James F. McDonough
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IRS Loses Court Case Against Yankees Co-Owner Hal Steinbrenner
Author: James F. McDonough
Date: June 18, 2013
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A court case against Yankees co-owner and managing partner Hal Steinbrenner ruled that he will not be required to repay the Internal Revenue Service $670,000 in what the agency called an “erroneous” tax refund that it mistakenly extended to Steinbrenner and his wife in 2009, a federal court ruled.
The issues go back to IRS audits of the Major League Baseball team’s parent company for 2001 and 2002, as well as amended returns filed by Steinbrenner during the 2001 tax year, Accounting Today reports. Hal Steinbrenner is one of the children of the late George Steinbrenner, the latter of whom settled the audit disputes in an agreement with the IRS in 2007. As part of that agreement, certain alterations were made to the tax returns of the beneficiaries of a family trust, including Hal Steinbrenner’s share, the news source explains.
Following the adjustments, Hal Steinbrenner paid his taxes in 2008, and filed an amended 2001 tax return in 2009 seeking a refund as a result of a $6.8 million net operating loss carried back from 2002. The tax agency extended a refund to Steinbrenner, only to argue later that the amount never should have been approved because it passed the statute of limitations.
In a 19-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday detailed the intricacies of U.S. tax law and said many of the phrases and jargon in the Internal Revenue Code are essentially “nonsense,” according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Merryday referred to the complex tax rules as “the forbidding arcana of partnership taxation, a subject intractably muddled by archaically and chaotically composed – and therefore, nearly inscrutable – statutes and regulations and by the bold proliferation and proud maintenance of abstruse distinctions and obscure jargon,” the Tampa Tribune reports.
The IRS failed to comment on the case, and has not yet announced whether it will appeal the ruling in federal court.
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