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Tax Blog

  • Posts by Connor Schlacks
    Associate
    | 713.356.1268

    Connor Schlacks is an associate attorney in Houston's Tax Controversy group. He earned his Juris Doctor and LL.M. in Taxation from the University of Houston Law Center where he was a Senior Articles Editor at the Houston Law Review ...

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Relevant? The Tenth Circuit Broadens the Application of the Economic Substance Doctrine in Liberty Global
Posted June 3, 2026 by Andrew Mullendore, Connor Schlacks

On April 21, 2026, a divided panel of the Tenth Circuit issued the first appellate decision regarding the "relevance" threshold in the codified economic substance doctrine under Section 7701(o).  In Liberty Global v. United States, the Court affirmed the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado’s ruling that the codified economic substance doctrine was relevant to the transactions at issue (Project Soy) and that the transactions lack economic substance because they served no substantial nontax purpose despite the transactions complying with the mechanics of the ...

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