Petitioner requested innocent spouse relief from her tax liability under I.R.C. 6015(f) more than two years after the IRS began its efforts to collect the deficiency from an audit of the petitioner and her husband's joint income tax return for the year 2000. At issue was whether Treasury Regulation 1.6015-5(b)(1), 26 C.F.R. 1.6015-5(b)(1), establishing a two-year limitations period within which to request equitable innocent spouse relief from joint and several income tax liability under I.R.C. 6015(f), was a valid regulation. The court held that a two-year time period for requesting relief under section 6015(f) was a reasonable approach to filling the gap left in section 6015. Therefore, because section 6015(f) was ambiguous as to an appropriate limitations period and Regulation 1.6015-5(b)(1) was not arbitrary, capricious, or manifestly contrary to the statute, the court held that it was a valid regulation. Per petitioner's request, the court remanded the case to the Tax Court for determining whether petitioner was entitled to an extension under Treasury Regulation 301.9100-3. The court finally rejected petitioner's request for innocent spouse relief under the doctrine of equitable tolling where she waived the issue. Accordingly, the judgment of the Tax Court was reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings.

This appeal stemmed from the 2008 valuation of a parcel of real property owned by Appellant Martha Dunnagan. Larry Varilek, the personal representative of Ms. Dunnagan’s estate, argued that the Board of Equalization overvalued the property and appealed the Board’s decision. The superior court held that Mr. Varilek failed to prove that the property was overvalued. Mr. Varilek appealed to the Supreme Court. Upon careful consideration of the record and the applicable legal authority, the Supreme Court affirmed the Board’s assessment. The Court found that Mr. Varilek failed to meet his burden by showing that the Board’s valuation was improper.

Several Utah counties appealed a tax court's valuation of T-Mobile's taxable Utah property, arguing the valuation did not give proper deference to the Commission's prior assessments, erroneously excluded the value of goodwill, and was based on inadmissible evidence. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding (1) the tax court correctly conducted a trial de novo under the standard of review; (2) the tax court properly excluded T-Mobile's accounting goodwill from its taxable Utah property because the Utah Constitution prohibits taxing goodwill as property; and (3) under the Utah rules of evidence, the tax court did not abuse its discretion when it determined T-Mobile's expert witness was a qualified expert and that his testimony was reliable.

The City of Richmond provides a partial exemption from real estate taxes for qualifying rehabilitated property if a property increases in value by at least forty percent because of rehabilitation. According to the city code, the amount of the partial exemption is the difference between the property's assessed value before rehabilitation and its initial rehabilitated assessed value. At issue in this case was whether the City Assessor's policy of determining a property's initial rehabilitated assessed value not as of the date its rehabilitation is completed but as of the date its owner's application for the program is submitted was consistent with the requirements of the city code. The circuit court held the policy departed from the requirements of the code because the ordinance requires that a property's first assessed value after rehabilitation be used to determine the amount of a partial exemption. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that "initial rehabilitated assessed value" means the first assessed value after rehabilitation and not, as the city argued, value attributable to rehabilitation.

Level 3 Communications is a telecommunications company providing wholesale Internet services to major Internet service providers. Level 3 filed applications to correct the amount of its gross receipts certified by the State Corporation Commission (SCC) to the Virginia Department of Taxation Department (Department), asserting that the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) proscribes state taxation of its Internet-related revenues. The SCC concluded that the relevant statutes do not empower the SCC to establish deductions from gross receipts not enumerated in the statutes, and the ITFA does not impact the SCC's duties because the SCC makes no determination of tax liability and imposes no tax. The Supreme Court agreed, holding that the SCC properly declined to allow a deduction for Internet-related revenues that the General Assembly did not provide for in the gross receipts statute and that to allow for such a deduction would have required the SCC to exceed its statutory authority. Affirmed.

Rather than undertaking appeals from the assessment of taxes on its gas assets in accordance with R.I. Gen. Laws 44-5-26(a), plaintiff electric company sought declaratory and injunctive relief directly from the superior court. Plaintiff sued the taxing authorities of most of Rhode Island's municipalities, requesting a declaration that because the municipalities failed to tax plaintiff's gas assets as tangible personal property, they assessed illegal taxes. The trial justice dismissed all but one count of plaintiff's complaint, holding that plaintiff did not file a timely appeal or invoke the court's equitable jurisdiction. The Supreme Court affirmed. Because plaintiff elected to bypass the applicable review procedures and proceed directly to the superior court, plaintiff failed to establish that it had been assessed an illegal tax. Thus, plaintiff could not avail itself of the direct appeal to the superior court.

Real party in interest, as personal representative of his son's estate, filed a complaint in 2006 seeking a refund of state personal income taxes for the years 2000 and 2001, alleging that the estate had paid over $15 million as part of a tax amnesty program, reserving the right to seek a refund, and demanding a jury trial. At issue was whether a taxpayer had the right to a jury trial in an action for a refund of state income taxes. The court held that article I, section 16 of the California Constitution did not require a jury trial in a statutory action for a state income tax refund where the statutory cause of action for a tax refund was a purely legislative creation with no foundation in contract and where such statutory right of action occupied a different class from the common law form of action in which a jury trial was available.

Following a jury trial, appellant Michael Skarbinski was convicted on several counts, all of which arose from appellant's filing requests for tax refunds claiming no taxable income for three years when appellant had received substantial income. The supreme judicial court affirmed, holding (1) the court did not err when it instructed the jury on principles of tax law, and the court's instructions did not infringe upon the jury's role as fact-finder; (2) the court did not err in instructing the jury that if appellant believed the tax laws to be unconstitutional or illegal, or otherwise disagreed with them without an objectively reasonable good faith belief, his belief was not a defense to the charges; (3) the State's closing argument was not inflammatory and it did not improperly interject irrelevant issues into the case; and (4) the jury could have found each element of the offenses charged beyond a reasonable doubt, and the evidence was sufficient to support the convictions.

The Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) appealed a Tax Court decision that granted summary judgment in favor of Salman Ranch, Ltd. The Partnership owned a ranch in New Mexico. The Partners individually entered into short sales involving United States Treasury Notes. With the cash proceeds from the sales, the partners satisfied some debt obligations and bought replacement bonds. In 1999, the Partnership increased its basis in the ranch to reflect proceeds from the short sales. However, they did not account for the offset obligation used to close the short sales. The IRS eventually determined these transactions artificially inflated the Partnership's basis in the ranch. The IRS issued Notices of Final Partnership Administrative Adjustments (FPAAs) to adjust the Partnership's 1999, 2001 and 2002 tax returns to correct for the alleged overstatement of basis. The FPAAs were issued more than three but fewer than six years after the returns were first filed. The Partnership challenged the FPAAs, arguing that they were issued outside the statute of limitations. The Court of Federal Claims found in favor of the IRS. The Federal Circuit Court reversed. Upon careful consideration of the arguments and the applicable legal authority, the Tenth Circuit reversed the district court's decision. The Court concluded that the statute of limitations had not run on the 2001 or 2002 FPAAs. The Court remanded the case to the tax court for further proceedings.

This appeal arose from a franchise tax dispute involving the apportionment of receipts from the licensing of geophysical and seismic data to customers in Texas. Petitioner, a taxpayer, complained that respondent mischaracterized these receipts as Texas business and thereby had erroneously increased its franchise tax burden. At issue was whether these receipts should be categorized as receipts from the use of a license or as receipts from the sale of an intangible asset. The court held that the court of appeals erred in upholding respondent's franchise tax assessment because petitioner's receipts from licensing its seismic data were not receipts from the use of a license in the state within Tex. Tax Code 171.103(a)(4)'s meaning. Receipts from this intangible asset was not allocated according to its place of use under subsection (4) but rather, were included under subsection (6)'s catch-all provision as a limited sale of an intangible and allocated under the location of the payor rule. Accordingly, the court reversed the judgment and remanded for further proceedings.