Law Commons^™

Tax As Part Of A Broken Budget: Good Taxes Are Good Cause Enough, Stephanie Mcmahon

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The federal budget is a myth. Despite being a myth, Congress uses the budget to limit its choices by linking its revenue-raising and spending powers under a federal debt ceiling. Through its self-imposed limits, Congress puts tremendous pressure on how it calculates its budget, and that calculation generally assumes any tax provisions will raise revenue when the law becomes effective. However, many tax provisions require additional direction to ensure they operate as the budgetary process expects. That task falls to the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a bureau of the Department. Consequently, limiting the production of …

Pre-Enforcement Litigation Needed For Taxing Procedures, Stephanie Mcmahon

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Courts have opened tax guidance to procedural attack. Consequently, taxpayers who are found to owe tax may challenge the validity of the guidance implementing the tax if the procedure used by the Treasury Department in adopting the guidance failed to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act, in particular, with notice-and-comment. This increased willingness to consider tax guidance's procedural defects offers little to most taxpayers unless they are also given a better means to raise procedural challenges. Under current law and in most circumstances, generally, taxpayers can bring a challenge only after they have been found to owe taxes in an …

The Perfect Process Is The Enemy Of The Good Tax: Tax's Exceptional Regulatory Process, Stephanie Mcmahon

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Many courts and academics critique existing tax exceptionalism or the ability of the federal income tax to be created, applied, or interpreted differently from other laws. Critics have successfully complained that the Treasury Department, and the IRS as a bureau of the Department, issues guidance implementing the Internal Revenue Code using different processes from those required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). At the same time, courts are increasing the level of deference given to this guidance to conform to that given other agencies. This article responds to these critics by urging they re-focus their attention on the objectives of …

The Rise And Fall Of Chevron In Tax: From The Early Days To King And Beyond, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Restructuring The U.S. Tax Court: A Reply To Stephanie Hoffer And Christopher Walker's The Death Of Tax Court Exceptionalism, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article is an invited reply to an article in the Minnesota Law Review regarding whether the “reviewing court” provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) apply to the U.S. Tax Court, the principal court hearing disputes between taxpayers and the IRS. (The Tax Court has repeatedly said that the APA does not apply to it). It argues in part that the question of whether the Tax Court must apply the APA’s standard and scope of review when reviewing IRS action is not as clear as a matter of history and doctrine as Professors Hoffer and Walker argue. The author …

Preserving Fairness In Tax Administration In The Mayo Era, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

One of the dominant themes in contemporary federal taxation is bringing tax administration within the fold of general administrative law. In 2011, the United States Supreme Court unambiguously embraced this movement in the landmark case Mayo Foundation for Medical Education & Research v. United States, in which the Court held that challenges to the validity of Treasury regulations generally are governed by the Chevron standard to the same extent as are regulations issued by other administrative agencies.

There was an immediate and strong hostile reaction to Mayo in tax circles. Many fear that Mayo dramatically tips the balance in favor …

Do Treasury And The Irs Have To Explain Their Choices?, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

The validity of tax regulations has been challenged by taxpayers almost as long as there have been tax regulations. Now, however, we are in a period of unusually high activity on this front. The Supreme Court recently upheld the validity of a regulation under section 3121 in Mayo Foundation for Medical Ed. and Research v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 704 (2011); many cases are testing the validity of regulations extending the six-year statute of limitations under section 6501(e) to basis overstatements (or, as the Service would put it, clarifying the law in this regard); and many cases are …

Tax Court Invalidates New Section 6501(E) Regulations, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

The title of an article of mine in the Fall 2009 issue of the NewsQuarterly asked “What’s Next in the Section 6501(e) Overstated Basis Controversy?” The Tax Court answered that question on May 6, 2010, in its decision Intermountain Insurance Service of Vail, LLC v. Commissioner, 134 T.C. No. 11. In that decision, the court invalidated two temporary regulations that had been issued on September 24, 2009: sections 301.6229(c)(2)-IT and 301.6501(e)-IT.

Treasury Regulations And Judicial Deference In The Post-Chevron Era, David A. Brennen

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Analysis of several post-Chevron cases indicates that every major Supreme Court case since 1984 involving the validity of a Treasury regulation is consistent with Chevron. Indeed, since 1984 every challenged Treasury regulation interpreting a statute in which Congress failed to address a specific tax issue has been upheld by the Court. In fact, no Supreme Court case since 1984 could be discovered in which the Court invalidated a Treasury regulation on the grounds that it was an unreasonable interpretation of a statute. Several post-Chevron Supreme

Court decisions, however, rejected the Treasury's application of a tax regulation to …