Tax Court Dawson Access to Simultaneous Opening Briefs in Syndicated Conservation Easement (1/12/26)

Readers of this blog may know that the Tax Court’s Dawson tool shows the docket entries for cases but has historically included for public view by link only documents prepared and filed by the Court. Dawson is now showing some documents prepared and filed by the parties. For an example, I point to the Simultaneous Opening Briefs in Capitol Places II Owner, LLC v. Commissioner (T.C. No. 16536-23 here at ## 264-265) involving a syndicated conservation easement. (Simultaneous Opening Briefs are acronymed or initialized to SIOB in the system and I use that convention here.) Readers might particularly be interested in the Petitioner’s SIOB, at #265 (note that the Dawson system does not have permanent links, so those wanting to see or download the documents must do so from the docket entries which I link above). Added 1/12/26 @ 10:00pm: I have been reminded that, on 5/5/23, the Tax Court entered Administrative Order No. 2023-02, here, that PostTrial Briefs and Amicus Briefs would be available on Dawson to view and download.

Petitioner’s SIOB is 372 pages; the IRS’s is 221 pages. I have made no attempt to read either of those briefs, but I have paged through the table of contents of both briefs and some of the briefs (as discussed below). The Petitioner's table of contents is 12 pages long and indicates that the body of the brief is 339 pages long.

Judging from Petitioner's table of contents, Petitioner offers a generous smorgasbord of all imaginable claims, many of which appear to be Hail Mary arguments.  Gemini AI says a Hail Mary argument in a legal brief is an argument “highly unlikely to succeed but is included as a last resort, in the desperate hope that a court might accept it.” I am not opining that some of the arguments are weak on merits but merely offering my gut reaction. Of course, ultimately the fatal weakness in these shelters are the bullshit valuations that often accompany the syndications to justify the return reporting positions.

Some points I noted:

 1. IRS statement (p. 11):

 55. The 2014 Form 1065 claimed a noncash charitable contribution deduction in the amount of $23,909,000 for the façade easement contribution. Ex. 32-J.

 2. IRS ultimate findings of fact (pp 92-93):

ULTIMATE FINDINGS OF FACT

1. The FMV of the Subject Property prior to the donation of the easement was $2,770,000. Entire record.

2. The FMV of the Subject Property after the donation of the easement was $2,710,000. Entire record.

3. The FMV of the easement donation was $60,000. Entire record. 4. CP II Owner is not entitled to deduct (1) the $10,000 paid for the Clark Appraisal, (2) the $70,333 paid for the LDS, or (3) the $800,000 paid to GBX for “Tax Consulting” as rental real estate expenses, and those expenses were  properly reclassified as Other Deductions at Schedule K, Line 13d in the FPAA. Entire record.

5. The FPAA was issued timely and the assessment statute expiration date has not passed. Entire record.

6. The accuracy-related penalties asserted with respect to CP II Owner received timely  supervisory approval pursuant to I.R.C. § 6751(b). Entire record.

7. Penalties under I.R.C. § 6662 for gross valuation misstatement, substantial valuation misstatement, negligence,3 and substantial understatement of income tax apply; reasonable cause defenses do not apply. Entire record.

Fn 3 As discussed in respondent’s pre-trial memorandum filed on April 11, 2025, respondent is no longer asserting the negligence or disregard of rules or regulations penalty with respect to the noncash charitable contribution deduction adjustment.

Notes on Dawson Available Documents and Tax Court Style Guide (5/9/24)

The purpose of this blog entry is to inform readers (some of whom may already know some of the items) of certain matters relating to Tax Court practice.

 MATTERS RELATED TO THE DAWSON SYSTEM:

1. Documents available Online in the DAWSON System. First, there is no permanent link for opinions. Those wanting opinions or orders have to do so in the following alternative manners:

a. the “Today’s Opinions” or “Today’s Orders” pages, here and here, respectively which are available only on day of publication);

b. through the Docket Entries for the specific Case, here.

c. through the Opinion Search here or Order Search here. In addition to specific opinion searches, the Opinion Search offers significant database search possibilities by types of opinions (T.C., Memorandum, Summary, and Bench), by Tax Court Judge, and by dates (this latter permitting a search for cases that are no longer on the Today’s Opinions discussed in paragraph 1.a.)

I am not sure precisely why there are no permanent links provided for opinions, although I understand it relates to the design of the DAWSON system.

As to search by Judge with no other limiting parameters, the pages display only “first 100 matches;” in theory, this might limit the usefulness for certain types of studies. But within those parameters, certain analyses may be made. For example, having too much time on my hand, I wanted to see how productive the Active Judges were in terms of their T.C. and Memorandum Opinions. I started with a  prolific generator of opinions, Judge Lauber who, although a Senior Judge since January 1, 2020, produced 100 T.C. and Memorandum Opinions from 7/26/21 (the earliest date that the search reached the maximum 100 opinions for Judge Lauber) to present (5/9/24). I then used the tool to determine the number of opinions rendered by the presently active Judges during the same period. Here are the results:

Those are the raw data; I draw no conclusions from these data because I am sure there is a lot of nuance behind them.