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Tax Court Anticipates Releasing Revisions to its Rules in the Near Future

by | Oct 3, 2016 | ,

At the ABA Section of Taxation meeting in Boston last week, Chief Judge Marvel of the US Tax Court announced that the court anticipates issuing revisions to its rules in the near future. These rule revisions will address two areas: (1) e-filing matters, including the ability to electronically file a petition; and (2) revisions necessitated by changes made by Congress at the end of 2015 (for our earlier report on this subject, see here). Chief Judge Marvel also noted that the court is continuing to review its rules and prior comments received from the public, and may issue further revisions in the future.



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Altera Corporation Files Answering Brief in Commissioner’s Ninth Circuit Appeal of Altera

by | Sep 19, 2016 | , , ,

In Altera Corp. v. Commissioner, 145 T.C. No. 3 (July 27, 2015), the Tax Court, in a unanimous reviewed opinion, held that regulations under Section 482 requiring parties to a qualified cost-sharing agreement (“QCSA”) to include stock-based compensation costs in the cost pool to comply with the arm’s-length standard were procedurally invalid because Treasury and the IRS did not engage in the “reasoned decisionmaking” required by the Administrative Procedures Act and the cases interpreting it. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue (“Commissioner”) appealed this holding to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Dkt. Nos. 16-70496, 16-70497. The Commissioner filed his opening brief on June 27, 2016. Two groups of law school professors filed amicus briefs in support of the Commissioner’s position. On September 9, 2016, Altera Corporation (“Altera”) filed its answering brief with the Ninth Circuit.

Altera begins with the observation that the Commissioner “has remarkably little to say” about the Tax Court’s rationale in holding the QCSA regulation invalid. According to Altera, the Commissioner either did not respond to the salient points in the Tax Court’s analysis or, more often, actually admitted that those points were correct. Instead, the Commissioner advanced a “new, litigation-driven position” that Section 482’s “commensurate with income” requirement is an independent “internal standard” that “does not require consideration of transactions between unrelated parties.” Indeed, Altera notes, the Commissioner now argues “that the arm’s-length standard may be applied without considering any facts at all.” Thus, rather than engage with the Tax Court’s reasoning, the Commissioner “mistakenly accuses the Tax Court of overlooking an argument that is missing from the administrative record.”

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Scott Singer Informs on the Effect of Loans to Financially Troubled Subsidiary in a Debt-Equity Analysis

by | Aug 26, 2016 | , ,

One often overlooked debt-equity issue is presented by continuing transfers to a subsidiary that is reasonably creditworthy at the inception but subsequently encounters difficulties, in spite of which (or maybe because of which) and continues to receive advances from the common parent or one of its finance subsidiaries. The issue is whether the subsequent difficulties should cause the advances made after some point in time to be equity rather than debt.

Scott Singer Installations, Inc. v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2016-161, [read here] involves a corporation that began business in 1981 and operated with some success. In order to fund its growth, its sole shareholder began to borrow from other persons and relend the proceeds to the corporation in 2006. (No notes were executed; no interest was charged; and no maturity dates were imposed.) The corporation was initially profitable, but experienced a decline in business in 2008. The court held that the shareholder loans from 2006 through 2008 constituted  debt because the corporation’s success provided a basis for the shareholder’s having a reasonable expectation that those loans would be repaid, but that the funds transferred after 2008 were not debt because as a result of the decline in business, the shareholder “should have known that future advances would not result in consistent repayments.”

The court cited no case in which this approach was applied. Whether shareholder could have a reasonable expectation of repayment is a factual issue for which authority is not needed. However, this approach is somewhat unusual. A particularly difficult question in many cases is the point after which advances should be treated as equity. The general downturn in the economy may have simplified it here. It is important to note that the advances made before 2009 were not recharacterized as equity; it appears that if it were appropriate to treat them as debt when they were made, they remain debt.

The Tax Court in Scott Singer focused heavily on the lender’s reasonable expectation of repayment in characterizing the later advances as equity. However, it is important to note that the debt-equity determination is often extremely complex and fact-specific. The question of lending to a troubled company arises frequently in the third-party lending context. In these situations, a lender often seeks a higher interest rate and/or additional collateral to account for the problems that the company is experiencing. When a third-party lender extends credit to a troubled company, they often look to assets and their priority relative to other creditors in considering whether to loan additional funds.

Business people at a company need to be cautioned that pumping money into a subsidiary that is sustaining losses (and probably needs the money to prevent sinking) may lead to adverse tax consequences unless the entity’s stock becomes worthless. One approach may be to have the subsidiary issue a combination of notes and preferred stock.



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Facebook Battles IRS In Summons Enforcement Case

by and | Aug 12, 2016 | , , , , ,

Facebook is in a protracted battle with the IRS related to its off-shoring of IP to an Irish affiliate. Read more here. The IRS issued an administrative summons for the documents, and Facebook has refused to comply with the summons. The IRS is asking the court to enforce the summons and force Facebook to turn over the requested documents. The court agreed that on its face, the summons was issued for a legitimate purpose. Facebook will now have to tell the court why it refuses to turn over the documents. Review the court order here. Assumedly, Facebook is asserting that it is not required to disclose the requested materials based upon a claim of privilege. The case demonstrates that the IRS is aggressively seeking documents and information from taxpayers and their representatives in cases involving international tax issues.



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Tax Court Trial Sessions – How a Case is Set for Trial

by | Aug 11, 2016 | , ,

The US Tax Court is physically located in Washington, DC, but its judges travel nationwide to conduct trials in 70 designated cities. At the time the petition is filed with the Tax Court, the taxpayer will request a specific location for trial. The Tax Court will issue a notice setting the case for trial approximately five months before the trial date.

However, before the notice for trial is sent out, the Tax Court will have announced the dates and locations of the trial sessions. The most recent sessions for Fall 2016 and Winter 2017, which were just released by the Tax Court, can be found here and here. Taxpayers who have not yet received a notice setting the case for trial may review the trial session schedules in advance and want to find out which judge will be presiding over those sessions. Although the name of the judge presiding over a trial session is not listed on the Tax Court’s website, a taxpayer can call the Clerk’s Office and ask whether a particular judge has been assigned to the calendar.



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Tax Case Sparks Shareholder Derivative Suit

by | Jul 28, 2016 | , ,

A company never litigates in a vacuum: statements in pleadings or court papers and testimony by company officials can be used against the company in parallel or subsequent proceedings, even unrelated cases. Eaton Corporation PLC was sued recently for alleged violations of federal securities laws because one of its officers made an admission on an earnings call that provisions of federal tax law barred Eaton from making tax-free spinoffs for a limited period of time, and the company’s prior statements allegedly suggested such spin-offs could occur. Eaton Corp. Sued Over Statements About Post-Inversion Spinoff. Companies make similar statements in litigation on a regular basis. Often, such statements form a necessary component of a company’s litigation position. Nevertheless, companies should carefully consider the risk that a statement will expose it to a shareholder-derivative lawsuit and incorporate that risk into its litigation strategy.

 



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Protecting Confidential Taxpayer Information in Tax Court

by , and | Jul 21, 2016 | , , , , , , ,

Taxpayers value confidentiality, particularly if there is a dispute with the IRS that involves highly-sensitive trade secrets or other confidential information. Not surprisingly, complex tax litigation often raises the question of what confidential information has to be “made public”—through discovery responses or the introduction of exhibits or testimony in a deposition or at trial—so that a taxpayer can dispute IRS adjustments in court if administrative efforts to resolve the case are not successful. Fortunately, the Tax Court tends to protect highly-sensitive trade secrets or other confidential information from public disclosure even when the judge must review the information to decide the case.

In the Tax Court, the general rule is that all evidence received by the Tax Court, including transcripts of hearings, are public records and available for public inspection. See Internal Revenue Code (Code) Section 7461(a). Code Section 7458 also provides that “[h]earings before the Tax Court . . . shall be open to the public.” Code Section 7461(b), however, provides several important exceptions. First, the court is afforded the flexibility to take any action “which is necessary to prevent the disclosure of trade secrets or other confidential information, including [placing items] under seal to be opened only as directed by the court.” Second, after a decision of the court becomes final, the court may, upon a party’s motion, allow a party to withdraw the original records and other materials introduced into evidence. In our experience, the trend appears to be erring on the side of protecting information from disclosure.

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Tax Court Issues Five Discovery Orders Addressing Admissibility of Expert Reports

by and | Jul 20, 2016 | , , , ,

On July 13, 14, and 15, 2016, Judge Laro of the US Tax Court (Tax Court) ruled on five taxpayer-filed motions in limine to exclude expert reports in Guidant LLC f.k.a. Guidant Corporation, and Subsidiaries, et al. v. Commissioner. At issue in the case are a number of IRS transfer pricing adjustments to the taxpayer-corporation’s income under Section 482.

In support of its adjustments, the IRS offered numerous expert reports to the Tax Court, and the taxpayer sought to exclude these reports. The taxpayer raised the following major arguments:

Argument: The IRS expert reports failed to contain opinions.

The taxpayer argued that three of the reports should be excluded because they did not comply with Tax Court Rule 143(g)(1), which requires that expert witnesses generally prepare written reports, and requires that expert reports include “a complete statement of all opinions the witness expresses and the basis and reasons for them.” In federal district court practice (under somewhat different rules), this requirement generally means that an expert must separately state, and clearly delineate, his or her expert opinions in a written report—usually in a “conclusions” or “opinions” section. In Tax Court, the requirement for a clear and concise written expert report is even more significant than in federal district court practice because, under Rule 143(g)(1), expert reports are treated as direct testimony of the expert (although, in many cases, additional expert testimony and cross-examination may be helpful or necessary).

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Tax Court Order Indicates That E-Discovery and Predictive Coding Are Here to Stay

by , , and | Jul 18, 2016 | , , , , ,

On July 13, 2016, Judge Buch of the US Tax Court denied an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) motion to compel the production of electronically stored information (ESI) by Dynamo Holdings Limited Partnership and Beekman Vista, Inc., which was not delivered as part of a discovery response based on the mutually agreed-upon use of “predictive coding.” Predictive coding is an electronic discovery method that permits an efficient and effective approach when reviewing for relevance a large amount of data and documents. It is a relatively new discovery method that is gaining acceptance by courts around the country as an alternative to the costly and laborious physical review of data and documents. Judge Buch previously authorized the use of predictive coding in Dynamo Holdings, Ltd. vs. Commissioner, 143 T.C. No. 9 (2014).

The IRS and the taxpayers had agreed that the taxpayers would run a search for terms determined by the IRS on the potentially relevant documents. The taxpayers provided the IRS with samples of randomly selected documents from the universe of potentially relevant documents, from which the IRS identified the relevant documents. These selections were used to create a predictive coding model, which a computer can use to identify conceptually similar documents.  The IRS also selected a “recall rate” of 95 percent. A search method’s recall rate is the percentage of all relevant documents in the search universe that are retrieved by that search method. The higher the recall rate, the fewer relevant but retrieved documents there will be. The taxpayers then delivered to the IRS all of the documents retrieved using the predictive coding model that were not privileged. More documents were identified in the initial search for terms than were identified using the predictive coding model. The IRS filed a motion to compel production of the documents identified in the initial terms search that were not produced.

The Tax Court denied the IRS’s motion, explaining that document review results are never perfect. The court stated that the IRS was seeking a perfect response, but that the Tax Court Rules and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require only that the responding party make a “reasonable inquiry” when making a discovery response. The court explained that “when the responding party is signing the response to a discovery demand, he is not certifying that he turned over everything, he is certifying that he made a reasonable inquiry and to the best of his knowledge, his response is complete.”  The use of predictive coding does not change this standard, and the court held that the taxpayers satisfied the reasonable inquiry standard when they responded using predictive coding.

Practice Note: Due to the amount of data and documents generated by taxpayers in the normal course of business, discovery of ESI can be extremely burdensome and expensive for taxpayers.  Nonetheless, it has become commonplace to see discovery requests for ESI.  Although there is a substantial amount of guidance on this subject in other courts, the Tax Court has issued [...]

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Expert “Hot Tubbing” in the Tax Court

by and | Jul 15, 2016 | , ,

The use of expert witnesses in litigation can be tricky.  Taxpayers want to avoid the perception that their expert is a “hired gun” who is merely their biased advocate.  The US Tax Court has repeatedly stated that such expert testimony is not useful or credible.

A technique that is common in Australia, and has been gaining traction in the Tax Court, is the use of concurrent expert testimony.  This technique—referred to as “hot tubbing”—involves expert witnesses engaged by the taxpayer and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) conferring directly with the judge and engaging in conversation about the evidence in the case and their opinion.   (more…)



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