Tax Blog

On December 29, the Eleventh Circuit in Hewitt v. Commissioner gave taxpayers a nice victory to ring in the New Year.  There, the Court struck down a 1980’s era conservation easement regulation and reminded Treasury and the IRS that the notice-and-comment cornerstone of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) requires that agencies genuinely consider and address legitimate public comments received on proposed regulations.

In 1995, the Supreme Court in Perez v. Mortg. Bankers Ass'n, had described an essentially four-step procedure for notice-and-comment rulemaking: (1) an ...