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IRS roundup: August 28 – September 15, 2025

by , , , and | Sep 18, 2025 | , , , ,

Check out our summary of significant Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidance and relevant tax matters for August 28, 2025 – September 15, 2025.

August 28, 2025: The IRS issued Revenue Procedure 2025-28, providing guidance on making certain elections for domestic research or experimental expenditures under § 70302(f) of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Revenue Procedure 2025-28 specifically modifies procedures under Internal Revenue Code (Code) § 446 and Treasury Regulation § 1.446-1(e) for obtaining automatic consent from the commissioner of the Internal Revenue to:

  • Change methods of accounting for research or experimental expenditures under § 174, as amended by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017
  • Change methods of accounting to comply with §§ 174 and 174A, as amended by OBBBA.

Revenue Procedure 2025-28 also prescribes the procedure for electing to amortize domestic research or experimental expenditures paid or incurred in the taxable years beginning after December 31, 2024, under Code § 174A(c).

September 2, 2025: The IRS issued Tax Tip 2025-59, reminding employers that they can use educational assistance programs to help employees pay for various educational expenses for undergraduate- or graduate-level studies. These programs can help pay for books, equipment, supplies, tuition, and other fees, as well as for qualified education loans. This tax-free benefit is allowed only up to $5,250 per employee per year and does not include meals, lodging, or transportation.

September 3, 2025: In Medtronic, Inc. v. Commissioner, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated the US Tax Court’s order, rejecting the Tax Court’s three-step unspecified method to value the arm’s length royalty rate for intercompany licensing agreements. The Eight Circuit also held that the Tax Court incorrectly rejected the application of the comparable profits method, explaining that, on remand, the Tax Court should consider whether the proposed comparable companies were “sufficiently similar” to Medtronic Puerto Rico.

September 15, 2025: The IRS released Internal Revenue Bulletin 2025–38, which includes Notice 2025-38. This notice republishes the inflation adjustment factor and the clean electricity production credit allowable under Code § 45Y for the 2025 calendar year. The inflation adjustment factor – and applicable amounts allowable for the 2025 calendar year – are used to determine the amount of Code § 45Y credits that may apply to calendar year 2025 sales, consumption, or storage of electricity produced at a qualified facility in the United States.

The IRS also released its weekly list of written determinations (e.g., Private Letter Rulings, Technical Advice Memorandums, and Chief Counsel Advice).



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The Employee Retention Credit: A court challenge to IRS guidance

by , and | Jul 8, 2025 | , ,

Case: Stenson Tamaddon LLC v. IRS, No. CV-24-01123-PHX-SPL, 2025 WL 1725942 (D. Ariz. June 20, 2025)

On June 20, 2025, the US District Court for the District of Arizona denied a motion for summary judgment that was filed by Stenson Tamaddon LLC (StenTam). The tax advisory firm argued that IRS Notice 2021-20, which provided informal guidance on claiming the Employee Retention Credit (ERC), was invalid because it was a “legislative rule” that was not promulgated through notice and comment rulemaking as required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The court ruled that while StenTam had standing to challenge the validity of the notice, the notice was an “interpretive rule” and its issuance as such did not violate the APA. The court also addressed StenTam’s arguments that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) exceeded its statutory authority in issuing the notice and that it acted in an arbitrary or capricious manner.

Background on the Employee Retention Credit

The ERC was enacted in 2020 as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to provide financial relief to businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Congress’s goal was to incentivize businesses experiencing significant disruptions because of COVID-19-related government orders or a substantial decline in gross receipts to retain employees on payroll and rehire displaced workers. The ERC is calculated as a percentage of qualified wages paid to employees during periods in 2020 and 2021.

Millions of employers have filed refund claims seeking ERC. Since the enactment of the CARES Act, the IRS has issued roughly $269 billion in ERC. However, more than 200,000 claims have been disallowed, reversed, or recaptured, and another 592,000 remain pending as of late April 2025. To the frustration of many, taxpayers whose claims have been processed in 2025 waited an average of more than 18 months before the IRS took action. According to a recent report from the Taxpayer Advocate Service, the IRS will need until at least the end of 2025 to process all remaining ERC claims. However, the IRS may still seek to recapture refunds relating to ERC claims well into the future.

IRS Notice 2021-20

A 102-page document presented in “question-and-answer” format, the IRS published Notice 2021-20 in March 2021 with the intention to “provide[ ] guidance on the [ERC] . . . .” In its suit, StenTam alleged that the notice “defined various terms in Section 3134 [providing for the ERC], identified factors or elements necessary to claim the credit, set minimum thresholds for recovery of ERC, and imposed new, related record-keeping requirements—all of which resulted in the ERC being restricted to a lesser number of businesses than originally contemplated by Congress.” The parties disputed whether the notice created substantive duties and restrictions that carry the force of law. Under the APA, agencies are generally required to follow notice and comment rulemaking procedures before issuing guidance that creates such duties or restrictions.

StenTam’s challenge to Notice 2021-20

StenTam is a tax services firm that advises clients claiming ERC. The firm contended that its business [...]

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The Employee Retention Credit: IRS’s “Risking” Model Faces Legal Challenge

by , and | Apr 24, 2025 | , ,

Case: ERC Today LLC et al. v. John McInelly et al., No. 2:24-cv-03178 (D. Ariz.)

In an April 2025 order, the US District Court for the District of Arizona denied a motion for a preliminary injunction filed by two tax preparation firms. The firms sought to halt the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) use of an automated “risk assessment model” that the IRS used to evaluate and disallow claims for the Employee Retention Credit (ERC), seeking to restore individualized review of ERC claims.

BACKGROUND ON THE ERC

The ERC was enacted in 2020 as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to provide financial relief to businesses affected by COVID-19 by incentivizing employers to retain employees and rehire displaced workers. The ERC allowed employers that experienced significant disruptions due to government orders or a substantial decline in gross receipts to claim a tax credit equal to a percentage of qualified wages paid to employees. Millions of employers have filed amended employment tax returns (Form 941-X) claiming the credit for periods in 2020 and 2021. Since the enactment of the CARES Act, the IRS has issued roughly $250 billion in ERC.

THE IRS’S MORATORIUM AND AUTOMATED RISK ASSESSMENT MODEL

In September 2023, the IRS instituted a moratorium on processing ERC claims to review its procedures, reduce the backlog of claims, and identify potential fraud. Before the moratorium, all ERC claims received individualized review. During the moratorium, the IRS developed an automated “risk assessment model” to facilitate the processing of claims. This model, which is alternatively known as “risking,” utilizes taxpayer-submitted data and publicly available information to predict the likelihood that a taxpayer’s claim is valid or invalid. Claims deemed to be “high risk” by the system are excluded from review by an IRS employee and instead are designated for immediate disallowance. In August 2024, the IRS lifted its ERC processing moratorium and began issuing thousands of disallowance notices to taxpayers. Notwithstanding these actions, the number of pending ERC claims remained above one million as of November 2024.

THE COURT CHALLENGE TO THE IRS’S “RISKING” MODEL

In their motion for a preliminary injunction, filed January 7, 2025, the plaintiffs (the tax preparation firms) sought a court order compelling the IRS to, among other things, stop the use of “risking” and restore individualized employee review of ERC claims. The plaintiffs claimed to be injured by the “risking” model because they were unable to collect contingency fees from clients when claims were disallowed.

In support of their motion, the plaintiffs pointed to having received on behalf of their clients many boilerplate rejections immediately following the end of the moratorium. The plaintiffs alleged that these summary disallowances were arbitrary and capricious, thus violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), because the “risking” model precluded the IRS from acquiring information necessary to properly evaluate the claims.[1] The plaintiffs also contended that the disallowances reflected a shift in IRS policy to disfavor ERC, with the result being that several legitimate claims were being [...]

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FedEx Defeats Government’s Loper Bright Gambit

by , , and | Mar 13, 2025 | , ,

On February 13, 2025, a Tennessee federal district court handed FedEx Corporation its second win in a refund action involving the application of foreign tax credits to what are known as “offset earnings.”[1] Offset earnings are earnings from a taxpayer’s profitable related foreign corporations that are offset by losses from other related foreign corporations. FedEx previously prevailed on the question of whether it was entitled to foreign tax credits related to such earnings.[2] In this most recent ruling, the court rejected the Government’s reliance on a certain regulatory provision called the “Regulatory Haircut Rule”[3] to argue that the amount of FedEx’s claimed refund should be reduced. The case now appears to be set for appeal.

Revisiting the analysis in its first ruling, the court explained the error of the Government’s reliance upon the Regulatory Haircut Rule. In short, the court said that the rule’s application conflicted with the best construction of the governing statutes, primarily Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Sections 960, 965(b)(4), and 965(g). The Government defended its reliance by appealing to Loper Bright’s instruction that courts must respect legitimate delegations of authority to an agency.[4] Citing IRC Section 965(o), which authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to prescribe regulations “as may be necessary or appropriate to carry out the provisions of” Section 965 and to “prevent the avoidance of the purposes” of this section, the Government argued that the Regulatory Haircut Rule furthered the IRC’s broader goal of preventing tax avoidance and that Loper Bright required the court to respect the Secretary’s exercise of his delegated authority.

While acknowledging that legitimate delegations of authority to agencies remain permissible after Loper Bright, the court reminded the Government that an agency does not have the power to regulate in a manner that is inconsistent with the statute, even when a delegation provision grants the agency broad discretionary authority:

Assuming that Congress delegated authority . . . to promulgate regulations implementing section 965 . . . that authority cannot, under Loper Bright, encompass the discretion to promulgate regulations that contravene the “single, best meaning” of section 965, as determined by the courts.[5]

In other words, a statute’s delegation provision should not be interpreted to allow Treasury to eliminate rules that Congress established in other parts of the IRC.

Practice Point: Referencing Loper Bright’s acknowledgment that Congress may “confer discretionary authority on agencies,”[6] the Government has defended (and likely will continue to defend) its regulations on the theory that its exercises of such authority should be respected. But as Loper Bright reminds us, courts have an independent duty to decide the meaning of statutory delegations. Thus, taxpayers should closely examine whether regulations purportedly derived from a statute’s delegation provision comport with the rest of the statute. Those that do not should be challenged.

______________________________________________________________________________

[1] FedEx Corp. & Subs. v. United States, No. 2:20-cv-02794 (W.D. Tenn., Feb. 13, 2025)(electronically available here).

[2] FedEx Corp. [...]

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Upcoming Webinar: Defeating IRS Penalties

by , and | Feb 25, 2025 | ,

The IRS has an extensive set of penalties that it can impose on both corporate and individual taxpayers, and recent audit trends indicate a growing tendency to apply multiple penalties. Join McDermott’s Tax Controversy & Litigation Group on March 5, 2025, for a webinar that will dive into the penalties the IRS may pursue and the strategies you can use to defend against them. Gain key insights into both the substantive and procedural aspects of IRS penalties, along with critical steps to safeguard your interests.

Discuss topics will include:
• Strategies for seeking abatement of IRS penalties and available defenses
• Preserving the attorney-client privilege during penalty cases
• Emerging trends in litigating penalty cases
• Understanding the IRS’s enforcement efforts relating to partnerships

Click here for details and to register.



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IRS Roundup January 20 – 31, 2025

by , , and | Feb 13, 2025 | , , , ,

Check out our summary of significant Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidance and relevant tax matters for the weeks of January 20, 2025 – January 24, 2025, and January 27, 2025 – January 31, 2025.

TAX-CONTROVERSY-RELATED DEVELOPMENTS

January 22, 2025: The IRS reminded taxpayers that they have rights – outlined in the Taxpayer Bill of Rights – any time they interact with the IRS. These rights cover a wide range of topics and issues and lay out what taxpayers can expect when interacting with the IRS. Taxpayers should also know that the Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) is an independent organization within the IRS that helps taxpayers and protects their rights for free. TAS can help if assistance is needed to resolve an IRS problem, if a problem is causing financial difficulty, or if an IRS system or procedure isn’t working as it should.

January 24, 2025: Alarm Concepts Inc. filed a class action lawsuit against the IRS and Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. after being notified that its tax data was stolen and leaked by Charles Littlejohn, a Booz Allen employee contracted to work at the IRS. Littlejohn pled guilty in October 2023 to unlawfully disclosing confidential tax returns and return information between 2018 and 2020. The breach appears to have affected tens of thousands of taxpayers.

The lawsuit alleges that the IRS failed to implement adequate cybersecurity measures despite repeated warnings, and that Booz Allen neglected to protect the data. The stolen information includes sensitive details from Forms 1099 and Schedule K-1. The lawsuit highlights ongoing risks of identity theft and fraud for the affected taxpayers.

The lawsuit asserts that Alarm Concepts and class members are entitled to statutory damages of $1,000 for each unauthorized inspection or disclosure, as well as punitive damages because the disclosures were willful or the result of gross negligence.

January 30, 2025: The US Senate Committee on Finance released a bipartisan discussion draft of legislation aimed at improving IRS procedures and administration. The proposed bill, named the Taxpayer Assistance Service Act (TAS Act), seeks to enhance the taxpayer experience by facilitating better communication with the IRS, streamlining tax compliance and dispute processes, and ensuring timely expert assistance. Key provisions include improving “math error” notices, expanding US Tax Court jurisdiction, simplifying foreign bank account report compliance, and expanding access to the IRS Independent Office of Appeals. The draft also aims to expand the independence of the National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA) from the IRS and strengthen the IRS whistleblower program while protecting the confidentiality of taxpayer information.

The proposed bill reflects nonpartisan recommendations and seeks to address challenges faced by taxpayers within the current tax system. Proponents of the proposed bill include the current NTA Erin Collins and the long-serving former NTA Nina Olson. Olson described the TAS Act as a “sweeping piece of legislation that promises to improve federal tax administration and increase taxpayer protections.”

TAX RETURN FILING SEASON DEVELOPMENTS

January [...]

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Supreme Court Overrules Chevron, Opening Door for New Tax Reg Challenges

by , , and | Jul 10, 2024 |

On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States reshaped the federal tax landscape when it overturned the long-standing Chevron doctrine in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, No. 22-451. The Chevron doctrine, a pillar of US administrative law for four decades, required courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute even where the court concluded that a different interpretation was better supported.

By ending the Chevron doctrine, Loper Bright has created new opportunities for taxpayers to challenge federal tax regulations. While taxpayers have long challenged federal tax regulations, Chevron’s deferential regime hampered many challenges to tax regulations because where there was statutory ambiguity or silence, courts generally deferred to agency interpretations. Loper Bright has evened the playing field between taxpayers and agencies because now both must convince courts that their interpretation of the statute is the best interpretation.

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Supreme Court Rules Against Taxpayers in IRC Section 965 Case

by , and | Jun 21, 2024 | ,

On June 20, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a 7-2 opinion in Moore v. United States, 602 U.S. __ (2024), ruling in favor of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Moore concerned whether US Congress and the IRS could tax US shareholders of controlled foreign corporations (CFCs) on those corporations’ earnings even though the earnings were not distributed to the shareholders. The case specifically focused on the so-called “mandatory repatriation tax” under Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Section 965, a one-time tax on certain undistributed income of a CFC that is payable not by the CFC but by its US shareholders. Some viewed the case as hinging upon whether Congress has the power to tax economic gains that have not been “realized.” (i.e., In the case of a house whose value has appreciated from $500,000 to $600,000, the increased value is “realized” only when the house is sold and the additional $100,000 reaches the taxpayer’s coffers.)

However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, rejected that position on the ground that the mandatory repatriation tax “does tax realized income,” albeit income realized by a CFC. On this basis, they reasoned that the question at issue was whether Congress has the power to attribute realized income of a CFC to (and tax) US shareholders on their respective shares of the undistributed income. This group of justices ultimately decided Congress does have the power.

The majority went out of its way to avoid expressing any opinion as to whether Congress can tax unrealized appreciation, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s concurrence and Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent asserting that it cannot. Perhaps the Court was signaling a distaste for the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax proposed by US President Joe Biden, which would impose a minimum 20% tax on the total income of the wealthiest American households, including both realized and unrealized amounts, among other Democratic proposals.

Practice Point: We previously noted that certain taxpayers should consider filing protective refund claims contingent on the possibility that Moore would be decided in favor of the taxpayers. In light of the case’s outcome, however, those protective claims are now moot.



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United States v. Eaton: IRS Summons Power Overrides EU Privacy Laws

by and | May 31, 2024 | , ,

A US federal district court judge recently endorsed the broad investigative powers of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in United States v. Eaton Corp., No. 1:23-mc-00037, May 16, 2024 (N.D. Ohio). During its audit of Eaton’s transfer pricing of a royalty arrangement with Eaton’s Irish affiliate, the IRS sought performance evaluations of certain employees of the affiliate. Eaton declined to provide the evaluations citing relevancy and legal objections based on EU privacy laws. The IRS subsequently served Eaton with an administrative summons seeking the evaluations.

In the ensuing summons enforcement action, Eaton initially prevailed before a magistrate judge on both grounds. However, the IRS persuaded the district court judge to reject the magistrate’s recommendation and enforce the summons.

The district court judge rejected Eaton’s position that a heightened relevancy standard applies when the IRS seeks personal information, such as employee valuations. The judge distinguished between civil discovery disputes where such a standard might apply and summons enforcement disputes, which engage the broad authority of the IRS to seek information that may be relevant to its audit. While the IRS’s case for relevancy could have been stronger, the judge nonetheless found that the IRS had sufficiently supported the connection between potential information in the evaluations and its audit of the royalty arrangement.

The district court judge also ruled that the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) did not bar the IRS’s legitimate exercise of its audit powers. The judge acknowledged that the GDPR generally prohibits the transfer of personal information, such as employee valuations, outside of the EU. However, the judge also found that exceptions to that prohibition applied where the IRS properly requested the information as part of its audit function and the EU Member State (in this case Ireland) had entered into a treaty with the United States that addressed corporate cross-border relationships and sought generally to combat tax evasion by resident entities. Comity concerns did not prevent enforcement of the summons according to the judge.

Practice Point: Given the effort the IRS expended in this case to obtain marginally relevant information, we clearly see the effects of increased audit resources at work and of the IRS’s mandate to target large corporate taxpayers. While there are certainly instances in every audit where a taxpayer should not expend resources just to fight a battle, the difficulty in cases like this is that absent this decision, Eaton likely felt bound to adhere to the GDPR for the sake of the employees working for its Irish affiliate.



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Understanding the IRC’s Excessive Refund Claim Penalty

by , and | May 8, 2024 | , , ,

Recently, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been asserting the Internal Revenue Code Section 6676 penalty much more frequently in examinations and in court. For example, in 2023, a government counterclaim in the US District Court for the Middle District of Georgia sought to recover Section 6676 penalties in Townley v. United States. And, internal IRS guidance requires examiners to consider whether to assert the penalty in every case in which a refund is disallowed.

In light of these factors, and major questions being raised in high-profile tax cases like Moore v. United States, which is currently pending before the Supreme Court of the United States, taxpayers are wondering whether the penalty can be asserted as a protective refund claim.

Read more here.



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