Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Five Tax Fraud Cases Get the Boot From Justices

(CN) - A couple was on the money in telling the IRS to back off on more than $12 million of unreported investment profits, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The Internal Revenue Service's case against Kenneth and Susan Beard was one of five that got the boot Monday in light of precedent set just last week in the case of U.S. v. Home Concrete & Supply.

While the IRS gets a wider berth to investigate omissions from tax returns, the Beards had argued that the transaction by which they concealed profits was an overstatement, not an omission.

The tax court had agreed and granted summary judgment to the Beards, finding that the IRS could not institute the claim without the extended six-year statute.

But the Chicago-based federal appeals panel ruled last year that the Beards' maneuver amounted to an abusive tax shelter, giving the IRS the benefit of extended time.

In 1999, the Beards employed a Son-of-BOSS (Bond and Option Sales Strategy) transaction to artificially increase their tax basis in a partnership interest through a short sale transaction before selling that interest. A year later, the IRS said it would no longer honor such transactions. Short sales allow investors to borrow shares with the obligation to repurchase them in the future, at which point they may have decreased in value.

By using the Son-of-BOSS maneuver, the Beards limited the value of their partnership interest without reducing their tax basis in the partnership. This is advantageous for the taxpayer because the capital gains tax on this type of transaction is calculated by subtracting the outside basis from the amount recognized in the sale of the ownership rights. A higher outside basis means lower capital gains tax and more money in the taxpayer's pocket.

The IRS did not detect the Beards had used Son-of-BOSS to misstate their true capital gains until nearly six years had passed. By arguing for the regular statute of limitations, the Beards, in essence, told the IRS it "was out of luck as the notice of deficiency came too late," according to the 7th Circuit ruling.

While the tax court based its award of summary judgment on a 1958 precedent that turns on a clause in the 1939 code, the three-judge appeals panel found that the code had changed in 1954.

"Reading [the updated section] as a gestalt, the meaning is clear, and an inflation of basis should be considered an omission from gross income such that it triggers the extended six-year statute of limitations," Judge Terence Evans wrote for the court.

But the high court concluded otherwise last week, saying the statutory changes were "too fragile to bear the significant argumenta­tive weight the government seeks to place upon them.'"

Aside from the Beards' case, the Supreme Court on Monday vacated decisions involving Grapevine Imports, Salman Ranch, Intermountain Insurance and Utam Ltd.

Categories / Uncategorized

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...