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How the Home Concrete ruling has hampered the IRS

01 June 2012


US taxpayers breathed a collective sigh of relief in April when the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Home Concrete which stated that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was not permitted to use an extended six-year statute of limitations period to investigate overstatements of basis. But there was a broader issue at stake in the case – the IRS’s ability to issue regulations and apply them retroactively. Joe Dalton explores the wider implications of Home Concrete and why US taxpayers will be hopeful the ruling will diminish the IRS’s arsenal in avoidance cases.

Lawrence Hill: IRS will still issue regulations retroactively

The dispute originated when two North Carolina businessmen, who owned a company called Home Oil and Coal, created Home Concrete to facilitate a so-called Son of Boss tax avoidance scheme in 1999.

Boss is an acronym for bond and option sales strategies; Son of Boss schemes essentially involve creating paper losses to offset real gains.

In May 1999, Home Concrete's shareholders carried out short sales of US Treasury bonds. They made capital contributions of the proceeds of the sales to Home Concrete, creating outside basis, or an interest in a partnership.

The following month, Home Oil made a capital contribution of substantially all of its business assets to Home Concrete and, also as capital contributions, the other taxpayers transferred percentages of each of their partnership interests in Home Concrete to Home Oil.

The taxpayers filed their tax returns in 1999 and 2000,...



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