The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has thrown our personal and professional lives into a constant state of change, as we deal with social distancing, e-learning, remote working, and Zoom. In this American Bar Association article, Andrew R. Roberson, a partner in US and International Tax at McDermott Will & Emery, describes how the constant change or “next normal” rings true in the tax world as well, both for taxpayers and practitioners, as we all adapt to today’s challenges.
Presented below is our summary of significant Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidance and relevant tax matters for the week of June 8 – June 12, 2020. Additionally, for continuing updates on the tax impact of COVID-19, please visit our resource page here.
June 9, 2020: The IRS published a reminder for taxpayers that estimated tax payments for tax year 2020, originally due April 15 and June 15, are now due July 15. Any individual or corporation that has a quarterly estimated tax payment due has until July 15 to make that payment without penalty.
June 11, 2020: The IRS released Notice 2020-46 to address that cash payments employers make to charitable organizations that provide relief to victims of the COVID-19 pandemic in exchange for sick, vacation, or personal leave which their employees forgo will not be treated as compensation. Additionally, the employees will not be treated as receiving the value of the leave as income and cannot claim a deduction for the leave that they donated to their employer.
June 12, 2020: The IRS and Treasury issued proposed regulations to amend the existing regulations to add a definition of real property to reflect statutory changes and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) limiting IRC § 1031 to exchanges of real property. Written or electronic comments and requests for a public hearing must be received by August 11, 2020.
June 12, 2020: The IRS issued Notice 2020-49 to provide tax relief for certain taxpayers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic involved in new markets tax credit transactions under IRC § 45D(a). Specifically, the notice provides guidance for community development entities (CDEs) and qualified active low-income community businesses (QALICBs) investing and conducting businesses in low-income communities. The notice postpones to December 31, 2020, the due dates for making investments, making reinvestments, and expending amounts for construction of real property under IRC § 45D due to be performed or expended on or after April 1, 2020, and before December 31, 2020.
June 12, 2020: The IRS released its weekly list of written determinations (e.g., Private Letter Rulings, Technical Advice Memorandums and Chief Counsel Advice).
Special thanks to Emily Mussio in our Chicago office for this week’s roundup.
When the US Tax Court (Tax Court) shut down in March, the public was unable to request copies of Tax Court records. That changed effective June 1, 2020, as non-parties may now call and request copies of court records which will then be sent via email. The cost for copy requests is $0.50 per page, with a per-document cap of $3.00. The Tax Court’s press release on this subject can be found here.
Practice Point: It can be extremely beneficial to taxpayers and their advisors to see arguments being made by other taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service in cases with similar legal issues. The ability to now directly call the Tax Court to request briefs or other filings in a docketed case, and to receive such documents electronically, is significant. Moreover, the cap of $3.00 per document may provide an incentive to request documents where the price per page, without a cap, was previously financially burdensome.
A recent US Tax Court Memorandum Opinion held that a settlement agreement embodied in Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 870-AD does not preclude the IRS from reopening an audit and issuing a notice of deficiency.
In Howe v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2020-78, the Tax Court held that equitable estoppel did not bind the Commissioner to an agreement in Form 870-AD. Only settlements that comply with Internal Revenue Code (IRC) sections 7121 and 7122 are binding on both the taxpayer and government, and an IRS Form 870-AD does not comply with those provisions. Further, the Court held that equitable estoppel did not bar the IRS from asserting a larger deficiency against the taxpayer because, even if true, the alleged failures to follow internal IRS procedures would not rise to the level of affirmative misconduct.
An IRS revenue agent initially began an audit of the 2008 tax return for the taxpayer, who was CEO and majority shareholder of a healthcare company, in 2011. At the conclusion of the audit, the revenue agent issued a Notice of Proposed Adjustment (NOPA) and IRS Form 886-A. The taxpayer responded to the NOPA by filing a protest letter at the IRS Appeals Office. In settlement of the issue during the IRS Appeals Office review, the taxpayer and the IRS appeals officer (on behalf of the IRS) signed a Form 870-AD that reduced the asserted tax deficiency and eliminated the IRC section 6662 accuracy-related penalty. The IRS Appeals Officer filed an IRS Appeals Case Memorandum (ACM) summarizing the facts and legal arguments.
In response to the ACM, the revenue agent who conducted the audit, in consultation with her supervisor and local IRS counsel, internally filed a Dissent for Appeals Decision. The Dissent for Appeals Decision sought to reopen the case against the taxpayer on the grounds that the taxpayer made material factual misrepresentations during the IRS Appeals process. The IRS Appeals Director approved reopening the case, and the IRS issued a Notice of Deficiency.
The taxpayer sought review in the Tax Court on the grounds that the IRS improperly reopened the case and that the settlement represented in Form 870-AD equitably estopped the Commissioner from issuing the Notice of Deficiency. The Tax Court rejected the taxpayer’s argument. Following its holding in Greenberg’s Express, Inc. v. Commissioner, 62 T.C. 324, 327 (1974), the Tax Court will only look behind a Notice of Deficiency when there is “substantial evidence of unconstitutional conduct on the Commissioner’s part and the integrity of our judicial process would be impugned if we were to let the Commissioner benefit from such conduct.” (Howe, at *12.) The Tax Court found there was no substantial evidence of unconstitutional conduct by the IRS.
Further, there is a heightened standard for applying equitable estoppel against the IRS. In addition to the traditional detrimental reliance elements, asserting equitable estoppel claims against the government requires a showing that: “(1) the government engaged in affirmative misconduct going beyond mere negligence; (2) the government’s wrongful acts will cause a serious [...]
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In response to a series of questions posed in a November 2019 letter from Senator Menendez (D-NJ), the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) issued a letter on April 15, 2020, analyzing carbon oxide credits under Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 45Q. For tax years between 2010 and 2019, TIGTA found that up to 87% of the value of the credits claimed were not in compliance with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) monitoring, reporting, and verification requirements.
IRC section 45Q provides a credit to taxpayers that capture and sequester carbon oxide. The credit was initially enacted into law in 2008, then substantially revised in 2018. As part of the revisions, the credit was expanded from solely carbon dioxide capture to include a broader set of carbon oxide emissions. This substantially expanded the class of taxpayers eligible to claim the credit. Although Treasury released some guidance in February 2020, there are still many unresolved questions about the expanded carbon oxide credit, and many taxpayers are waiting to move forward with additional projects pending release of that guidance.
The TIGTA analysis covers tax years 2010–2019, so it will primarily include carbon dioxide projects. The letter reports that only 10 out of the 672 taxpayers who claimed the IRC section 45Q credit received over $1 million in credits, and these 10 taxpayers represent 99.86% of the total value of all IRC section 45Q credits, around $1.02 billion. An examination of return data found that 87% of the credits claimed by these 10 taxpayers may have been improper because there was not an approved EPA monitoring, reporting, and verification plan in place when the credits were claimed. TIGTA reported that the IRS had already taken action against 4 of these 10 taxpayers—disallowing approximately 60% of the improperly claimed credits. Additional enforcement activity may target taxpayers who claimed large amounts of carbon sequestration credits.
Practice Point: Taxpayers considering investing in carbon oxide sequestration projects should perform extensive diligence on the project and make sure that they technically meet the requirements. We expect that carbon sequestration projects may come under increased scrutiny and result in more audits going forward. Spending the time and resources to ensure that your project conforms to the rules will save you money if the IRS denies your credits. Additionally, make sure to contemporaneously document your efforts to follow the rules; this may assist in penalty abatement if asserted.
In Taylor Lohmeyer Law Firm P.L.L.C. v. United States, No. 19-50506, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a Texas-based estate and tax-planning law firm (Firm) could not invoke the attorney-client privilege against an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) summons seeking the identity of its clients.
According to an IRS revenue agent’s declaration submitted in support of the summons, the Firm became a target for IRS investigation following an audit of one of its clients, an individual who had used the Firm’s services to establish and operate various foreign accounts and entities, through which the individual had funneled millions of dollars of unreported income. The IRS issued a John Doe summons to the Firm seeking, amongst other things, the identities of other clients for whom it had established foreign accounts or entities.
On April 14, 2020, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued informal guidance in the form of frequently asked questions (the “FAQs”), urging taxpayers to strengthen their transfer pricing documentation required under Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 6662(e) and Treasury Regulations § 1.6662-6. IRC section 6662 provides several types of accuracy-related penalties on underpayments of taxes. Pursuant to IRC section 6662(e)(1)(B)(ii), a net adjustment penalty could apply to an intercompany transaction when the net IRC section 482 transfer pricing adjustment exceeds the applicable threshold amount. Taxpayers, however, may avoid a net adjustment penalty by maintaining transfer pricing documentation in accordance with IRC section 6662(e)(3)(B) and Treasury Regulation § 1.6662-6. The IRS indicates that without robust documentation, intercompany transactions may be subject to extensive examination process.
The FAQs provide guidelines for preparing high-quality documentation that could increase the chance of early deselection of transfer pricing issues, thereby substantially facilitating the examination process. First, industry and company analysis sections of the report should be clear and provide context for related party transactions. For example, the report should explain economic downturns or other unforeseen special business circumstances that affect the transfer pricing results. The analysis should also address any differences in risks or functions between the tested party and the comparable companies. Second, functional analysis narratives should be robust and link facts to analysis, and risk analysis should be consistent with intercompany agreements. Finally, detailed analysis should be provided to support (i) the best method selection (as well as the rejection of specified methods, if applicable); (ii) the profit-level-indicator conclusion; (iii) the satisfaction of the comparability criteria enumerated in the regulations and (iv) proposed adjustments to the application of a specified method, if selected. Taxpayers are encouraged to conduct a “self-assessment” of the potential indicators of transfer pricing non-compliance to strengthen their transfer pricing documentation reports.
The FAQs also identify some of the most helpful features in a transfer pricing report. These features include (i) a full explanation of the data used in the transfer pricing analysis; (ii) descriptions of the general business risks of the transaction and detailed descriptions of how these risks are allocated among the controlled participants to the transaction based on the intercompany policies/agreements and (iii) detailed explanations of how profits are allocated among all parties, especially where a party is allocated profits that are disproportionate to its relative contributions. High-quality transfer pricing documentation may also include useful features such as reports of a functional and risk analysis for each transaction, an analysis of special business circumstances that may have affected profitability, descriptions of challenges of the analysis and any user-friendly features such as a summary of information.
These guidelines are consistent with recent IRS efforts to encourage taxpayers to improve the quality of transfer pricing documentation, and suggest that the IRS may apply a higher standard in future examination when reviewing the documentation.
Practice Point: The IRS is signaling that there are some persistent deficiencies in taxpayers’ contemporaneous transfer pricing documentation. It may be a good idea to [...]
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On April 8, 2020, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released a statement telling taxpayers that guidance would be forthcoming on refund claims related to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, or the CARES Act. Consistent with that promise, on April 13, 2020, the IRS issued guidance describing temporary procedures permitting the submission via fax of Form 1139, Corporation Application for Tentative Refund, and Form 1045, Application for Tentative Refund. For our prior discussion of CARES Act refund guidance issued by the IRS, see here.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, provides tax relief to taxpayers in certain situations. Some of these provisions may generate refunds for prior years, such as the relaxation of restrictions on the use of net operating losses (NOLs) and interest deductions as well as the retroactive availability of additional depreciation related to qualified improvement property. For our prior discussions of these, and other CARES Act provisions, see here.
In a recent order in the The Cannon Corp. v. Commissioner, No. 12466-16, the US Tax Court (Tax Court) held that a redacted email from a revenue agent’s supervisor to the agent regarding a notice of deficiency was not sufficient to satisfy the approval requirement under Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 6751(b) for the assertion of accuracy-related penalties.
Under IRC section 6751(b), as interpreted by case law, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is permitted to assert penalties only if the initial determination to assert the penalty is approved in writing by the supervisor of the individual making such a determination. That provision has been litigated recently in several notable cases, for example, Chai v. Commissioner, 851 F.3d 190 (2d Cir. 2017), and Graev v. Commissioner, 149 T.C. 485 (2017). Since Graev, the Tax Court has issued a series of decisions on the requirements of IRC section 6751(b). Our recent article discussing these decisions can be found here.
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