S.T.A.R.S. Transactions – Jury Is In, Foreign Tax Credit Disallowed

Volume 4 No 1    |    Read Article

By Rusudan Shervashidze and Galia Antebi

As a litigation strategy, a large corporation that is important to a community may decide that it is better to pay the tax and demand a jury trial in U.S. District Court as part of its claim for refund, rather than to defer payment while it argues the case before the Tax Court. The basic theory is that the jury will not be sympathetic towards the I.R.S. In a recent jury trial involving Wells Fargo, it found that the strategy did not work when the issue involved a tax shelter knows as a S.T.A.R.S. (structured trust advantaged repackaged securities) transaction. Rusudan Shervashidze and Galia Antebi explain.   See more →