Fourth Circuit Calls Out a Bullshit Tax Evasion/Avoidance Gambit (6/24/20)

In Est. of Kechijian v. Commissioner, ___ F.3d ___ (4th Cir. 6/23/20), here, the Court affirmed the Tax Court’s holding that the bullshit transaction to avoid tax on ordinary income -- $41.2 million of such income -- did not work and that the 20% accuracy related penalty applied.  This particular bullshit transaction was different from other similar genre transactions I have discussed, in the sense that it appears to have been a one-off rather than mass-marketed (although, I am sure components were packaged by various promoters into other bullshit deals).

I won't get into the twists and turns to gerrymander the result the taxpayers and their advisors went through to hide what really happened.  However, I did find the following (Slip Op. 15-16) particularly on point:

            Surprisingly, petitioners double down on their position in this appeal. They candidly acknowledge that the only reason they executed the Surrender Transactions was to enable UMLIC S-Corp. to avoid withholding and remitting approximately $33 million in state and federal payroll and income taxes. Petitioners maintain that this course of action was necessary to ensure UMLIC S-Corp.’s continued viability as a going concern. This is  [*16] because, according to petitioners, UMLIC S-Corp. did not have enough cash on hand to cover its tax withholding obligations, an assertion that the Tax Court found to be unsupported by the evidence at trial. See Austin, T.C. Memo. 2017-69, at *40 n.13. But even if that were true, it does nothing to change the fact that the sole purpose for the Surrender Transactions was the avoidance of tax obligations, both those of UMLIC S-Corp. and, by extension, those of petitioners. Under our case law, that is enough to satisfy the first prong of the economic substance test. See Friedman v. Comm’r, 869 F.2d 785, 792 (4th Cir. 1989) (noting that the first prong “requires a showing that the only purpose for entering into the transaction was the tax consequences”).

On the penalty issue and reasonable cause, the following is also noteworthy after finding that the taxpayers had done nothing to determine their correct liability (Slip Op. 19):

            Petitioners’ argument that the tax law issues in this case are novel does nothing to change our conclusion. For one thing, we have never recognized novelty as a stand-alone defense to the imposition of accuracy-related penalties. See Baxter, 910 F.3d at 168. More importantly, there is nothing novel about the legal issues presented by or doctrines applied in this case. That the law prohibits a taxpayer from avoiding tax liability by means of a sham transaction is a rule almost as old as the federal income tax system. See, e.g., Gregory v. Helvering, 293 U.S. 465, 468–70 (1935); see also Baxter, 910 F.3d at 168 (rejecting a similar novelty argument on the grounds that “it [is] well-established that transactions lacking economic substance must be disregarded for tax purposes”). There is no reason that petitioners, sophisticated businessmen who were clearly cognizant of the tax consequences of their actions, could have reasonably expected that the Surrender Transactions would be exempted from this longstanding rule. See Treas. Reg. § 1.6664-4(b)(1) (noting that “the experience, knowledge, and education of the taxpayer” is relevant in assessing accuracy-related penalty defenses).

 Well, as Vincent Laguardia Gambini said here:  “Everything That Guy Just Said Is Bullshit.”

Gambini made that assessment of the opposing argument in a trial before a jury.  I am not sure that would be a good argument in an appellate court as was involved in the case above.  But that is the gist of the Court's holding.  (Actually, without getting into the details, I did make a similar argument in a prominent case when I was with DOJ Tax Appellate Section where, rather than filing an amicus brief, a prominent tax lawyer who had exposed clients if the Government won the appeal, wrote a law review article in the premier tax publication, NYU's Tax Law Review, after all the briefs had been submitted.  At oral argument, I advised the Seventh Circuit of the article publication and said that the argument in the article was bullshit (actually, I said that the article was just wrong and that Government could respond to all of the arguments in the article if the court of appeals wanted the Government to do so).  The Government won the case without further ado.

Taxpayer Advocate Report on Efficacy of Accuracy-Related Penalties (1/18/14)

In the recently issued Taxpayer Advocate FY 2014 Objectives Report to Congress and Special Report to Congress, here, the Taxpayer Advocate included a report titled Do Accuracy-Related Penalties Improve Future Reporting Compliance by Schedule C Filers?, here.  The following is the Executive Summary (one footnote omitted):

Executive Summary 

Accuracy-related penalties are supposed to promote voluntary compliance. Congress has directed the IRS to develop better information concerning the effects of penalties on voluntary compliance, and it is the IRS’s official policy to recommend changes when the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) or penalty administration does not effectively do so. The objective of this study was to estimate the effect of accuracy-related penalties on Schedule C filers (i.e., sole proprietors) whose examinations were closed in 2007. TAS compared their subsequent compliance to a group of otherwise similarly situated “matched pairs” of taxpayers who were not penalized. TAS used Discriminant Function (or “DIF”) scores — an IRS estimate of the likelihood that an audit of the taxpayer’s return would produce an adjustment — as a proxy for a taxpayer’s subsequent compliance. 

While all groups of Schedule C filers who were subject to an examination assessment improved their reporting compliance (as measured by reductions in their DIF scores), those subject to an accuracy-related penalty had no better subsequent reporting compliance than those who were not. Thus, accuracy-related penalties did not appear to improve reporting compliance among the Schedule C filers who were subject to them. Further, penalized taxpayers who were also subject to a default assessment or who appealed their assessment had smaller reductions in DIF scores, suggesting lower reporting compliance five years later as compared to similarly situated taxpayers who were not penalized. n2 Similarly, those whose penalty was abated had smaller reductions in DIF scores, suggesting lower reporting compliance five years later as compared to taxpayers whose penalty was not abated.
   n2 Except as otherwise indicated, all differences discussed in this report are statistically significant (with 95 percent confidence). We note, however, that the DIF is an approximate measure of reporting compliance, and small differences, although statistically significant, may not indicate a real difference in reporting compliance 

Prior research suggests that a taxpayer’s perception of the fairness of the tax law, the IRS and the government drive voluntary compliance decisions, and the findings of this study are consistent with that research. Taxpayers subject to default assessments may be more likely to feel the penalty assessment process was unfair, which may have caused lower levels of future compliance. Similarly, those who appeal may be more likely to feel that the actual result was unfair, which may have caused lower levels of future compliance. Finally, those subject to a penalty assessment that is later abated may also feel that the IRS initially sought to penalize them unfairly, potentially causing lower levels of future compliance. 

More on the Supreme Court's Opinion in Woods on TEFRA and the 40% Basis Overstatement Penalty (12/4/13)

I offer more detailed comments on United States v. Woods, ___ U.S. ___ (2013), here.  This blog entry is primarily for students.

1.  The opinion has a good summary of the state of the law leading to the original enactment of the TEFRA partnership provisions.  Slip Op. 6 & 7.  This context is important to understand the general nature of the TEFRA partnership provisions and its policy choices.  The context is useful far beyond the context of the immediate issue.

2.  The immediate threshold question was the court's jurisdiction to determine penalty issues in the unified TEFRA proceeding.  The penalty in question was one of the accuracy related penalties.  In 1997, the TEFRA provisions were amended to have such penalties determined at the partnership level with respect to partnership items despite the fact that at least one critical component of the Section 6662 penalty has a defense of reasonable cause and good faith -- see Section 6664(c)(1), here -- that must be asserted by a partner at the partner level and not in the partnership level proceeding.  The statutory solution to this problem is to permit the partner to assert the defense at the partner level but in a separate refund proceeding (rather than in a Tax Court proceeding pursuant to a notice of deficiency).  Justice Scalia said pithily:  "Barring partnership-level courts from considering the applicability of penalties that cannot be imposed without partner-level inquiries would render TEFRA’s authorization to consider some penalties at the partnership level meaningless."  (Slip Op. 9.) Justice Scalia then reasons (Slip Op. 10):

Applying the foregoing principles to this case, we conclude that the District Court had jurisdiction to determine the applicability of the valuation-misstatement penalty — to determine, that is, whether the partnerships’ lack of economic substance (which all agree was properly decided at the partnership level) could justify imposing a valuation-misstatement penalty on the partners. When making that determination, the District Court was obliged to consider Woods’ arguments that the economic-substance determination was categorically incapable of triggering the penalty. Deferring consideration of those arguments until partner-level proceedings would replicate the precise  [*20] evil that TEFRA sets out to remedy: duplicative proceedings, potentially leading to inconsistent results, on a question that applies equally to all of the partners.
To be sure, the District Court could not make a formal adjustment of any partner’s outside basis in this partnership-level proceeding. See Petaluma, 591 F. 3d, at 655. But it nonetheless could determine whether the adjustments it did make, including the economic-substance determination, had the potential to trigger a penalty; and in doing so, it was not required to shut its eyes to the legal impossibility of any partner’s possessing an outside basis greater than zero in a partnership that, for tax purposes, did not exist. Each partner’s outside basis still must be adjusted at the partner level before the penalty can be imposed, but that poses no obstacle to a partnership-level court’s provisional consideration of whether the economic-substance determination is legally capable of triggering the penalty.  n2
   n2 Some amici warn that our holding bodes an odd procedural result: The IRS will be able to assess the 40-percent penalty directly, but it will have to use deficiency proceedings to assess the tax underpayment upon which the penalty is imposed. See Brief for New Millennium Trading, LLC, et al. as Amici Curiae 12-13. That criticism assumes that the underpayment would not be exempt from deficiency proceedings because it would rest on outside basis, an “affected ite[m] . . . other than [a] penalt[y],” 26 U. S. C. § 6230(a)(2)(A)(i). We need not resolve that question today, but we do not think amici’s answer necessarily follows. Even an underpayment attributable to an affected item is exempt so long as the affected item does not “require partner level determinations,” ibid.; see Bush v. United States, 655 F. 3d 1323, 1330, 1333-1334 (CA Fed. 2011) (en banc); and it is not readily apparent why additional partner-level determinations would be required before adjusting outside basis in a sham partnership. Cf. Petaluma FX Partners, LLC v. Commissioner, 591 F. 3d 649, 655, 389 U.S. App. D.C. 64 (CADC 2010) (“If disregarding a partnership leads ineluctably to the conclusion that its partners have no outside basis, that should be just as obvious in partner-level proceedings as it is in partnership-level proceedings”).

IRS Nonacquiesces in Holding that Uncertainty in Law is Factor in Penalty Defense (1/19/13)

In AOD 2012-05, IRB 2013-7  (2/11/13), here, the IRS announced nonacquiescence as to the holding in Patel v. Commissioner, 138 T.C. No. 23 (2012), here, that "the uncertain state of the law, without a finding regarding a taxpayer's efforts to determine the state of the law, is a factor in determining whether a taxpayer has demonstrated reasonable cause and good faith for purposes of avoiding the accuracy-related penalties."  The AOD Is short, so I quote the discussion section in its entirety:

Taxpayers Upen G. and Avanti D. Patel purchased property in Virginia in 2006 with the intention to demolish the house on the property and construct a new one. Taxpayers' real estate agent informed them that the local fire department had a program through which the fire department acquired houses for purposes of conducting training exercises by burning the houses and extinguishing the fires. Taxpayers completed all of the necessary paperwork to participate in the program, and hired a construction company to remove the remaining debris. In October 2006, the fire department conducted training exercises and destroyed the house on taxpayers' property. Taxpayers claimed a noncash charitable deduction of $339,504 for the claimed contribution of the property to the fire department. The Commissioner disallowed the deduction and determined an income tax deficiency and accuracy-related penalty under section 6662. 

In the Tax Court, the Commissioner filed a motion for partial summary judgment that taxpayers were not entitled to the charitable contribution deduction and were liable for the accuracy-related penalty on the alternative grounds of negligence or substantial understatement of income tax. In response to the motion, taxpayers denied their liability for the tax and penalty, stating that they had complied with the law and, with respect to the penalty, had acted with reasonable cause and good faith by relying on Scharf v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1973-265. In a reviewed opinion, the Tax Court granted the Commissioner's motion on the contribution issue, but did not uphold the penalty, finding that taxpayers fell within the "reasonable cause exception" under section 6664(c). In determining that taxpayers were not entitled to the charitable deduction, the court found that any reliance on Scharf was "unfounded." The court previously held in Rolfs v. Commissioner, 135 T.C. 471, 487 (2010), aff'd, 668 F.3d 888 (7th Cir. 2012) that the Scharf standard was superseded by the quid pro quo standard for charitable deductions articulated by the Supreme Court in United States v. American Bar Endowment, 477 U.S. 105, 118 (1986). Significant also was the fact that Congress amended section 170 to disallow a deduction for contributions of partial interests in property, such as that in Scharf, for contributions made after 1969. Although finding reliance on Scharf was "unfounded," the court held that taxpayers acted with reasonable cause and good faith "given all the facts and circumstances, including the uncertain state of the law" and, accordingly, taxpayers were not liable for the section 6662 penalty. Slip. op. at 39.