Supreme Court Poised to Rule on SIH Partners Cert Petition
January 7, 2020
We noted in our prior coverage of this case that SIH Partners was likely to seek Supreme Court review of the adverse decision it received in the Third Circuit regarding loan guarantees issued by a CFC, even if a grant of certiorari was a longshot. The Court is now scheduled to consider the taxpayer’s cert petition at its January 10 conference and will likely announce its determination on January 13.
In an effort to interest the Court in the case, the taxpayer chose to focus entirely on the administrative law issues presented by the case, not on the substantive tax … Read More
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 … Read More
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. § … Read More
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’ … Read More
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 … Read More
Rehearing Denied in SIH Partners
July 3, 2019
The Third Circuit today denied a petition for rehearing en banc in SIH Partners. See our prior reports here. The taxpayer now has 90 days to file a petition for certiorari.
The petition for rehearing focused more on general administrative law principles than on the substantive section 956(d) issue in the case. In particular, the petition criticized the panel for applying Chevron deference to a regulation that did little more than parrot the statutory language. It also argued that the panel erred in stating that the IRS was not bound by a previously published Revenue Ruling. Given the … Read More
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 … Read More
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 … Read More
Briefing Complete in Mazzei
May 20, 2019
The taxpayers have filed their reply brief in Mazzei, completing the briefing. The reply brief is colorful–perhaps to a fault–in critiquing the government’s arguments. For example: the issue is whether a Roth IRA can hold stock in a DISC “without suffering multitudinous nasties at the hands of the Commissioner”; the government’s arguments are “disingenuous” and “odd” and the Tax Court performed “judicial alchemy”; and the cases cited by the government are “as devoid of landing space herein as Noah’s crow” [actually a raven, according to the King James Bible].
Looking beyond the rhetoric, which is unlikely to make a … Read More
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 … Read More