In a short forthcoming article, I explain how a government loss in King v. Burwell may create tax problems for persons who purchase policies on the federal exchanges during the current enrollment season. With a loss, enrollees will generally have to pay back the subsidies they received from the government. Also, starting in July 2015, […]

In denying taxpayers’ claims for various deductions and credits offered by the tax code, courts are fond of saying that these are matters of “legislative grace.” Congress, we are told, allows a taxpayer to reduce his tax liability through sheer beneficence, and a taxpayer cannot infer a credit or deduction. Rather, his entitlement to them […]

It seems like every time a corporation announces a settlement with the government, someone expresses outrage upon learning that a corporation’s payment may be deductible.  How dare the government subsidize bad behavior by allowing a corporation to reduce its taxes?  Take a look at this Newsweek story, for example. The deductibility of settlement payments actually […]

Christopher Walker’s outstanding article on agency interpretive practice got me thinking about how the tax community interprets the tax code differently from courts.  I was specifically reminded about the gasps of horror and disgust that I received at a discussion forum during a recent ABA Tax Section Meeting. I had initiated a discussion about the […]

The Treasury and IRS have recently suffered some major losses regarding their attempts to regulate tax practitioners.  Earlier this year, in Loving v. IRS, the D.C. Circuit invalidated the entire regulatory regime regarding paid tax return preparers.  And over the summer, in Ridgley v. Lew, the D.C. District Court invalidated some regulatory restrictions on the […]

This week, the Treasury and IRS released a notice addressing so-called corporate inversions, through which U.S. companies essentially shuffle their legal structures to reduce the amount of income subject to U.S. taxes.  It’s not surprising that this guidance came out, given that President Obama himself has lambasted the alleged “corporate deserters” who have taken advantage […]