Briefing Completed in Container

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

Xilinx AOD Straightforward but Finds the IRS Still Intent on Redefining the Arm’s Length Standard

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.

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