Tax Blog

Last summer, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals handed the IRS a defeat that the IRS did not take lightly.  The Ninth Circuit ruled that an overstated basis, no matter how large, is simply not omitted income.  See Bakersfield Energy Partners, LP v. Commissioner , 568 F.3d 767 (2009).  The key to the decision is the definition of a four letter word, omit, which means “left out,” whereas an overstated basis by definition is stated on the return, i.e., not left out.  Without an omission of income, the three year statute of limitations applies, not the extended six year period.  The Ninth Circuit relied heavily upon a Supreme Court decision that came to the same conclusion.  Colony, Inc. v. Commissioner, 357 U.S. 28 (1958).

After Bakersfield, the IRS suffered a series of losses.  Not one to stand idly by, the IRS took matters into its own hands and seized upon a small opening left in the Ninth Circuit's decision: "The IRS may have the authority to promulgate a reasonable reinterpretation of an ambiguous provision of the tax code, even if its interpretation runs contrary to the Supreme Court's 'opinion as to the best reading' of the provision. . . . We do not." Bakersfield, 568 F.3d at 778 (citations omitted).  With that, the Treasury Department issued Temp. Reg. §§ 301.6229(c)(2)-1T and 301.6501(e)-1T, which provided "an understated amount of gross income resulting from an overstatement of unrecovered cost or other basis constitutes an omission from gross income."  With the new regulation in hand, the IRS went about attempting to overturn a series of unfavorable decisions.

In her column last Monday, Lee Sheppard criticized Judge Holmes of the Tax Court for, as she put it, “strain[ing] to find a reason to hold for the taxpayer” in the recent case of Container Corp. v. Comm’r, 134. T.C. No. 5.  According to Ms. Sheppard, Judge Holmes "appears to have assumed equitable powers in deciding" the case, and "the tax law is the worse for it."

The basic issue in Container Corp. was whether guarantee fees paid by a U.S. corporation to its Mexican parent in respect of a debt guarantee provided by the parent should be treated as U.S.-source income (and therefore subject to withholding tax on payment to the Mexican parent).  Because the rules for sourcing income don't address how guarantees are to be treated, the court framed its analysis as whether the guarantee fees were more like interest (which is sourced to the location of the borrower) or more like services (which are sourced to the location of the provider).

Ms. Sheppard excoriated Judge Holmes for even contemplating that a debt guarantee could be treated as a service.  To her, it "[s]ounds pretty obvious" that the parent corporation was simply protecting its investment in the subsidiary, not providing a service to the subsidiary.