Federal

  • July 01, 2024

    US-Taiwan Biz Groups Push For True Double-Tax Treaty

    Top-ranking Senate members should push for the start of consultations on a bilateral tax treaty to avoid double taxation between the U.S. and Taiwan as opposed to measures already included in a stalled larger bill, two groups focused on business relations between the countries said.

  • July 01, 2024

    Nelson Mullins Adds 9-Attorney Tax Team In Houston

    Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP announced Monday that five partners and four other tax attorneys have joined its new Houston office from Chamberlain Hrdlicka White Williams & Aughtry, including a former Texas Supreme Court justice.

  • July 01, 2024

    Longtime IRS Trial Atty Joins Jones Day In NY

    An attorney who spent his entire career at the IRS has moved to private practice at Jones Day, the firm said on Monday.

  • July 01, 2024

    Firm Can't Cast Off $1.5M Tax Levy In Alter Ego Case

    A Baltimore law firm can't stop a $1.5 million tax levy that allowed the IRS to freeze its bank account, a Maryland federal judge ruled, saying the firm failed to prove at this point in its suit that one of its clients lacked an interest in the money.

  • July 01, 2024

    IRS Floats Taking Tax Payments Directly By Credit Card

    Taxpayers using credit cards could sidestep third-party payment processors and make tax payments directly to the IRS under regulations the agency proposed Monday that align with the Taxpayer First Act.

  • July 01, 2024

    IRS Regs Would Tax Overpayment Interest On COVID Credits

    Businesses, tax-exempt groups and some governmental entities could be taxed on overpayment interest received for erroneous refunds of pandemic relief tax credits under proposed Internal Revenue Service regulations released Monday.

  • July 01, 2024

    Top 3 Federal Tax Policies Of 2024: Midyear Report

    Despite an energetic start of the year with the House's overwhelming passage of a bipartisan tax package negotiated between the chairs of the House and Senate's tax-writing committees, tax policy discussions in Congress have slowed down in the months since. Here, Law360 looks at the most consequential developments in federal tax policy from the first half of 2024.

  • July 01, 2024

    Supreme Court Widens Window To Challenge Federal Regs

    Legal challenges to federal regulations can be brought outside the normal statute of limitations if someone isn't adversely affected until after the six-year window of time to file suit, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday.

  • June 28, 2024

    Chevron's End Is Just The Start For Energized Agency Foes

    By knocking down a powerful precedent that has towered over administrative law for 40 years, the U.S. Supreme Court's right wing Friday gave a crowning achievement to anti-agency attorneys. But for those attorneys, the achievement is merely a means to an end, and experts expect a litigation blitzkrieg to materialize quickly in the aftermath.

  • June 28, 2024

    In Chevron Case, Justices Trade One Unknown For Another

    The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overrule a decades-old judicial deference doctrine may cause the "eternal fog of uncertainty" surrounding federal agency actions to dissipate and level the playing field in challenges of government policies, but lawyers warn it raises new questions over what rules courts must follow and how judges will implement them.

  • June 28, 2024

    The Tax Angle: IRS Budget Vote, TCJA's Racial Impact

    From a look at an upcoming vote on IRS funding for fiscal 2025 to an analysis of GOP claims that tax incentives in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act benefited Black Americans, here's a peek into a reporter's notebook on a few of the week's developing tax stories.

  • June 28, 2024

    IRS Finalizes Broker Rules For Digital Asset Sales

    Brokers of digital assets such as cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens will face tax reporting requirements for the first time similar to those for brokers of securities and other financial instruments under final regulations issued Friday by the Internal Revenue Service.

  • June 28, 2024

    Final Rules Exempt REITs From Stock Buyback Tax

    Real estate investment trusts and regulated investment companies may be able to avoid the stock buyback tax but would still be required to keep records under final regulations on reporting and paying the tax released by Treasury and the IRS Friday.

  • June 28, 2024

    IRS Plans To Quickly Finalize Partnership Basis-Shifting Regs

    The IRS is moving quickly to finalize partnership rules that target abusive tax avoidance using basis shifting within related partnerships, the agency's top attorney said Friday, asking practitioners to weigh in on the rulemaking so enforcement can properly target the problematic transactions.

  • June 28, 2024

    IRS Improves Availability But Can Do More, TIGTA Says

    The Internal Revenue Service has improved the accessibility and availability of customer services in underserved, underrepresented and rural communities, but it could do more to expand into other geographic areas, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said Friday.

  • June 28, 2024

    IRS Whistleblower Office Overhaul In Process, Chief Says

    The Internal Revenue Service is working through initiatives to improve its whistleblower program that were laid out in the agency's strategic operating plan, including improving systems and processes and drastically increasing staffing, the director of the agency's Whistleblower Office said Friday.

  • June 28, 2024

    NY Law Firm Botched Gas Co. Sale, Ex-Client Says

    Albany, New York-based Whiteman Osterman & Hanna LLP is facing a lawsuit in New York federal court alleging it failed to properly structure the sale of a gas company and caused its owner to incur an avoidable tax liability.

  • June 28, 2024

    IRS Reminds Marijuana Businesses They Can't Get Tax Breaks

    The Internal Revenue Service sought to remind taxpayers Friday that businesses selling marijuana, even in states where it's legal, are not entitled to federal tax deductions, saying some taxpayers are filing invalid claims for refunds through amended returns.

  • June 28, 2024

    Chevron Ruling No Sea Change For Tax Court, Judge Says

    The U.S. Tax Court will continue to rely on the IRS and Treasury's expertise in the tax code following the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision to overturn the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine that directed courts to defer to federal agencies' interpretations of ambiguous law, a judge said Friday.

  • June 28, 2024

    Spouse's Prenup Payments Count As Income, IRS Says

    Support payments to a taxpayer from a former spouse made before they officially divorce constitute alimony and should be included in the taxpayer's gross income, the Internal Revenue Service said in a private letter ruling released Friday.

  • June 28, 2024

    IRS Revokes Variable Annuity Ruling From 2014

    The IRS revoked part of a 2014 private letter ruling regarding an annuity option with variable payments that a taxpayer had planned to offer, saying in a ruling released Friday that it no longer agreed with its former position.

  • June 28, 2024

    Taxation With Representation: Kirkland, Vinson, Skadden

    In this week's Taxation with Representation, Aareal Bank AG and Advent International sell a property management and maintenance software company, Webtoon Entertainment Inc. and Tamboran Resources Corp. price initial public offerings, SM Energy Company acquires oil and gas assets, and Nokia sells Alcatel Submarine Networks to the French state.

  • June 28, 2024

    Estate Owes $4.9M For Son-Of-Boss Scheme, US Says

    An estate owes $4.9 million in tax liabilities for a couple's scheme to artificially cancel out their capital gains, the federal government said in a complaint in Michigan federal court, arguing that the Son-of-Boss scheme constitutes fraud and its proceeds aren't entitled to bankruptcy protection.

  • June 28, 2024

    Weekly Internal Revenue Bulletin

    The Internal Revenue Service's weekly bulletin, issued Friday, included an extension of the penalty relief for entities that fail to make estimated quarterly payments of the corporate alternative minimum tax.

  • June 28, 2024

    Supreme Court Strikes Down Chevron Deference

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned a decades-old precedent that instructed judges about when they could defer to federal agencies' interpretations of law in rulemaking, depriving courts of a commonly used analytic tool and leaving lots of questions about what comes next.

Expert Analysis

  • The Nuts And Bolts Of IRS Domestic Content Tax Credit

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    Recent IRS guidance provides specifics on how renewable energy projects can qualify for bonus tax credits by meeting U.S. domestic content rules, but also creates a qualification framework that will be complicated for project developers to navigate, say Scott Cockerham and Wolfram Pohl at Orrick.

  • How Cities Can Tackle Post-Pandemic Budgeting Dilemmas

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    Due to increasing office vacancies around the country, cities may consider politically unpopular actions to avoid bankruptcy, but they could also look to the capital markets to ride out the current real estate crisis and achieve debt service savings to help balance their budgets, say attorneys at Cadwalader.

  • Guidance Adds Clarity To Energy Communities Bonus Credits

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    Recent IRS guidance on the Inflation Reduction Act's changes to tax credits for renewable energy projects offers much-needed pointers for developers and financing parties, and should allow them to more comfortably incorporate special bonus credits for projects in energy communities into their transactions, say Jorge Medina and Ira Aghai at Shearman.

  • Taxing The Digital Economy: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

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    U.S. tech companies should watch for important developments in international taxation, including the resolution of Apple's decade-old state aid case, growing frustration with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's global tax plan and adoption of the digital services tax instead, says Joyce Beebe at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

  • Big Tax Changes For Multinational Cos. In Budget Proposal

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    The Biden administration’s fiscal year 2024 budget proposes changes that would materially alter decades-old Internal Revenue Code provisions, requiring a shift in multinational corporations' tax planning strategies comparable to that required after enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, say Xenia Garofalo and Kyle Colonna at Eversheds Sutherland.

  • SVB Collapse Reinvigorates Bank Accounting Debate

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    Silicon Valley Bank's sudden collapse revives questions over whether fair value or amortized cost accounting is the most appropriate for banks' financial reporting — a controversy that's crucial for understanding what information could have helped market participants better understand SVB's financial condition, say consultants at Analysis Group.

  • Brownfield Renewables Guidance Leaves Site Eligibility Murky

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    Recent IRS guidance sheds some light on the Inflation Reduction Act's incentives for renewable energy development on contaminated sites — but the eligibility of certain sites for brownfield status remains uncertain, say Megan Caldwell and Jon Micah Goeller at Husch Blackwell.

  • Get Ready For IRS Criminal Crackdown On Crypto

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    Recent developments at the IRS, from a new operating plan to the announcement of a centralized data center, signal that the agency is ramping up criminal enforcement against those using digital assets to evade tax liabilities — and given its high conviction rate, companies and individuals must prioritize compliance, say attorneys at BakerHostetler.

  • NFT Tax Guidance Shows IRS Interest In Crypto Enforcement

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    The IRS' first ever guidance addressing the federal income tax treatment of NFTs indicates the agency could take a potentially aggressive stance in enforcing U.S. tax laws in the NFT and crypto spaces, which could have a significant impact on the self-directed IRA market, say attorneys at BakerHostetler.

  • Substantiation Is Key When Gifting Crypto To Charity

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    A recent Internal Revenue Service memorandum makes clear that the agency will require substantiation when gifting cryptocurrency to charity, even for relatively small amounts, so donors need to be aware of the important differences between crypto and typical cash donations, says Sheryl Morrison at Lathrop GPM.

  • Senate Credit Suisse Report Puts Attention On Banks, Trusts

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    The Senate Finance Committee's recent finding that Credit Suisse violated a plea agreement struck over its role in enabling offshore tax evasion has important ramifications for banks and trusts, including how they onboard, document and report on transactions relevant to U.S. reporting requirements, say Will Barry and Ian Herbert at Miller & Chevalier.

  • Seeking IRS Accountability For Faulty Microcaptive Notice

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    Like the taxpayers in Standard Insurances v. U.S. seeking to expand earlier wins in microcaptive insurance cases that limit IRS use of improperly obtained information, others should consider ways to hold the agency accountable and provide incentive for it to follow the law going forward, says Joshua Smeltzer at Gray Reed.

  • Biden Admin. Proposals Both Encourage And Thwart EV Adoption

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    While the Biden administration has been aggressively focused on promoting electric vehicles from the start, its recently issued guidance on EV tax credits and its restrictive new auto emissions proposal create a sense of implementation whiplash that may frustrate manufacturers and consumers, says Levi McAllister at Morgan Lewis.

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