Alston & Bird Tax Blog

Controversies - Federal

The Panama Papers: Taking a New Look at an Old Problem

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On April 3, 2016, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (“ICIJ”) published more than 11.5 million documents connected to Mossack Fonseca, a Panama law firm that helped establish offshore financial operations for some of the world’s wealthiest power players. The implicated offshore operations allegedly failed to adhere to transparency and beneficial ownership reporting requirements thereby permitting some corporations to operate behind a veil of secrecy and avoid taxing authorities around the world. The release of the Panama Papers has prompted a new firestorm of international [...]Read more

“Nobody Loses All The Time”: Remembering Negative Precedents

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The IRS can have a long memory when it comes to rulings and decisions against taxpayers. Even with the seemingly all-purpose economic substance doctrine in its utility belt, the IRS sometimes dusts off old precedents to attack transactions. Revenue Ruling 80-239, 1980-2 C.B. 103, and Basic, Inc. v. United States, 549 F.2d 740 (Ct. Cl. 1977) are two anti-taxpayer authorities that targeted perceived abuses that are now largely obsolete. Nevertheless, the IRS may still invoke these precedents for support in totally different situations. Taxpayers should be aware of how the IRS might use [...]Read more

Federal Tax ADVISORY: Supreme Court May Consider Economic Substance Doctrine

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This advisory discusses how several taxpayers have petitioned or are considering petitioning the Supreme Court of the United States to review their losses at the hands of lower court judges applying the economic substance doctrine.

This advisory is provided on the Alston & Bird website: www.alston.com/advisories/fed-tax-may-2014/

STARS Transaction Rejected

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On Feb. 11, 2013, a regular Tax Court opinion was issued in a case that the opinion said was of first impression, ruling against Bank of New York Mellon (BNY). 140 T.C. No. 2. BNY had engaged in a cross-border transaction called STARS that KPMG created around 2000 in cooperation with the foreign bank Barclays. Barclays desired to obtain UK tax credits and deductions that required making an investment in a UK trust in conjunction with investments by a U.S. bank. The benefit for the U.S. bank was to be receipt as a loan of Barclays’ investment of $1.5 billion in the trust, with a very reduced [...]Read more

Global Banks Being Audited

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All global banks currently being audited by the IRS, which have engaged in cross-border withholding planning for clients, should take careful notice of AM 2012-009. This GLAM explains to IRS LB&I how to assess foreign affiliates of domestic banks that did not withhold tax on foreign stock borrowing and back-to-back swaps, in reliance on Notice 97-66. The basic advice is to assert the economic substance doctrine. Fortunately, the advice applies only to transactions prior to the partial codification of the doctrine in 2010, which happened to coincide with legislation fixing the Notice 97-66 [...]Read more