In United States v. McFerrin, 570 F.3d 672 (5th Cir. 2009), the Fifth Circuit vacated the opinion of the lower court which concluded that the taxpayer was not entitled to the research tax credit claimed. McFerrin, a prominent chemical engineer, owns several chemical companies. McFerrin hired a tax consulting firm to prepare a [...]

In FedEx Corp. v. United States, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 59856 (W.D. Tenn. 2009), a district court in Tennessee rejected the government’s interpretation of its research tax credit regulations for internal use software. In the late 1990’s, FedEx embarked on designing a new client-server billing system that could handle a large number of transactions. [...]

The United States brought suit against Arthur R. McFerrin (”McFerrin”[1] ) seeking to recover a tax credit that the government alleges was erroneously paid by the Internal Revenue Service (”IRS”) to McFerrin. After a six day bench trial, the district court held that the government had proved by a preponderance of the evidence that the [...]

ORDER GRANTING PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR PARTIAL SUMMARY JUDGMENT Before the Court is Plaintiff FedEx Corporation’s (“FedEx”) February 11, 2009 motion for partial summary judgment on the legal standards governing certain research tax credits FedEx claims under 26 U.S.C. § 41. More specifically, FedEx seeks summary judgment on the legal standard for the “discovery” test under [...]