary course, one would expect the IRS to appeal a decision where it believed the factual and legal conclusions were fundamentally erroneous. However, like the schoolyard bully who gets beat up by the first nerdy kid he picks on, the IRS has kept its tactics but changed its victim. The IRS declined to appeal Veritas, while setting out its plan to take someone else’s lunch money in an Action on Decision that refuses to acquiesce in the Tax Court decision and indicates that it will challenge future transactions under the same aggregate value method rejected in Veritas. The AOD states that the IRS is not appealing Veritas because the Tax Court’s decision allegedly turns on erroneous factual findings that would be difficult to overturn on appeal.
This attempt by the IRS to use an AOD to continue to harass taxpayers should fail. The Tax Court’s opinion did not conclude that the useful life of the pre-existing IP could never survive later technology developments. And it did not exclude the possibility of future product value flowing from that original IP. Rather, it rejected the view that synergies allow the IRS to turn a specific asset valuation into a global business valuation and, while they are at it, include in that valuation non-compensable goodwill and going-concern value. The “head-start” IP provides is indeed valuable, but it is properly valued as part of a specific asset and not in some “synergistic” stew of assets, goodwill, going concern value and business opportunity. (While we are at it, Hospital Corp. of America v. Commissioner, 81 T.C. 520 (1983)) did not bless the valuation of a business opportunity; it held that while proprietary systems, methods and processes are compensable, the mere business opportunity to engage in R&D is not.) IP does give competitive advantages that do not necessarily disappear in next generation product developments. However, one cannot treat an IP transfer as the segmentation and transfer of an entire living, breathing business. This ignores the transaction that happened but, more importantly, the real and substantial risks assumed by the parties in developing the future IP, risks that drive the real value of those future products, products that are but one part of the value of that continuing business. Contra Litigating Treas. Reg. § 1.482-7T.
The AOD acknowledges that “[t]he facts found by the Court materially differed from the determinations made by the Service” but does not accept the consequences. The Tax Court disagreed with the IRS’s view of “the facts” because those “facts” were entirely inconsistent with the business realities of IP transfers. If it does not believe its position merits an appeal, the IRS should accept its loss. Instead, it is pushing around other taxpayers by foisting the same untenable “factual” story on them. As former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once said, “courage is fire and bullying is smoke.” The Veritas AOD is nothing but smoke.
Conversation with Bob Kirschenbaum Regarding Great Debate
December 4, 2010
We previously mentioned the IFA “Great Debate,” held on the campus of Stanford University on October 27, 2010, where the debaters squared off on the debatable utility of the Temporary Cost Sharing Regulations Income Method in valuing intangible transfers for transfer pricing purposes. As forecast, the debate was extremely well-attended (notwithstanding the conflicting start of the first game of the World Series just up the road in San Francisco). Bob Kirschenbaum and Clark Chandler drew the “pro” (i.e., you should never use the Income Method) while Jim O’Brien and Keith Reams drew the “con.” After the debate, Bob and I kicked around his presentation, how things went, and how he feels about the issue generally. The discussion seemed interesting enough to formalize and post.
Did you enjoy arguing the “pro” position? Would you have preferred to have the “con” position?
We were prepared for either and I think Clark and I did a good job advocating. However, I actually would have preferred the “con” position. It is more interesting analytically because you get to drill down on how the Code and Regulations might be read to permit an income method analysis that would fairly measure the value of the IP actually transferred.
With most taxpayers fighting the income method at Exam, wasn’t the “pro” position easier?
It is easier in the sense that the argument can be made very simply. That is true. The argument goes like this: The existing cost sharing regulatory construct already enabled the evaluation of rights to the anticipated income stream without essentially disregarding the transaction as actually structured by the parties. The “con” position, on the other hand, requires a more nuanced understanding of transfer pricing principles, what they are trying to achieve, and how one might go about constructing a set of variable inputs that could be used to indirectly derive the value of the IP transferred.
Personally, do you think the income method has a place in transfer pricing practice?
I think it does. However, Clark made a very persuasive argument that the Income Method as constituted in the Temporary Regs, while not to be discarded out of hand, becomes much more tenuous: (i) if the Regulations are read as mandating a counterfactual perpetual useful life of transferred IP (see Veritas v. Commissioner), and (ii) when coupled with the Periodic Trigger look-back provisions of the Temporary Regulations. If fairly applied, and in the right circumstances, the Income Method can be a powerful convergence tool for valuing IP. We have proven that in our dealings with Exam on cases where the IRS seeks to require CIP-compliant outcomes. Obviously, it will never be as good as a valid CUT, but it can be useful and does have a place in the practice.
What does the Tax Court’s recent decision in Veritas tell us about the viability of the Income Method?
At the end of the day, probably not much. Veritas was a gross overreach by the IRS; ultimately, the decision is just Bausch & Lomb revisited. Taxing a neutral transfer of business opportunity is not going to fly, nor is the imposition of a perpetual life for IP that produces premium profits for some limited number of years. That dog just will not hunt against a sophisticated and well-advised taxpayer. But it certainly doesn’t mean that the Income Method, properly applied, is never useful.
What do you see as the biggest errors the IRS makes in applying the Income Method?
(1) The perpetual useful life edict, and (2) the implicit presumption of unlimited sustention of competitive advantage. Technology progresses and, the fact is, legacy technology often doesn’t persist for multiple generations. You could not find too many people in Silicon Valley—where I do a fair amount of my work—who would take the other side of that proposition. Even where technology does persist for an extended period, the IRS at times contends that fundamentally new products, developed at great risk under Cost Sharing, owe their genesis entirely to foundational IP. You cannot assume large growth rates decades out and try to allocate all of that value to the original IP. At some point the competitive advantage associated with the pre-existing IP will dissipate. This is very basic finance theory. There are certainly other concerns but these are the most glaring weaknesses in the application of the Income Method.
Briefing Completed in Container
November 22, 2010
The government has filed its reply brief in Container, and the parties will now await an order assigning a date for oral argument. The parties’ respective arguments were well delineated in the opening briefs, and the reply brief does not shed much additional light on the issue. The government emphasizes that it has never argued that guarantee fees are interest; instead it argues that they are more analogous to interest than to a payment for services. And, disputing the taxpayer’s argument, the government reiterates that this analogy is supported by the two most relevant cases, Bank of America and Centel.
The reply brief notes that Congress addressed this issue for future years in the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. (This legislation is briefly discussed in our first post on the Container case.) Quoting the Blue Book, the reply brief asserts that the new legislation “‘effect[s] a legislative override’ of the Tax Court’s opinion in this case,” providing that a guarantee fee paid by a domestic corporation “is now expressly considered to be income from a United States source.”
We note that the practical implications of the new statute and the Container decision can differ from country to country depending on treaty provisions. The November 8 edition of Tax Analysts’ Tax Notes Today reported on a speech given by Robert Driscoll, a technical adviser at the IRS Large Business and International Division. It quoted Mr. Driscoll as saying that withholding and taxation of guarantee fees could depend on treaty provisions if the guarantor is a qualified resident of a treaty country. Specifically, if the guarantee fee can be categorized as “other income” under the treaty, Mr. Driscoll is quoted as saying, the payment “from a U.S. [subsidiary] to its foreign parent guarantor would not be U.S.-source income and thus would not be subject to withholding.” That statement is imprecise since “other income” provisions of treaties typically do not directly address sourcing. What Mr. Driscoll appears to be indicating is the IRS’s view that the “other income” provisions of treaties could preclude the U.S. from taxing guarantee fee income, even if that income is technically characterized as U.S.-source income under the new law (or, presumably, under prior law if the government prevails in Container). That would lead to the same tax result as a practical matter as a determination that the fees are not U.S.-source income.
Container – Government’s reply brief
Taxpayer’s Brief Filed in Container
October 28, 2010
The taxpayer has filed its answering brief in Container (attached below), arguing that guarantee fees paid to its Mexican parent were properly analogized to a payment for services and therefore sourced to Mexico. The taxpayer reasons that the government’s analogy to interest on a loan is misdirected because the guarantor does not advance any funds. All it does is “stand[ ] by to pay,” which is in the nature of a service, and it is the Mexican parent’s assets – located in Mexico – that give it the ability to serve as a guarantor. The taxpayer also maintains that the government’s position conflicts with the Tax Court’s factual findings to the extent that the government argues that the parent was a lender in substance because it expected the U.S. subsidiary to default.
The taxpayer disputes the government’s assertion that the relevant precedents support the interest analogy. With respect to the commissions paid for letters of credit in the Bank of America case, the taxpayer argues that “Bank of America was not being paid for substituting its credit for that of the foreign bank, but for substituting its money.” Accordingly, the taxpayer reasons, the commissions in Bank of America were logically analogized to interest, but a different result is called for in Container where the guarantor did not furnish any money. The taxpayer also distinguishes the Centel decision involving stock warrants as resting on factual findings specific to that case. It further contends that the Fifth Circuit should disregard the observation in Centel that Bank of America rejects analogizing guaranties to services, because that observation is “both dicta and incorrect.”
Container – Taxpayer’s answering brief
Government’s Opening Brief Filed in Container
September 20, 2010
The government has filed its opening brief (attached below) in the Fifth Circuit in Container, challenging the Tax Court’s decision to treat loan guarantee fees as foreign-source income. As discussed in our previous post, the Tax Court concluded that such guarantee fees are best analogized to compensation for services.
The brief is unusually concise, using barely half of the maximum available pages. As it argued in the Tax Court, the government maintains on appeal that the fees are better analogized to interest, which would result in treating them as U.S.-source income. It emphasizes three elements of the fees in urging this position: the guarantee fees payments (1) “were made to [the Mexican parent] for the use of its credit”; (2) “to compensate it for putting its assets at risk;” and (3) “for its assistance in enabling [the U.S. sub] to meet its obligations under the Notes.”
The government’s brief criticizes the Tax Court’s approach for failing to recognize that: (1) there was no evidence that the sub had rendered any services to the parent in exchange for the fees; and (2) the amount of the fees was calculated as a percentage of the loan amount and, indeed, was a standard percentage charged by the parent to guarantee loans of its various subs irrespective of any services provided. The government also argues that the two most relevant precedents — Centel Comm. Corp. v. United States, 920 F.2d 1335 (7th Cir. 1990) (involving stock warrants), and Bank of America v. United States, 680 F.2d 142 (Ct. Cl. 1982) (involving commissions paid in connection with letters of credit) — strongly support its position.
The taxpayer’s answering brief is currently due on October 18, 2010.
Container – Government’s opening brief
The Best Minds in Transfer Pricing Spar Over the Income Method
September 8, 2010
Practitioners interested in the more interesting conceptual aspects of transfer pricing should mark October 27th on their calendars. On that day, the International Fiscal Association is sponsoring a debate on the usefulness of the income method to value intangibles in the transfer pricing context. Dubbed “The Great Debate” by IFA, this year’s event will pit the best transfer pricing practitioners in the world (including Miller & Chevalier’s Bob Kirschenbaum and Baker & McKenzie’s Jim O’Brien) against each other. Neither will know which position they are arguing prior to a coin toss. The gloves will surely come off and our current understanding is that the only thing missing will be a steel cage. Attendance is limited to IFA members and special guests (which you can become by being sponsored by an IFA member).
Xilinx AOD Straightforward but Finds the IRS Still Intent on Redefining the Arm’s Length Standard
August 13, 2010
On July 28, 2010, the IRS released AOD 2010-33; 2010-33 IRB 1. The AOD acquiesces in the result but not the reasoning of Xilinx, Inc. v. Comm’r, 598 F.3d 1191, 1196 (9th Cir. 2010) which held that stock option costs are not required to be shared as “costs” for purposes of cost sharing agreements under old Treas. Reg. §1.482-7. For prior analysis of Xilinx see this. The AOD in and of itself is relatively unsurprising. New regulations (some might say “litigating regulations”) have been issued that explicitly address the issue, and those regulations will test the question of whether Treasury has the authority to require the inclusion of such costs. The IRS surely realized that from an administrative perspective it was smart to let this one go. The best move for most taxpayers is likely to grab a bucket of popcorn and watch the fireworks as a few brave souls test Treasury’s mettle by challenging the validity of the new regulations. Including a provision in your cost sharing agreements that allow adjustments in the event of a future invalidation of the regulations might go well with the popcorn.
The only really interesting item in the AOD is the gratuitous bootstrap of the Cost Sharing Buy-In Regs “realistic alternatives principle.” The still warm “realistic alternatives principle” – the IRS assertion that an uncontrolled taxpayer will not choose an alternative that is less economically rewarding than another available alternative – “applies not to restructure the actual transaction in which controlled taxpayers engage, but to adjust pricing to an arm’s length result.” AOD, 2010 TNT 145-18, pp.4-5. That assertion appears to ignore that “arm’s length” is not some obscure term of art cooked up by the IRS, but rather an established concept that lies at the heart of most countries’ approach to international taxation.
Still clinging to the withdrawn Ninth Circuit opinion, the AOD offers in support of this premise that “the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to define terms adopted in regulations, especially when they are neither present nor compelled in statutory language (such as the arm’s length standard), that might differ from the definition others would place on those terms.” Xilinx, Inc. v. Comm’r, 567 F.3d 482, 491 (9th Cir. 2009).
In short, the IRS appears to have dusted off the rule book of the King in Alice and Wonderland:
The King: “Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.”
“I’m not a mile high,” said Alice.
“You are,” said the King.
“Nearly two miles high,” added the Queen.
“Well, I shan’t go, at any rate,” said Alice: “besides, that’s not a regular rule: you invented it just now.”
“It’s the oldest rule in the book,” said the King.
“Then it ought to be Number One,” said Alice.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at 125 (Giunti Classics ed. 2002). The IRS has often been disappointed with the real rule Number One (the arm’s length principle) when the results of real-world transactions do not coincide with the results the IRS desires. Now the IRS looks to magically transform that rule into one that replaces those real-world transactions with the IRS’s revenue-maximizing vision. Tax Wonderland is getting curiouser and curiouser.
Fifth Circuit to Consider Sourcing of Guarantee Fees
August 6, 2010
The parties are poised to brief the appeal of Tax Court’s decision in Container Corp. v. Commissioner, 134 T.C. No. 5 (Feb. 17, 2010), in the Fifth Circuit. The issue concerns the “sourcing” of income earned by a Mexican corporation from loan guarantee fees paid by its U.S. subsidiary. Code sections 861-63 identify certain items of income and specify whether they should be treated as U.S-source or foreign-source income. But there are items of income not specified in those sections, like loan guarantee fees, and it falls to the courts to determine how to source them, using analogies to items that are listed.
In Container, a U.S. subsidiary had to raise capital to finance corporate acquisitions, but needed the larger Mexican parent to guarantee the notes in order to make them marketable. The parent charged a standard 1.5% annual fee for providing the guarantee. The companies treated the fees as foreign-source income, analogizing them to “compensation for labor or personal services,” which are generally sourced to the location where the services are performed. I.R.C. §§ 861(a)(3), 862(a)(3). Therefore, the U.S. subsidiary did not withhold 30% from the fees, as would have been required if the fees were U.S.-source income. I.R.C. §§ 881(a), 1442(a). The IRS objected, arguing that the fees were better analogized to interest, which is sourced to the location of the interest payor. I.R.C. §§ 861(a)(1), 862(a)(1). The IRS also relied on one of the leading precedents, Bank of America v. United States, 680 F.2d 142 (Ct. Cl. 1982), which had ruled that acceptance and confirmation commissions paid in connection with letters of credit should be treated like interest for sourcing principles.
The Tax Court opted for the taxpayer’s analogy. It distinguished Bank of America and the interest analogy by stating that the Mexican parent did not put its money “directly at risk”; it “was augmenting [the sub’s] credit, not substituting its own.” The Tax Court’s reasoning seems strained, as the proffered distinction does not come to grips with the reasoning in Bank of America or obviously relate to the policy underlying the sourcing rules. Although the guarantee fees are not identical to interest, they have some similarities and also serve the same function of facilitating the subsidiary’s ability to obtain capital. Without the guarantee, the subsidiary would surely have had to pay more interest to obtain the financing, and the guarantee fee thus is in some sense a substitute for interest. Conversely, while the parent can be said to have provided a service in promising “to possibly perform a future act” through the guarantee, the Tax Court’s approach appears to approve a much broader reading of the concept of performing “labor or personal services” than did the Bank of America case.
Congress has introduced legislation to reverse the outcome of the case by specifically providing that guarantee fees are to be sourced like interest. That legislation, contained in a provision of the Small Business Jobs Act that the Senate is expected to take up when it returns in September, would operate prospectively and is estimated to raise $2 billion over ten years. The legislation is not intended to provide any inference for the treatment of guarantee fees before the date of enactment; the appeal in Container is the government’s route to relief for those earlier years. And the Fifth Circuit’s decision may well provide more guidance beyond guarantee fees for how courts should approach the problem of sourcing analogies. The government’s opening brief is currently due September 15, 2010.