Federal

  • May 03, 2024

    Gannett Can't Dodge Tax Firm's Defamation Case

    Gannett Co. can't escape a defamation case accusing it of writing misleading articles saying Ryan LLC, a tax services and technology firm, engaged in shady business practices, a Texas appeals court ruled, finding the media giant isn't shielded from the claims by the Lone Star State's anti-SLAPP law.

  • May 03, 2024

    US Resisting More Scoping On Amount B, Economist Says

    In negotiations over the streamlined transfer pricing approach for baseline marketing and distribution functions known as Amount B, the U.S. has resisted calls for additional scoping criteria that would exclude more companies from the safe harbor, a former U.S. Treasury economist said Friday.

  • May 03, 2024

    Sidley Liable For Ex-Partner's Tax Sheltering, Ga. Judge Told

    Counsel for a family of business magnates who say they were duped into an illegal tax shelter scheme over 25 years ago by Sidley Austin urged a Georgia federal judge Friday to let their suit against the firm continue, arguing its defense that the suit is time-barred should be done away with.

  • May 03, 2024

    Dems, GOP Favor Extending Pass-Through Break, Staff Says

    Democrats and Republicans are both interested in extending the 2017 tax law's pass-through deduction, which expires at the end of 2025, though Democrats would like to limit its availability to upper-income earners, a pair of congressional staffers said Friday.

  • May 03, 2024

    No Climate Law Corrections Bill Expected, Senate Staffer Says

    Congress is unlikely to pass a so-called technical corrections bill that would change noncontroversial and revenue-neutral tax provisions in the 2022 climate law known as the Inflation Reduction Act, a Senate Finance Committee Democratic staffer said Friday.

  • May 03, 2024

    Feds Can Introduce Prior Guilty Plea In Tax Fraud Case

    Federal prosecutors can introduce a man's prior admissions of tax evasion in a trial over separate tax crime charges because it could show his willingness and knowledge to commit the crime, a Pennsylvania federal judge ruled.

  • May 03, 2024

    Foreign Trust Reporting Rules Coming Soon, IRS Official Says

    The Internal Revenue Service is about to issue proposed regulations that will provide guidance on the reporting obligations for individuals who have transactions with foreign trusts, an agency official said Friday.

  • May 03, 2024

    IRS Details Penalty-Free Retirement Withdrawals For Disasters

    The Internal Revenue Service detailed procedures Friday for taking penalty-free withdrawals of up to $22,000 from Internal Revenue Code Section 401(k) retirement accounts and other retirement plans under the permanent disaster tax relief granted in the Secure 2.0 Act.

  • May 03, 2024

    HMRC Director Rejoins KPMG To Boost Tax Dispute Offering

    A former deputy director at HM Revenue & Customs has returned to KPMG as director of KPMG Law's tax disputes teams, the firm has announced.

  • May 03, 2024

    IRS Expects Updates To Hydrogen Credit Emissions Model

    The Internal Revenue Service expects the U.S. Department of Energy to update a model used to determine eligibility for the new clean hydrogen production tax credit under recently proposed rules, an IRS attorney said Friday.

  • May 03, 2024

    IRS Program In Miss. Delta Struggling, TIGTA Says

    Attempts by the Internal Revenue Service to expand operations to economically distressed areas in the Mississippi Delta have fallen well short of a goal of hiring 160 employees by the end of fiscal 2024, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in a report.

  • May 03, 2024

    Medical Testing Co. Not In Health Field For Taxes, IRS Says

    A company that fills medical testing orders for its customers is nonetheless not a business involved in performing services in the health field for certain tax purposes, the Internal Revenue Service said in a private letter ruling released Friday.

  • May 03, 2024

    IRS May Again Extend Corp. AMT Penalty Relief, Official Says

    The Internal Revenue Service could again extend the penalty waiver for companies that fail to make estimated quarterly payments of the corporate alternative minimum tax, an agency official said Friday.

  • May 03, 2024

    US Trade Position Seen Contradicting Stance In Pillar 1 Talks

    The U.S. trade representative's withdrawal of support for digital trade proposals has caused tax policy observers to worry that the U.S. position on trade is undermining that of U.S. Treasury Department officials negotiating a taxing rights overhaul at the OECD known as Pillar One.

  • May 03, 2024

    Weekly Internal Revenue Bulletin

    The Internal Revenue Service issued its weekly bulletin Friday, which included updated rates for foreign insurance company equations and an extension on excise tax relief for minimum plan distributions.

  • May 03, 2024

    Taxation With Representation: Skadden, Wachtell, Davis Polk

    In this week's Taxation With Representation, L'Occitane International said its executive director and chair is leading an offer to buy the company's shares he doesn't already own, UMB Financial agreed to purchase Heartland Financial USA, Medline said it agreed to acquire Ecolab's global surgical solutions business and The Mosaic Co. said it agreed to sell its stake in a phosphate production joint venture.

  • May 03, 2024

    IRS Can Assess Foreign Info Disclosure Penalty, DC Circ. Says

    The D.C. Circuit on Friday overturned a major U.S. Tax Court ruling that had struck down the Internal Revenue Service's authority to assess and administratively collect penalties from taxpayers for failing to file an information return on their interests in a foreign corporation.

  • May 03, 2024

    Final EV Tax Credit Regs Add New Battery Tracing Test

    The U.S. Treasury Department unveiled final regulations Friday for the up to $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit that include a more detailed process for automakers to trace the battery supply chain to qualify for the credit's domestic content requirements.

  • May 02, 2024

    Hahn Air To Pay Feds $26.8M To End FCA Travel Fees Suit

    Hahn Air Lines agreed to pay $26.8 million to resolve a whistleblower's allegations that the German airline-ticketing company violated the False Claims Act by intentionally failing to remit to the U.S. government certain travel fees the company collected from U.S. commercial airline passengers.

  • May 02, 2024

    Claimed Panama Papers Leaker Fights To Hide ID In €5M Suit

    A person claiming to be the Panama Papers leaker told a federal court they would fear for their life if the court made them disclose their identity in a €5 million ($6.3 million) suit against Germany, protesting a magistrate judge's suggestion that the suit be tossed because the person wouldn't identify themselves.

  • May 02, 2024

    Texas Tax Preparers Cop To $3.7M Tax Fraud Scheme

    The owner of a Texas tax preparation company and her two sisters who worked as employees all pled guilty Thursday to preparing nearly $3.7 million worth of false returns riddled with fraudulent credits, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

  • May 02, 2024

    IRS To Boost Audit Rates By 50% On Wealthy, Werfel Says

    The Internal Revenue Service plans to nearly triple audit rates on corporations with assets over $250 million and increase audit rates by more than 50% on wealthy taxpayers with more than $10 million in total positive income by 2026, Commissioner Daniel Werfel said Thursday.

  • May 02, 2024

    Latest Stock Buyback Tax Rules May Still Have Wide Reach

    The U.S. Treasury Department recently floated regulations that narrow an earlier proposal aimed at preventing foreign-parented corporations from circumventing a new excise tax on stock buybacks, but the regulations still characterize avoidance in ways that could include routine intercompany transactions.

  • May 02, 2024

    Wyden Pushes Intuit To Help Users Get Refunds After Error

    The Senate's top tax writer told Intuit's CEO that the company needs to help taxpayers in Oregon, the senator's home state, receive the full refunds they're entitled to after a reported error in its TurboTax product caused some Oregonians to overpay their state taxes.

  • May 02, 2024

    Nixon Peabody Adds Two Community Finance Attys In DC

    Nixon Peabody LLP has hired two partners, who will focus their practices on helping nonprofits and other clients understand and obtain tax credits for a range of community development projects, to its community development finance practice in Washington, D.C., the firm announced Thursday.

Expert Analysis

  • What Large Language Models Mean For Document Review

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    Courts often subject parties using technology assisted review to greater scrutiny than parties conducting linear, manual document review, so parties using large language models for document review should expect even more attention, along with a corresponding need for quality control and validation, say attorneys at Sidley.

  • Participating In Living History Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    My role as a baron in a living history group, and my work as volunteer corporate counsel for a book series fan association, has provided me several opportunities to practice in unexpected areas of law — opening doors to experiences that have nurtured invaluable personal and professional skills, says Matthew Parker at the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.

  • Private Equity Owners Can Remedy Law Firms' Agency Issues

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    Nonlawyer, private-equity ownership of law firms can benefit shareholders and others vulnerable to governance issues such as disparate interests, and can in turn help resolve agency problems, says Michael Di Gennaro at The Law Practice Exchange.

  • Kentucky Tax Talk: Taking Up The Dormant Commerce Clause

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    Attorneys at Frost Brown examine whether the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to review Foresight Coal Sales v. Kent Chandler to consider whether a Kentucky utility rate law discriminates against interstate commerce, and how the decision may affect dormant commerce clause jurisprudence.

  • Prevailing Wage Rules Complicate Inflation Act Tax Incentives

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    Nicole Elliott and Timothy Taylor at Holland & Knight discuss the intersection between tax and labor newly created by the Inflation Reduction Act, and focus on aspects of recent U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Department of the Treasury rules that may catch tax-incentive seekers off guard.

  • Payroll Tax Evasion Notice Suggests FinCEN's New Focus

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    The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s recent notice advising U.S. financial institutions to report payroll tax evasion and workers' compensation schemes in the construction industry suggests a growing interest in tax enforcement and IRS collaboration, as well as increased scrutiny in the construction sector, say Andrew Weiner and Jay Nanavati at Kostelanetz.

  • How Taxpayers Can Prep As Justices Weigh Repatriation Tax

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    The U.S. Supreme Court might strike down the 2017 federal tax overhaul's corporate repatriation tax in Moore v. U.S., so taxpayers should file protective tax refund claims before the case is decided and repatriate previously taxed earnings that could become entangled in dubious potential Section 965 refunds, say Jenny Austin and Gary Wilcox at Mayer Brown.

  • IRS Foreign Tax Credit Pause Is Welcome Course Correction

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    A recent IRS notice temporarily suspending application of 2022 foreign tax credit regulations provides wanted relief for the many U.S. multinational companies and other taxpayers that otherwise face the risk of significant double taxation in their international operations, say attorneys at Mayer Brown.

  • If Justices End Chevron Deference, Auer Could Be Next Target

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    If the U.S. Supreme Court decides next term to overrule its Chevron v. NRDC decision, it may open the door for a similar review of the Auer deference — the principle that a government agency can interpret, through application, ambiguous agency regulations, says Sohan Dasgupta at Taft Stettinius.

  • Tax Court Ruling Provides Helpful Profits Interest Guidance

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    A recent U.S. Tax Court decision holding that a partnership may exclude interests in a company that it indirectly received sheds light on related IRS guidance, including the proper valuation method for such interests, though the court's application of the method to the facts of this case appears flawed, say attorneys at Kramer Levin.

  • Mallory Ruling Doesn't Undermine NC Sales Tax Holding

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    Contrary to the conclusion reached in a recent Law360 guest article, the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Mallory ruling shouldn't be read as implicitly repudiating the North Carolina Supreme Court’s sales tax ruling in Quad Graphics v. North Carolina Department of Revenue — the U.S. Supreme Court could have rejected Quad by directly overturning it, says Jonathan Entin at Case Western Reserve.

  • IRS Criminal Probe Spells Uncertainty For Malta Pension Plans

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    The IRS’ recent scrutiny of Malta pension plan arrangements — and its unusual issuance of criminal administrative summonses — confirms that it views many of these plans as illegal tax evasion schemes, and the road ahead will not be smooth and steady for anyone involved, say attorneys at Kostelanetz.

  • IRS Announcement Will Aid Cos. In Buyback Tax Planning

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    Recent IRS transitional guidance regarding current requirements for reporting and payment of the stock repurchase excise tax will help corporate taxpayers make decisions about records retention and establishing reserves for future tax payments, say Xenia Garofalo and Kyle Colonna at Eversheds Sutherland.

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