Recently in Tax Law Category

In a consolidated appeal of orders of the United States Tax Court assessing income deficiencies against former business partners engaged in an abusive tax shelter known as "Son-of-Boss", the tax court had jurisdiction over the deficiency proceedings but the case is remanded for consideration of whether certain components of the deficiencies were time-barred.     

Read Desmet v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue, No. 08-1598

Appellate Information

Argued: March 10, 2009

Decided and Filed: September 17, 2009

Judges

Opinion by Judge Gibbons

Counsel

For Appellant:  David D. Aughtry, Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White, Williams & Martin, Atlanta, Georgia. 

For Appellee:  Michael J. Haungs, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.

In an Indian tribe's action seeking injunctive relief from Michigan's policy of taxing transactions involving the tribe and from Michigan's reliance on an informal refund process to sort those immunities out on a case-by-case basis, judgment for Defendant is reversed, where the questions presented covered a myriad of hypothetical transactions and were too abstract and unsupported by specific facts.

Read Keweenaw Bay Indian Comm. v. Rising, No. 08-1585

Appellate Information

Argued April 30, 2009

Decided and Filed June 26, 2009

Judges

Opinion by Judge Merritt

Counsel

For Appellant:

Vernle Charles Durocher, Jr., Dorsey & Whitney LLP, Minneapolis, MN

For Appellees:

Kevin Joseph Moody, Miller, Canfield, Paddock & Stone, P.L.C., Lansing, MI