District Court holds the § 6707 Tax Shelter Reporting penalty Not Divisible (3/12/16)

I previously reported on a case in the Court of Federal Claims, Diversified Group Inc. v. United States, 123 Fed. Cl. 442, 2015 U.S. Claims LEXIS 1276 (2015), here, appeal docketed, No. 16-1014 (Fed. Cir. October 6, 2015), here, that held that the § 6707 penalty was not divisible for purpose of the Flora, here, full payment rule for refund suits.  See Flora Full Payment Rule and the Rough Edges (Federal Tax Procedure Blog 9/17/15), here.  In Pfaff v. United States, Civil Action No. 14-cv-03349-PAB-NYW, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 30844 (D. Colo. Mar. 10, 2016) [no link available], in a much shorter opinion, the District Court reached the same result that, in my judgment, does not provide anything not covered in the Diversified Group opinion.

Justice Scalia on Chevron Deference (2/15/16)

The Country mourns the death of Justice Scalia.  Despite being prone to hyperbole, he was a force and, I think, generally for good.  He made us think about his statements which were the product of a keen mind.

I provide below some of the more substantive quotes and references in the tax procedure area from my Federal Tax Procedure book (the latest published version can be downloaded on SSRN - footnoted version here and nonfootnoted version.here; I probably will have updated versions later this year).  Justice Scalia was not a tax lawyer, so his opinions in the tax area are few.  Most of his influence in the tax area is in the context of whether administrative agency pronouncement, principally Regulations, are subject to so-called Chevron deference.  In the tax context, the announcements are regulations and other announcement subject to Chevron or some lesser deference.  So most of the quotes below relate to Chevron deference in some of its many manifestations.  Justice Scalia early signaled the importance of Chevron deference in a lecture after the Chevron opinion reprinted in the Duke Law Journal (Antonin Scalia, Judicial Deference to Administrative Interpretations of Law, 1989 Duke L.J. 511,(footnotes omitted) here):

Administrative law is not for sissies -- so you should lean back, clutch the sides of your chairs, and steel yourselves for a pretty dull lecture. There will be a quiz afterwards. 

Five Terms ago, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in the case of Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC, which announced the principle that the courts will accept an agency's reasonable interpretation of the ambiguous terms of a statute that the agency administers. Dealing with the question whether the Environmental Protection Agency could permissibly adopt the "bubble concept" -- that is, a plantwide definition of "stationary source" -- under the Clean Air Act, Justice Stevens for a unanimous Court adopted an analytical approach that deals with the problem of judicial deference to agency interpretations of law in two steps: 

First, always, is the question whether Congress has directly spoken to the precise question at issue. If the intent of Congress is clear, that is the end of the matter; for the court, as well as the agency, must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress.  

Failing an affirmative response to the first inquiry, the Chevron analysis moves to step two: 

If, however, the court determines that Congress has not directly addressed the precise question at issue, the court does not simply impose its own construction on the statute, as would be necessary in the absence of an administrative interpretation. Rather, if the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency's answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.

So, with that introduction, here are the significant Scalia quotes and references in my Federal Tax Procedure Book, primarily on Chevron:

On giving primacy to the text over other forms of statutory interpretation:

Some jurists, Justice Scalia the most visible, give primacy to the statutory text and are reluctant to look beyond the statutory text (for example, to the legislative history) for assistance in determining how the statutory text should be interpreted. fn15  They may discern what they often call the “plain meaning” to statutory text; in such cases, they profess to give little or no credence to broader legislative context, including legislative history (such as Committee Reports), because, they reason, only the statutory text was enacted by Congress and the text means what they believe it plainly says. fn 16  This approach to statutory interpretation is often called textualism. fn 17  If context is relevant at all to textualists, it is internal context (i.e., context within the statute itself rather than context determined from sources external to the statute) and perhaps the context of what the legislative words would mean to the hypothetical reasonable person versed in the English language as of the date of enactment (thus, for example,  permitting resort to a contemporaneous dictionary).  Other jurists find that broader legislative context assists in interpreting text and are willing to look to that broader context, most immediately the legislative history, to determine how the enacted text should be interpreted.  This approach to interpretation has different iterations that go by the terms intentionalism, purposivism and the practical reason (or dynamic) method.
   fn 15 Justice Scalia’s impact in the debate in terms of influencing others to the same position has been questioned.  See David S. Law and David Zaring, Law Versus Ideology: The Supreme Court and the Use of Legislative History, 51 Wm. and Mary L. Rev. 1653, 1659 (2010). Other authors conclude from smaller and perhaps less sophisticated samplings that Justice Scalia has had a significant impact, if not so much on other Justices on the Supreme Court then in the lower courts.  Id. 1671-1672, 1682.  Professors Law and Zaring, however, question the sophistication of the prior analyses to address the determinants in the use of legislative history.
   fn 16 Earlier in his career while on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Justice Scalia so pronounced by quoting a marvelous floor dialog between Senator Armstrong and Senator Dole, then Chair of the Finance Committee, in which Senator Dole denied having written or even read or even knowing whether any Senator wrote or even read the Committee Report and denied that the Report had been voted on by the Committee.  Hirschey v. F.E.R.C., 250 U.S. App. D.C. 1, 777 F.2d 1, 7 n.1 (D.C. Cir. 1985) (Scalia, J., concurring) (quoting 128 Cong. Rec. S8659 (daily ed. July 19, 1982)). Senator Armstrong concluded the dialog with the following comment: “[F]or any jurist, administrator, bureaucrat, tax practitioner, or others who might chance upon the written record of this proceeding, let me just make the point that this is not the law, it was not voted on, it is not subject to amendment, and we should discipline ourselves to the task of expressing congressional intent in the statute.”
   fn 17 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textualism (also containing a fair general description of the concept and noting the difference between textualism, of which Justice Scalia is a proponent, and strict construction, of which Justice Scalia is not a proponent). 

On the use of legislative history in statutory interpretation, I quote from a law review article::

Good Discussion of the Burden of Proof When the Trier of Fact Bases Decision on a Preponderance of the Evidence (12/17/15)

A case decided yesterday by the Fifth Circuit has a pretty good discussion on the effect of § 7491's shift of the burden of proof when the Tax Court may have improperly assigned the burden of proof under that section but had decided the case based on a preponderance of the evidence.  Brinkley v. Commissioner, ___ F.3d ___, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 21838 (5th Cir. 2015), here.

This is cumulative to what I state in the text book, but is probably a good reminder for students and new practitioners.  I incorporate the entire discussion on that subject:

A. The Allocation of the Burden of Proof 

"The allocation of the burden of proof [under I.R.C. § 7491] is a legal issue reviewed de novo." Whitehouse Hotel Ltd. P'ship v. Comm'r, 615 F.3d 321, 332 (5th Cir. 2010) (quoting Marathon Fin. Ins., Inc., RRG v. Ford Motor Co., 591 F.3d 458, 464 (5th Cir. 2009)). 

As a general rule, the Commissioner's determination of a tax deficiency is presumed correct, and the taxpayer has the burden of proving the determination to be erroneous. See Tax Ct. R. 142(a); Welch v. Helvering, 290 U.S. 111, 115 (1933). However, I.R.C. §§ 6201(d) and 7491(a) set forth exceptions to this rule. Under § 6201(d), "if a taxpayer asserts a reasonable dispute with respect to any item of income . . . and the taxpayer has fully cooperated with the Secretary . . ., the Secretary shall have the burden of producing reasonable and probative information concerning such deficiency." Similarly, under § 7491(a), if "a taxpayer [(1)] introduces credible evidence with respect to any factual issue relevant to ascertaining the liability of the taxpayer for any tax," n7 (2) complies with certain substantiation requirements, (3) "maintain[s] all records required under this title," and (4) "cooperate[s] with reasonable requests by the Secretary for witnesses, information, documents, meetings, and interviews," then "the Secretary shall have the burden of proof with respect to such issue." Nevertheless, this Court has held that the operation of this burden-shifting scheme is irrelevant when both parties have met their burdens of production and the preponderance of the evidence supports one party. See Whitehouse Hotel, 615 F.3d at 332; Knudsen v. Comm'r, 131 T.C. 185, 189 (2008) ("[A]n allocation of the burden of proof is relevant only when there is equal evidence on both sides.").
   n7 Although this Court has yet to speak on what constitutes "credible evidence," the Eighth and Tenth Circuits have defined the term to mean "the quality of evidence, which after critical analysis, the court would find sufficient upon which to base a decision on the issue if no contrary evidence were submitted. . . ." Blodgett v. Comm'r, 394 F.3d 1030, 1035 (8th Cir. 2005) (quoting Griffin v. Comm'r, 315 F.3d 1017, 1021 (8th Cir. 2003)); accord Rendall v. Comm'r, 535 F.3d 1221, 1225 (10th Cir. 2008) (citing Blodgett, 394 F.3d at 1035). 

Here, the tax court initially found that Brinkley "did not introduce credible evidence regarding the tax character of the income in issue that merited a shifting of th[e] burden [of proof] to [the Commissioner]" under §§ 6201(d) and 7491(a). But the court ultimately declined to hold Brinkley to his burden, concluding instead that "[t]he preponderance of the evidence, without regard to burden of proof, is that [under letter agreement II] petitioner received the value of his stock and compensation for service previously rendered or to be rendered in the future." Accordingly, the resolution of this issue turns on the tax court's finding that the preponderance of the evidence supports the Commissioner's position that the $3.1 million payout in letter agreement II amounted to compensation for both his stock and his services to Zave and/or Google -- and therefore was properly characterized as ordinary income. 

We agree with the tax court's finding that the preponderance of the evidence favors the Commissioner's deficiency determination, so any error in the court's allocation of the burden of proof is harmless. See Whitehouse Hotel, 615 F.3d at 332; Blodgett v. Comm'r, 394 F.3d 1030, 1039 (8th Cir. 2005).

Addendum 12/18/15 9:00am:

Significant 2d Circuit Opinion on Lack of Waiver of Attorney-Client and Work Product Privileges in Common Interest Situation (11/14/16)

Note, this presentation was substantially revised on 11/15/16.

In Schaeffler v. United States, ___ F.3d ___, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 19617 (2d Cir. 2015), here, the Second Circuit rendered a major decision on the issue of waiver of the attorney client privilege, through § 7525, here, in a common legal interest context.  The Court's opening paragraph is:

Georg F.W. Schaeffler ("Mr. Schaeffler" or "Schaeffler") and associated entities ("Schaeffler Group") (collectively "appellants") appeal from Magistrate Judge Gorenstein's order denying a petition to quash an IRS summons. n1 We conclude that: (i) the attorney-client privilege was not waived by appellants' provision of documents to a consortium of banks ("Consortium") sharing a common legal interest in the tax treatment of a refinancing and corporate restructuring resulting from an ill-fated acquisition originally financed by the Consortium; and (ii) the work-product doctrine protects documents analyzing the tax treatment of the refinancing and restructuring prepared in anticipation of litigation with the IRS. We therefore vacate and remand.

So, how did the 2d Circuit justify that holding?  The opinion is relatively short, so that is the best source for its reasoning.  At the risk of oversimplification, I offer my short analysis of the points I think appropriate.

Schaeffler, a U.S. resident (perhaps not citizen), was 80% owner of a German corporation which attempted to acquire a minority interest in another German corporation by a tender offer.  German law requires such tender offers to at least offer to acquire all shares.  The offer, unfortunately, was made just before the 2008 financial crisis, hence "far more shareholders than expected or desired accepted [4]  the offer, leaving the Schaeffler Group the owner of nearly 89.9% of outstanding Continental AG shares."  The net result was that the Schaeffler Group had to re-group, so to speak, or refinance with its committed lenders.  That created a potential bust in the financing as a result of the decline in the market and German law.  That required coordination among all parties, including Schaeffler and the coordination in order to respond to the crisis.

From that re-grouping and refinancing and sharing among the parties of information, documents and legal analysis, this dispute arose.  Did that sharing among parties with a common legal interest waive the privileges -- attorney-client and work product?

The issue presented a subtlety in the application of the attorney-client privilege in a common-interest situation.  What exactly does it mean that sharing of otherwise attorney-client or work product privileged information among persons with a common interest preserves the privileges from waiver?  The opinion does not provide any black letter law on that issue, but does address the issue in the specific context before it.

The Second Circuit described the common interest rule as follows (omitting all citations and most quotation marks for easier readability):

While the privilege is generally waived by voluntary disclosure of the communication to another party, the privilege is not waived by disclosure of communications to a party that is engaged in a “common legal enterprise” with the holder of the privilege. Such disclosures remain privileged where a joint defense effort or strategy has been decided upon and undertaken by the parties and their respective counsel in the course of an ongoing common enterprise and multiple clients share a common interest about a legal matter. The need to protect the free flow of information from client to attorney logically exists whenever multiple clients share a common interest about a legal matter. 

Parties may share a “common legal interest” even if they are not parties in ongoing litigation. The common-interest-rule serves to protect the confidentiality of communications passing from one party to the attorney for another party where a  joint defense effort or strategy has been decided upon and undertaken by the parties and their respective counsel. It is therefore unnecessary that there be actual litigation in progress for the common interest rule of the attorney-client privilege to apply. However, only those communications made in the course of an ongoing common enterprise and intended to further the enterprise are protected. The dispositive issue is, therefore, whether the Consortium's common interest with appellants was of a sufficient legal character to prevent a waiver by the sharing of those communications.

The Saltzman Tax Procedure treatise, here, has a good discussion of the common interest rule.  Saltzman and Book, Tax Practice and Procedure, ¶ 13.04[3][a][viii][A] Express waiver [of the attorney-client privilege].

The TFRP and the § 6751(b) Requirement for Supervisor Written Approval (11/9/15)

In United States v. Rozbruch, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 19223 (2d Cir. 2105), here, a nonprecedential opinion, the Second Circuit sustained the district court's holding that the TFRP penalty in the case under § 6672, here, did not fail the requirement in § 6751(b), here, for the written approval of "the immediate supervisor of the individual making such determination or such higher level official as the Secretary may designate."  The Court's holding is cryptic, so I will include the entire discussion of the argument on appeal:

Appellants argue that the District Court erred in holding that TFRPs imposed pursuant to Section 6672(a) of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C. § 6672(a), do not trigger the written supervisory approval requirement of Section 6751(b)(1), id. § 6751(b)(1). But even assuming, without deciding, that TFRPs are governed by Section 6751(b)(1), the record here nevertheless supports a finding that the Government functionally satisfied Section 6751(b)(1)'s written supervisory approval requirement. Thus, we affirm the District Court's grant of summary judgment, which reduced to judgment Appellants' unpaid TFRPs. See Thyroff v. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., 460 F.3d 400, 405 (2d Cir. 2006) ("[W]e are free to affirm a decision on any grounds supported in the record, even if it is not one on which the trial court relied.").

Apparently the Court cited Thyroff because the district court had not held for the Government based on functional satisfaction of § 6751(b)'s requirement.

The briefs are helpful in understanding how the Court threaded the needle to get to a summary affirmance while avoiding having to decide whether the TFRP was even subject to § 6751(b).  The briefs are here.

• Appellant's opening brief, here.
• Appellee U.S. Answering brief, here.
• Appellant's reply brief, here.

The gravamen of of the Appellant's argument is that the TFRP is a penalty subject to § 6751(b) because Congress said the TFRP is a penalty.  Appellant does make some policy arguments, but the force of the argument is that the TFRP is a penalty because Congress said so.  And this is true even though it functions, unlike other penalties, as simply a collection mechanism.  The Government's argument is that, although labeled a penalty, it is really just a fall-back collection device for the trust fund tax that was not withheld and paid over.  The applicability of § 6751(b) to the TFRP has not yet been decided, so, rather than decide the issue, the Court said that, even § 6751(b) did apply, there was functional satisfaction of the requirement.  I presume functional satisfaction is something like substantial compliance.  The reason, as recounted in more detail in the Government brief is that manager level approval was given in the process required to approve the TFRP.

Here is the relevant portion of the argument from the Government's brief (pp. 9-10):

Correction to Books on Trust Fund Recovery / Responsible Person Penalty (10/22/15)

The IRS Policy Statement formerly P-5-60, quoted at p. 493 of the student edition and p. and p. 711 of the Practitioner edition, on the TFRP / Responsible Person penalty under § 6672 has been restated as Policy Statement 5-14 and the paragraphs renumbered.  Policy Statement 5-14 appears in relevant part in the IRM, here, as follows:

1.2.14.1.3  (06-09-2003)Policy Statement 5-14 (Formerly P-5-60) 

* * * * 

4. Determination of Responsible Persons 

5. Responsibility is a matter of status, duty, and authority. Those performing ministerial acts without exercising independent judgment will not be deemed responsible.\ 

6. In general, non-owner employees of the business entity, who act solely under the dominion and control of others, and who are not in a position to make independent decisions on behalf of the business entity, will not be asserted the trust fund recovery penalty. * * * * 

* * * *

Correction to Books on Discussion of Transferee Liability (10/22/15)

Please note the following correction for p. 487 Student Edition (in paragraph opening Transferee liability requires two facets* * * * " and in the Practitioner edition p. 701 (carryover paragraph).  The following sentence needs correcting:

As in the pdf texts:

The courts that have addressed the issue, however, determine that the prongs are independent and that the state law prong is the same as applied to creditors generally under state law, unaffected by the transferee status determination under state law.

The bold-faced word "state" should be changed to "federal."  As thus corrected, the sentence should read:

The courts that have addressed the issue, however, determine that the prongs are independent and that the state law prong is the same as applied to creditors generally under state law, unaffected by the transferee status determination under federal law.

The correction has been made in the draft for the next edition of the books.

Missing Graphic from p. 424 of Student Edition (10/15/15)

There is a graphic mission from p. 424 of the student edition.  The graphic is here.  The graphic is in the practitioner edition.

You Lie, You Lose -- Another Midco Transaction Fails (10/15/15)

I have discussed so-called Midco transactions in this blog before where a seller and buyer of a C Corporation with a built-in liability use a bullshit tax shelter to claim to eliminate the tax and share in the tax thus "eliminated." Yesterday, the Tax Court issued a new opinion in a Midco transaction where the parties tried to scam the fisc.  Tricharichi v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2015-201, here:

The Tax Court offers this succinct explanation of the Midco transaction:

Although Midco transactions took various forms, they shared several key features, well summarized by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Diebold Found. Inc. v. Commissioner, 736 F.3d 172, 175-176 (2d Cir. 2013), vacating and remanding T.C. Memo. 2010-238. These transactions were chiefly promoted to shareholders of closely held C corporations that had large built-in gains. These shareholders, while happy about the gains, were typically unhappy about the tax consequences. They faced the prospect of paying two levels of income tax on these gains: the usual corporate-level tax, followed by a shareholder-level tax when the gains were distributed to them as dividends or liquidating distributions. And this problem could not be avoided by selling the shares. Any rational buyer would normally insist on a discount to the purchase price equal to the built-in tax liability that he would be acquiring. 

Promoters of Midco transactions offered a purported solution to this problem. An "intermediary company" affiliated with the promoter -- typically, a shell company, often organized offshore -- would buy the shares of the target company. The target's cash would transit through the "intermediary company" to the selling shareholders. After acquiring the target's embedded tax liability, the "intermediary company" would plan to engage in a tax-motivated transaction that would offset the target's realized gains and eliminate the corporate-level tax. The promoter and the target's shareholders would agree to split the dollar value of the corporate tax thus avoided. The promoter would keep as its fee a negotiated percentage of the avoided corporate tax. The target's shareholders would keep the balance of the avoided corporate tax as a premium above the target's true net asset value (i.e., assets net of accrued tax liability). 

In due course the IRS would audit the Midco, disallow the fictional losses, and assess the corporate-level tax. But "[i]n many instances, the Midco is a newly formed entity created for the sole purpose of facilitating such a transaction, without other income or assets and thus likely to be judgment-proof. The IRS must then seek payment from other parties involved in the transaction in order to satisfy the tax liability the transaction was created to avoid." Id. at 176. 

In a nutshell, that is what happened here. Petitioner engaged in a Midco transaction with a Fortrend shell company; the shell company merged into West Side and engaged in a sham transaction to eliminate West Side's corporate tax; the IRS disallowed those fictional losses and assessed the corporate-level tax against West Side; but West Side, as was planned all along, is judgment proof. The IRS accordingly seeks to collect West Side's tax from petitioner as the transferee of West Side's cash. We hold that petitioner is liable for West Side's tax under the Ohio Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act and that the IRS may collect West Side's tax liabilities in full from petitioner under section 6901(a)(1) as a direct or indirect transferee of West Side. We accordingly rule for respondent on all issues.

The opinion is longer, but that is the opinion in a "nutshell."

Second Circuit Opinion Affirming Denial of Motion to Quash Summons (10/1/15)

We have studied IRS summonses and summons enforcement in the class.  See Student edition pp. 271 - 282.  A recent nonprecedential opinion from the Second Circuit provides a useful review.  Highland Capital Management LP v. United States, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS _____ (2d. Cir. 2015), here.

The Court provides a helpful introduction (footnote omitted):

Petitioner-Appellant Highland Capital Management, L.P. ("Highland Capital") challenges a decision and order of the District Court denying its motion to quash a third-party summons served by the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") on Barclays Bank PLC ("Barclays") and granting the IRS's cross-motion for enforcement. The IRS had issued the summons seeking documents related to its audit of Highland Capital (the "2008 audit"), and particularly regarding losses claimed for 2008 related to two transactions with Barclays. On appeal, Highland Capital argues that the District Court erred in refusing to quash the summons because (1) the IRS failed to provide reasonable notice in advance of issuing the summons, as required by 26 U.S.C. § 7602(c)(1);1 (2) the summons seeks privileged and irrelevant documents; and (3) the summons was issued in bad faith or for an improper purpose. Finally, Highland Capital argues that the District Court erred by refusing to grant an evidentiary hearing on the question of the IRS's bad faith. "We review the district court's factual findings for clear error and its interpretation of the Internal Revenue Code de novo." Adamowicz v. United States, 531 F.3d 151, 156 (2d Cir. 2008). We assume the parties' familiarity with the underlying facts and the procedural history of the case.

Summons Relevance

As in some many of the endless stream of summons enforcement and quashing cases, the Court cites the Powell standard:

The standard set forth in United States v. Powell, 379 U.S. 48 (1964), governs motions to quash an IRS summons. Under Powell, "[t]he IRS must make a prima facie showing that: (1) the investigation will be conducted pursuant to a legitimate purpose, (2) 'the inquiry may be relevant to the purpose,' (3) 'the information sought is not already within the Commissioner's possession,' and (4) 'the administrative steps required by the [Internal Revenue] Code have been followed.'"

The Court then moves to the second Powell requirement -- relevance.  The Court reasoned:

Highland Capital contends that the summons seeks irrelevant information insofar as it requests documents related to transactions other than the two being investigated in connection with the 2008 audit. In determining relevancy, "[t]his court has consistently held that the threshold the Commissioner must surmount is very low, namely, 'whether the inspection sought might have thrown light upon' the correctness of the taxpayer's returns." Adamowicz, 531 F.3d at 158 (quoting United States v. Noall, 587 F.2d 123, 125 (2d Cir. 1978)). A court properly "defer[s] to the agency's appraisal of relevancy . . . so long as it is not obviously wrong." Mollison, 481 F.3d at 124 (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Here, the IRS agent conducting the 2008 audit has submitted a declaration explaining that information about the other transactions was necessary to determine how payments made in connection with a settlement agreement relate to the two transactions being investigated in the audit. Highland Capital has provided no reason for us to conclude that the IRS's appraisal of relevancy was "obviously wrong," and we accordingly find that Highland Capital has not satisfied its "heavy" burden to disprove this Powell factor. Mollison, 481 F.3d at 122-23, 124.

JAT Comment:  Basically, the agent said it was relevant to the tax investigation and the taxpayer did not show otherwise.  Obviously in a discovery context where the proponent of the discovery may not know the actual relevance of the documents requested, a broad standard of potential for relevance is required.

Reasonable Notice Pursuant to § 7602(c)(1)