Justia U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

Articles Posted in Corporate Compliance
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The Internal Revenue Service denied Wells Fargo’s claims for refunds based on interest-netting under 26 U.S.C. 6621(d) between interest on tax underpayments and interest on tax overpayments. Section 6621(d) reads: To the extent that, for any period, interest is payable under subchapter A and allowable under subchapter B on equivalent underpayments and overpayments by the same taxpayer of tax imposed by this title, the net rate of interest under this section on such amounts shall be zero for such period. Absent an interest-netting provision , a taxpayer might make equivalent underpayments and overpayments yet owe the IRS interest because corporate taxpayers pay underpayment interest at a higher rate than the IRS pays overpayment interest. The Claims Court granted Wells Fargo partial summary judgment, finding that it satisfied the “same taxpayer” requirement, although the current embodiment of the company is the result of seven mergers. The companies involved in these mergers made tax underpayments and overpayments. The Federal Circuit identified three merger “situations” and concluded that two qualified for interest netting and one did not. The situations involved consideration of the whether the entities had separate identities at the time of the payments at issue and the amount of change in the entity’s identity as a result of the merger. View "Wells Fargo & Co. v. United States" on Justia Law

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This tax case concerned the procedures to be followed when the IRS conducted a partnership proceeding under the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA), I.R.C. 6221-6233. Plaintiffs, individual taxpayers and limited partners in partnerships that were the subject of such proceedings, filed suit on grounds that the lack of deficiency notices rendered the IRS's assessments invalid. At issue was whether the IRS was required to issue notices of deficiency before assessing additional tax payments from plaintiffs. The court held that the assessments in this case amounted to computational adjustments and therefore, no deficiency notices were necessary. The court noted that the three remaining questions the court put to the parties as part of en banc rehearing each presumed that a deficiency notice was required. Because the court's holding here definitively contradicted that presumption, the court need not analyze those questions. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgement of the Court of Federal Claims.