On September 11, a Ropes & Gray team secured a significant victory on behalf of Veolia Energy Boston, Inc. in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.
Affirming a 2016 decision by the state Appellate Tax Board and denying the Boston Board of Assessors’ appeal, the court ruled that Veolia will be refunded $1.96 million in
In a recent Law360 article, tax partner and tax controversy group co-founder Kat Gregor and tax controversy counsel Elizabeth Smith examine the top five modern tax challenges for digital health companies.
Please click here to the read full article.
On August 16, 2019, the Ninth Circuit upheld Amazon’s cost-sharing arrangement and valuation of its intangible assets, affirming the Tax Court’s 2017 decision. In essence, the holding confirms that U.S. companies transferring all intangibles to foreign subsidiaries need not include global goodwill and going concern value of the business when calculating the mandatory buy-in payment
It is no secret that cryptocurrency holders are facing increased scrutiny by the IRS. In 2018, the agency announced a virtual currency compliance campaign that included outreach and examinations. As part of its latest sequence this summer, the IRS recently publicized that it has begun sending letters to cryptocurrency holders advising them of their reporting
In the wake of the IRS’ Ninth Circuit victory in Altera Corporation v. Commissioner, 926 F.3d 1061 (9th Circuit 2019), the IRS’ Large Business and International (LB&I) Division issued Memorandum LB&I-04-0719-008, informing examiners that they may once again open examinations to require taxpayers to include stock-based compensation costs as intangible development costs under
In its 2019 Spring Term, the Supreme Court published five decisions regarding tax matters, three of which limit states’ taxing authority. In a February decision, Dawson v. Steager, the Court held that a state cannot tax a federal retiree’s pension benefits while declining to tax a similarly situated state retiree. The March decision in
The IRS will continue to focus its compliance efforts on taxpayers’ offshore activities in the coming months.
At the June 2019 New York University Tax Controversy Forum, acting director of IRS field operations (foreign payments practice) Kimberly A. Schoenbacher stated that the IRS will soon launch a compliance campaign targeting foreign banks that have not
On May 16, 2019, the Large Business and International (LB&I) Division of the IRS unveiled the Large Corporate Compliance (LCC) program. The LCC uses data analytics to automatically target the largest and most complex corporate taxpayers having the most compliance risks for examination. The LCC is part of a larger push toward “portfolio management”—ensuring that
In a recent Law360 article, tax partner and tax controversy group co-founder Kat Gregor, tax controversy counsel Elizabeth Smith and tax associate Stefan Herlitz analyze the costly risks that loom if retailers collect too much sales tax including private class action lawsuits seeking refunds of over-collected sales tax.
The authors explain that the trend of