Green Gas Del. Statutory Trust v. Comm'r of Internal Revenue Serv.
Opinion
Garland, Chief Judge:
Rumpelstiltskin could spin straw into gold. Rumpelstiltskin, Inc. thought it could do the same for garbage, spinning it into tax credits. The Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service disagreed. So did the Tax Court. So do we.
I
Every year, Americans generate 250 million tons of garbage. EPA, MUNICIPAL WASTE FACT SHEET 1 (2012), perma.cc/DQD3-YK9C. Slightly over half of that garbage is deposited in landfills, where it is left to decompose. Id. at 2. The decomposition of organic matter in those landfills produces a gas -- appropriately termed "landfill gas" -- that contains roughly 50-55% methane, 45-50% carbon dioxide, small amounts of non-methane organic compounds, and trace amounts of inorganic compounds. See Stipulation of Facts ¶ 56 (App. 369). Landfill gas is both a potential environmental hazard and a potential energy source.
During the time relevant to this case, Rumpelstiltskin, Inc. was the parent of a wholly-owned subsidiary, Resource Technology Corporation (RTC).
See
Green Gas Del. Statutory Tr. v. Comm'r
,
RTC also entered into agreements with the appellants in this case -- two Delaware trusts named Green Gas and Pontiac -- both of which engaged tax-matters partners controlled, like RTC, by Rumpelstiltskin. Notwithstanding these connections, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) stipulated in the Tax Court that RTC and the trusts were "unrelated" for purposes of tax law. Stipulation of Facts ¶¶ 14-15 (App. 361).
Under the agreements between RTC and the trusts, RTC sold the rights to produce landfill gas at each landfill to the *141 trusts. It also agreed to maintain the landfill gas equipment at each landfill. The trusts, in turn, agreed to sell all landfill gas produced back to RTC. Id. ¶¶ 53-55 (App. 368-69).
During the relevant time period, only five of the 24 landfills that RTC managed had operational equipment capable of turning landfill gas into electricity.
Green Gas
,
What was the purpose of these byzantine arrangements? Largely, the appellants admit, to monetize tax credits provided under 26 U.S.C. § 45K.
See
Green Gas Br. 8-9. That statutory tax credit, which Congress first enacted in 1980, creates an incentive for the production and sale of energy from "nonconventional" sources. 26 U.S.C. § 45K(a). More specifically, it provides a credit of $3, multiplied by the "barrel-of-oil equivalent of qualified fuels[,] ... sold by the taxpayer to an unrelated person during the taxable year," and "the production of which is attributable to the taxpayer."
Between 2005 and 2007, when the Section 45K credit expired, the appellants claimed $11.7 million in Section 45K credits for selling landfill gas to RTC. The overwhelming majority of those claimed credits came from venting/flaring landfills, where RTC made no (and could make no) use of the gas.
Green Gas
,
After an audit, the IRS Commissioner disallowed all but $586,000 of the trusts' Section 45K credits.
Green Gas
,
The Tax Court affirmed the Commissioner's determinations in all respects.
Green Gas
,
II
We first consider the Tax Court's decision to disallow Section 45K credits at
*142
the venting/flaring landfills and at the gas-to-electricity landfills during periods when gas-to-electricity equipment was non-operational and venting or flaring was used. The Tax Court gave two reasons in support of this holding: first, that venting and flaring do not satisfy the statutory requirements of Section 45K ; and second, that the appellants failed to substantiate the amount of landfill gas they allegedly vented or flared. We review the Tax Court's legal conclusions de novo and its findings of fact for clear error.
Barnes v. Comm'r
,
Section 45K is hardly a model of drafting clarity. The statute has several interlocking requirements for claiming a credit, four of which are relevant here:
First
, there must be a "qualified fuel[ ]," 26 U.S.C. § 45K(a)(2), which includes "gas produced from ... biomass,"
The Tax Court held, and the Commissioner does not dispute on appeal, that landfill gas is a "qualified fuel."
According to the Tax Court, in the context of landfill gas production, a " 'facility for producing qualified fuels' under section 45K(f)(1) must allow a taxpayer to capture, sell, or even transform [landfill gas] into energy."
We agree with the Tax Court that Congress appears to have intended Section 45K to reward the production of alternative energy, not the release of gas into the atmosphere. That intention is evident in the statute's text, which provides a credit for producing "fuels" and which prescribes that the credit will be proportional to the "barrel-of-oil equivalent of qualified fuels." 26 U.S.C. § 45K(a)(2). This language suggests that only fuels that are capable of substituting for oil -- that is, only fuels that can be used to generate energy -- are eligible to receive tax credits. Had Congress instead intended to reward the release of gas into the atmosphere, it would have used very different language.
The appellants resist this conclusion by pointing to the floor statements of four
*143
legislators who voted to reauthorize Section 45K. Green Gas Br. 27. This effort is unpersuasive, and not only because floor statements are often weak evidence of congressional intent.
See
Nat'l Ass'n of Mfrs. v. Taylor
,
We need not run the statutory issue to ground, however, because the Tax Court's other holding -- that the appellants failed to substantiate the amount of landfill gas that was vented or flared -- more than suffices to resolve this case.
Taxpayers are required to maintain records substantiating their claims for credits and deductions,
The appellants offered three methods for measuring the amount of gas they vented or flared, each of which the Tax Court found unreliable. First, the appellants asserted that RTC employees maintained site logs measuring gas flow at many of the landfills. The Tax Court, however, found those logs unconvincing. Many of the sites had "four logs or fewer," and "the data reported [was] statistically improbable because gas flow and methane concentrations remain[ed] the same over long periods."
On this appeal, the appellants expend little energy arguing that the above findings were clearly erroneous. Instead, they assert that four legal errors infected the Tax Court's holding. We address each in turn.
First, the appellants argue that the Tax Court "implicitly" -- and erroneously -- required them to provide "a full, continuous record ... of [landfill gas] flow and concentration measurements accomplished through a meter." Green Gas Br. 33. The Tax Court did no such thing. Rather, it simply found that the appellants' substantiating records were riddled with errors or otherwise not credible, a judgment with which we agree.
Second, the appellants aver that two of the employees who allegedly prepared 85% of the site logs died prior to the Tax Court's proceedings. Accordingly, the appellants contend, the court erred in employing a presumption that the appellants chose not to introduce testimony that might have corroborated the logs because that testimony would instead have been unfavorable.
See
Third, the appellants object that, given the parties' stipulation that landfill gas contains "roughly" 50-55% methane, the Tax Court should not have rejected the appellants' use of 50% as a default value for assessing the percentage of methane in the gas flow reported in the logs.
See
Stipulation of Facts ¶ 56 (App. 369). This objection is unavailing because the Tax Court gave numerous other reasons why it did not find the appellants' logs credible.
See
Finally, the appellants argue that, even if they could not fully substantiate their landfill gas production, they should have been allowed to estimate that amount. This argument relies on
Cohan v. Commissioner
, in which Judge Learned Hand wrote that the predecessor of the Tax Court should "make as close an approximation as it can, bearing heavily if it chooses upon the taxpayer whose inexactitude is of his own making."
For these reasons, we affirm the Tax Court's judgment that the appellants were not eligible for the Section 45K credits they claimed for venting or flaring landfill gas. 3
III
We now turn to the Tax Court's determination that some of the landfill gas claimed at gas-to-electricity landfills was not "attributable to the taxpayer," and thus not eligible for Section 45K credits on that ground.
See
26 U.S.C. § 45K(a)(2)(B). Because the appellants' dispute with the Tax Court is ultimately a factual one, we review for clear error.
Barnes
,
First, the Tax Court disallowed credits at three landfills because the appellants introduced no credible evidence that they had the rights to sell landfill gas at those landfills.
The Tax Court did not clearly err in declining to accept those excuses. For one thing, any defects in RTC's record keeping do not explain why the appellants -- separate legal entities from RTC -- lack copies
*145
of the agreements they allegedly signed. For another, the Tax Court observed that the appellants managed to introduce evidence of the agreements at every venting/flaring landfill, making their failure to do so at these gas-to-electricity landfills all the more stark.
Second, the Tax Court disallowed credits at the Pontiac, Illinois landfill after June 13, 2006.
The Tax Court's conclusion was not clear error. The appellants' sole argument to the contrary is that the agreement between RTC and the relevant appellant "is essentially a sublease, and the possessory rights of a sublessee are not impaired in bankruptcy unless they would be impaired under applicable state law." Green Gas Br. 46. We need not decide whether that proposition is correct as a matter of bankruptcy law because, even if it were, Illinois law (which governs the contract at issue) states that "the termination of [a] top lease ipso facto works a termination of a sublease."
Arendt v. Lake View Courts Assocs.
,
IV
We next address the Tax Court's decision to disallow the bulk of the appellants' business-expense deductions.
We find no clear error in the Tax Court's findings. The court determined that the appellants could not deduct operation-and-maintenance expenses at landfills where they could not produce any operation-and-maintenance agreements, and where they failed to introduce any "evidence showing that any payments were actually made, such as bank records."
As to the appellants' claimed deductions for consulting and legal fees, the Tax Court determined that the appellants "failed to provide a credible explanation" for why the consulting fees were "paid by other entities but deductions were claimed by" appellant Green Gas.
All of these determinations were reasonable and supported by the record, and we *146 have no cause to overturn them. Nor, for the reasons explained above, do we accept the appellants' argument that the Tax Court should have applied a Cohan estimate rather than reject the expenses entirely. We therefore affirm the Tax Court on this issue.
V
Finally, we consider whether the Tax Court properly approved a 20% accuracy-related penalty under
Under IRS regulations, "negligence includes.... any failure by the taxpayer to keep adequate books and records or to substantiate items properly."
Nor did the Tax Court clearly err in rejecting the appellants' claim that they acted "with reasonable cause and in good faith," such that no accuracy penalty should issue.
VI
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Tax Court is
Affirmed .
It is, perhaps, no coincidence that some of the intermediary entities were named Bye Bye Gas GP, C U Later Gas GP, Arrivederci Gas GP, Buon Giorno Gas GP, Ciao Gas GP, and Adios Gas GP.
See
Green Gas
,
The appellants also deducted business expenses for 2005, which the Commissioner did not disallow. See Final Adjustment (Aug. 20, 2009) (App. 826-27); U.S. Br. 16 n.8.
In light of our decision on this point, we need not address the Tax Court's alternative holding that vented/flared landfill gas was not "sold" within the meaning of Section 45K.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- GREEN GAS DELAWARE STATUTORY TRUST, Methane Bio, LLC, Tax Matters Partner, Et Al., Appellants v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, Appellee
- Cited By
- 10 cases
- Status
- Published