Reflections on the Ninth Circuit’s Decision in Amazon.com

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

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

Both Parties Face Tough Questions in Amazon.com Ninth Circuit Argument

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.

Amazon.com Tax Court Opinion

Ninth Circuit to Hear Oral Argument in Amazon Transfer-Pricing Dispute Friday

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