TONE, Circuit Judge.
This case involves two provisions of the Internal Revenue Code concerning the taxation of mutual casualty insurance companies: § 832(b)(5), which allows a “losses incurred” deduction from the companies’ underwriting income; and § 821(e), which permits certain companies a “special transitional underwriting loss” deduction from its statutory underwriting income. The issues [337]*337presented are highly technical and can be adequately stated only after a more detailed description of the statute. The Tax Court ruled in favor of the taxpayer on one issue and in favor of the Commissioner on another. We reverse and remand in part and affirm in part.
Mutual casualty insurance companies, including the taxpayer here, Home Mutual Insurance Company, became subject to §§ 832(b)(5) and 821(d) with the passage of the Revenue Act of 1962, Pub.L. No. 87-834, 76 Stat. 960. Before 1963 mutual casualty insurance companies were taxed under a formula that did not include any deduction for underwriting losses or for a special transitional underwriting loss.1 Beginning with that year, however, these companies have been taxed under a method established by the Revenue Act of 1962, in which a company’s taxable income is comprised of three components — taxable investment income, statutory underwriting income, and funds returned from the protection-against-loss account.2 The statutory underwriting income component consists essentially of underwriting income as it has been computed for nonmutual casualty insurance companies since the 1920’s, less a deduction for funds set aside in a protection-against-loss account.3 Under the decades-old portion of the computation scheme, underwriting income is defined as the amount of premiums earned during the year, less expenses and “losses incurred.” I.R.C. § 832(b)(3). The “losses incurred” deduction in turn consists of losses paid during the taxable year netted against cash salvage and reinsurance recoveries, plus any increase (or minus any decrease) during the year in unpaid losses outstanding, minus any increase (or plus any decrease) in salvage and reinsurance recoverable outstanding. I.R.C. § 832(b)(5); Treas.Reg. § 1.832-4(c).4 The 1962 Revenue Act also provided companies that had experienced underwriting losses during each of the five preceding taxable years with a special transitional underwriting loss deduction to allow them to garner some tax advantage from those recent losses, which had been irrelevant under the prior statute.5
The issues before us arose following the Commissioner’s assertion of deficiencies in Home Mutual’s tax liability for 1966 and 1971 totaling $48,530.71.6 In a petition for a redetermination of the deficiencies, Home Mutual contended, first, that the Commissioner had erroneously failed to allow it during the years 1963-1966 and in 1971 to lower its figure for unpaid losses outstanding at the start of each year by the amount by which pre-1963 claims settled during the year had been overestimated. Such a reduction would have increased Home Mutual’s losses-incurred deduction for those years, thereby decreasing its underwriting [338]*338income and thus its tax. Alternatively, Home Mutual argued that its exclusion in its original tax returns during 1963-1966 of cash subrogation recoveries from pre-1963 claims was proper because the underwriting losses incurred on those claims had not lessened its taxes.7 Home Mutual also raised another claim unrelated to the first two, viz., that it should have been allowed to deduct the special transitional underwriting loss from total underwriting gain rather than from underwriting gain less the protection-against-loss deduction.
In a so-called “reviewed opinion,” the Tax Court, with one judge dissenting, ruled in favor of Home Mutual on the proper treatment of “unpaid losses,” which made it unnecessary to decide the cash subrogation recoveries issue. The court unanimously agreed with the Commissioner on the special transitional underwriting loss issue.8 The Commissioner appeals the determination of the unpaid loss issue; Home Mutual cross-appeals the Tax Court’s interpretation of the special transitional underwriting loss and asks that, if we reverse on the unpaid losses issue, we rule in its favor on the treatment of subrogation recoveries. We reverse the Tax Court’s resolution of the unpaid losses dispute, remand the subrogation recoveries issue, and affirm the court’s ruling on the special transitional underwriting loss.
I
Home Mutual’s contentions with respect to the unpaid loss deduction are ultimately grounded in the inequity it perceives in the Code’s treatment of its overestimate of unpaid losses outstanding as of December 81, 1962. That overestimate, totaling $402,-314.59,9 resulted in smaller “losses incurred” deductions in later years than a totally accurate estimate of unpaid losses would have, because, in every year that some of those claims were settled, the unpaid-losses-outstanding account was decreased not only by the amounts paid on those settlements, which were offset by a corresponding increase in paid losses, but also by the overestimates on the claims.
The similar effect in the years of settlement of post-1962 overestimated losses is more than compensated for by the increase in the unpaid losses part of the losses-incurred deduction that the overestimates cause in the years in which the unpaid losses were incurred. In those years the overestimates increase the “unpaid losses outstanding at the end of the taxable year,” I.R.C. § 832(b)(5)(B), and thus the losses-incurred deduction. Accordingly, for years after 1962, overestimating defers taxable income by allowing a company to accelerate its unpaid losses in this manner.
Although Home Mutual cannot obtain a similar acceleration of losses with respect to pre-1963 claims because those losses were then irrelevant to the computation of taxable income, it wishes to avoid the “erroneous” decrease of the deduction in the years it settled overestimated pre-1963 losses. By lowering its “unpaid losses outstanding at the end of the preceding taxable year” by the amounts by which pre-1963 claims settled during the year had been overestimated, Home Mutual argues, it will obtain as a deduction its “true” amount of losses incurred since 1962.
Home Mutual’s position can be illuminated by an example. Assume first that the company was notified of a claim in 1963 and estimated that $10,000 would be required to settle the claim. That $10,000 would be added to the unpaid-losses-outstanding account. By raising the balance of unpaid [339]*339losses outstanding, this addition would increase the losses-incurred deduction from premiums earned to arrive at underwriting income for 1963, thus conferring a tax benefit for that year. The $10,000 would then be carried as an unpaid loss outstanding until paid. Assume the claim is settled in 1965. If the amount of the settlement is $10,000, that amount is removed from unpaid losses outstanding and paid out with no further tax consequences.10 If, however, the claim is settled for $8000, there are tax consequences in 1965: assuming sufficient income from premiums during the year, the $2000 overestimate is taxed as ordinary income.11 Now assume that Home Mutual had learned of the claim in 1962, not 1963, and therefore had added the $10,000 to its unpaid losses outstanding in the earlier year. Under the pre-1963 tax scheme, this addition would have had no tax consequences. See note 1 supra. If the claim is then settled for $8000 in 1965, the company, under the literal terms of the statute, would have to pay tax on the $2000 overestimate in 1965 as above. While in the first instance the taxation of the $2000 occurs only after a company has received a corresponding tax benefit in 1963 by including that amount in the losses-incurred deduction for that year, in the second case taxation of the $2000 would occur despite the absence of such a prior tax benefit. As a remedy, Home Mutual wishes, in computing its taxes for 1965, to lower its unpaid losses outstanding at the beginning of 1965 by $2000 and thereby prevent its inclusion in taxable income in that year.12
Home Mutual’s argument is made m the context of comprehensive, technical, and very specific provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. Especially when dealing with provisions of this kind, and when no support for the theory asserted by the taxpayer can be found in the language of the statute, the appurtenant regulations, or the legislative history, the courts should ordinarily “resist the temptation to attempt any creative rewriting of the Internal Revenue Code."13
There is nothing in the statutory provision involved in the case at bar, its regulations, or its legislative history revealing even a glimmer of any intent that Home Mutual would be allowed to make the retroactive adjustment it wishes. The statutory formula for computing the losses-incurred deduction was first enacted in § 246(b)(6) of the Revenue Act of 1921, ch. 136, 42 Stat. 227, 263, for use in taxing stock casualty insurance companies and has been reenacted since then without substantial change. As the Tax Court pointed out, “[t]he 1962 Act was designed to tax the mutual companies on much the same basis as the stock companies.” 70 T.C. at 945-46. The first regulations concerning the losses-incurred deduction, which were adopted in 1944, expressly recognized that the unpaid-losses-outstanding component of the deduction is an estimate of the total amount of losses incurred but unpaid at year’s end.14 Given the longstanding existence of these regulations interpreting a statutory provision that has remained unchanged, they are deemed to have received congressional ap[340]*340proval and have the effect of law. See United States v. Correll, 389 U.S. 299, 305-06, 88 S.Ct. 445, 448-49, 19 L.Ed.2d 537 (1967); Hanover Insurance Co. v. Commissioner, 598 F.2d 1211, 1219 n.17 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 915, 100 S.Ct. 229, 62 L.Ed.2d 169 (1979). In addition, the casualty insurance industry has adapted its own reporting forms for use under the regulations, so that the forms now serve as the basis on which a company’s income is determined. See Hanover Insurance Co. v. Commissioner, 65 T.C. 715, 720-21 (1976);15 Continental Insurance Co. v. United States, 474 F.2d 661, 666-67, 200 Ct.Cl. 552 (1973). Since the unpaid losses component of the losses-incurred deduction is merely an estimate, the only allowable adjustment by either the Commissioner or taxpayer would be to correct a figure that was not a “fair and reasonable” estimate given the facts at the time the estimate was made. See Hanover Insurance Co. v. Commissioner, 598 F.2d 1211 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 915, 100 S.Ct. 229, 62 L.Ed.2d 169 (1979); Treas.Reg. § 1.832-4(b).16 Home Mutual admits that no legislative history of the 1962 Revenue Act supports its attempt to go outside the language of the statute. In light of this absence of statutory support for the adjustment desired by Home Mutual, only the existence of a principled extra-statutory ground for adjustment could persuade us to go beyond the express bounds of the statute.
We consider in turn two theories that have been advanced to support the adjustment Home Mutual seeks. The Tax Court majority’s theory, which Home Mutual does not attempt to support in this court, was that the adjustment is analogous to permissible retroactive adjustments of inventories and also to the adjustment of bad debt reserve permitted by Revenue Ruling 58-126, 1958-1 C.B. 13. Home Mutual presents an argument that the Tax Court appeared to reject, that the tax benefit rule allows such an adjustment. We are not persuaded by the reasoning of the Tax Court majority or Home Mutual.
A.
In each of the cases the Tax Court majority believed analogous, a taxpayer has been allowed to adjust the value of opening inventory (the closing inventory of the preceding year) after its original calculation. See, e. g., Elm City Nursery Co. v. Commissioner, 6 B.T.A. 89 (1927), acq., VI-2 C.B. 2; Baumann Rubber Co. v. Commissioner, 4 B.T.A. 671 (1926). These adjustments have, however, served only to correct errors in reporting facts ascertainable at the time of the original calculation. In Baumann Rubber Co. the taxpayer had incorrectly counted the items in the inventory, an error that was later discovered and that the Board of Tax Appeals allowed the taxpayer to correct. In Elm City Nursery Co. the value of the inventory had been ascertainable, but the taxpayer had deliberately inflated the figures for the purpose of borrowing funds. When the taxpayer demonstrated that the actual inventory value had been less, the Board of Appeals allowed the taxpayer to reduce its inventory figures accordingly and arrive at an accurate amount for cost of goods sold.
In the case at bar, however, taxpayer is not attempting to adjust its unpaid losses outstanding to an amount that could have been determined from facts existing at the [341]*341time of the original estimate. Strictly analogous to those cases in this situation would be a showing by taxpayer that, given the facts existing at the end of the year preceding the taxable year, its estimate of unpaid losses was unreasonable. See Hanover Insurance Co. v. Commissioner, 598 F.2d 1211 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 100 S.Ct. 229, 62 L.Ed.2d 169 (1979). Instead, Home Mutual here wishes to change the estimate of an unpaid loss to the amount actually paid to settle that particular claim. Courts have not permitted taxpayers to make inventory adjustments because of subsequent events. See Estate of Stauffer v. Commissioner, 48 T.C. 277 (1967), rev’d on other grounds, 403 F.2d 611 (9th Cir. 1968).
This reasoning has the additional defect of not being limited in principle to application to the estimates of unpaid losses incurred prior to 1963. The estimate of an unpaid loss incurred in 1965, for instance, could also prove to be higher than the actual amount of a settlement ultimately reached in a later year. However, nothing in this theory would prevent the taxpayer from reducing its opening unpaid-losses-outstanding account for the year of settlement by the amount of the overestimate and thereby change the deferment of income contemplated by the congressional scheme into an outright exemption.17 Such a rationale plainly cannot be accepted.
Likewise unpersuasive is the analogy to Revenue Ruling 58-126, which permitted a savings and loan association that first became subject to taxation in 1952 to transfer the amount by which, its pre-1952 loss reserve was found to be excessive from the reserve to its undivided profits without producing gross income.18 Although the loss reserve of a savings and loan association is similar to a mutual casualty insurance company’s unpaid loss account, the Code provisions allowing the two deductions are structured differently. A loss reserve is merely a method of utilizing the bad debt deduction. A taxpayer may deduct worthless debts in the year they become worthless pursuant to § 166. Alternatively, under § 593 a taxpayer may deduct a reasonable amount each year to be set aside to cover worthless debts generally.19 When specific debts do become worthless, they are charged off against the reserve with no direct tax consequences.20
[342]*342In similar fashion a mutual casualty insurance company will set aside funds it estimates are necessary to cover pending claims.21 The Code, however, does not treat these funds as a § 593 loss reserve. If it did, a taxpayer would have a choice: either it could deduct specific losses when they accrue or are paid or it could deduct a reasonable amount each year as an addition to a reserve and merely charge off against the reserve all losses when actually paid. Instead, a taxpayer has no choice; only one statutory method exists for deducting underwriting losses of mutual casualty insurance companies. Under that method, when a loss is “incurred” through the assertion of a claim but not paid during the year, the estimated amount thereof is added to the unpaid-losses-outstanding “reserve”; in the later year in which the claim is actually paid, the amount of the estimate is subtracted from unpaid losses outstanding and the amount of the payment is added to losses paid. Another contrast with the § 593 reserve is that none of the losses actually paid during a taxable year is merely charged off against a reserve. All losses paid, including those from prior years that have been carried as part of the unpaid-losses-outstanding “reserve,” are added into the losses-incurred deduction.22 Another difference between the two statutory mechanisms is the different significance attached to changes in the reserve. The only change in a § 593 reserve with direct tax consequences is the addition of a reasonable amount during the year; the actual payment of a loss is charged off against the reserve but has no direct tax consequences. In contrast, all modifications of an unpaid-losses-outstanding reserve directly affect the amount of a taxpayer’s deduction for losses incurred. Indeed, if the balance of the unpaid-losses-outstanding reserve decreased over the course of the taxable year, the losses-incurred deduction itself is diminished for that year.
The differing structures of the statutory schemes directly affect the issue under consideration here. Under the provisions of the statute relevant in Revenue Ruling 58-126, the loss reserves accumulated before 1952 were irrelevant to computation of the savings and loan association’s income beginning that year.23 In contrast, the express terms of § 832(b)(5) make the amount of the unpaid losses outstanding estimated for pre-1963 claims relevant in determining taxable income after 1962. Thus, while savings and loan association income set aside in a loss reserve when that income is not taxable may not be taxed if returned to undivided profits in a year in which income of a like kind is taxed, that result does not compel the conclusion that we should interpret a different statutory scheme as allowing Home Mutual to adjust its estimate of pre-1963 claims at the beginning of a taxable year according to the actual amounts paid during that year.
Further support for our conclusion is provided by Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co., 48 T.C. 118 (1967), rev’d on other grounds, 413 F.2d 55 (9th Cir. 1969), and [343]*343Lutheran Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. United States, 602 F.2d 328 (Ct.Cl.1979), petition for cert. filed, 48 U.S.L.W. 3570 (U.S. Feb. 23, 1980), which concerned questions very similar to the one before us that arose under taxing mechanisms enacted in the Life Insurance Company Income Tax Act of 1959 that were, unlike the bad debt mechanism discussed above, very similar to the one here. Both cases involved efforts by taxpayers to lower their opening reserves to reflect actual experience during the year and thus avoid hardship attending Congress’ imposition of a new taxing formula. Although the courts differed somewhat in their evaluation of legislative history common to both cases, both agreed that the explicit language of the statute precluded adjustment of a reserve that, in the words of the court in the Pacific Mutual case, “at the time it was established, was based upon all available information and contained no mathematical error.” 48 T.C. at 129.24 The same result must be reached at bar, where there is no legislative history that even arguably supports the taxpayer’s position.
B.
Home Mutual argues that we should affirm the Tax Court on this issue on the basis of the tax benefit rule and allow reduction of unpaid losses outstanding at the beginning of each taxable year by the amount by which amounts actually paid that year on pre-1963 claims fell below original estimates. The tax benefit rule is a well established judge-made rule25 that despite partial codification in. § 111 remains substantially extra-statutory in nature and affects a taxpayer’s taxable income beyond the literal meaning of the Code itself. Thus it is not sufficient to rebut the invocation of the tax benefit rule to argue that the statute makes no provision for its use here or to cite Pacific Mutual and Lutheran Mutual, where the tax benefit rule was not considered. Upon examining the contours of the tax benefit rule itself, however, we conclude that it does not apply in this case.
The tax benefit rule is “both a rule of inclusion and exclusion: recovery of an item previously deducted must be included in income; that portion of the recovery not resulting in a prior tax benefit is excluded.”26 Until 1929 it was unclear, in light of Eisner v. MacombePs definition of income as “gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined,” whether a taxpayer was required to report recoveries of funds owed to it that had previously been deducted.27 Although various justifications have been offered for requiring taxpayers to report funds received from what normally is not viewed as an income-producing event, perhaps the best is that the inclusionary aspect of the tax benefit rule counterbalances the annual accounting principle enunciated in Burnet v. Sanford & Brooks, 282 U.S. 359, 51 S.Ct. 150, 75 L.Ed. 383 (1931). A taxpayer should not be per[344]*344mitted to take advantage of the tax system’s need to treat transactions as final at the end of the accounting year so that tax consequences can be calculated. The rule allows accurate taxation of a whole transaction that may span several accounting periods.28 In short, the inclusionary aspect of the rule, which is based entirely on case law,29 “recognizes the ‘recovery’ in the current year of taxable income earned in an earlier year but offset by the item deducted.”30 Because such recoveries are reportable due to the existence of previous deductions, taxpayers have successfully argued that the recoveries should be included in income only to the extent that the earlier deduction had in fact served to reduce its taxable income in the year in which the deduction was taken. This exclusionary aspect of the tax benefit rule was not conclusively accepted until 1942, when Congress enacted the statutory predecessor to current § 111.31 Although § 111 expressly provides for such exclusion only for the recovery of previously deducted bad debts, taxes, and delinquency amounts, it is well settled that this aspect of the tax benefit extends beyond the literal terms of the statute.32 Thus, although the exclusionary part of the tax benefit rule finds a statutory anchor, the entire rule remains in essence an extra-statutory judicial rule permitting retroactive adjustments so that some transactions substantially altered in years subsequent to the original accounting period may be taxed virtually as though the entire transaction had occurred in one accounting period.33
Home Mutual invokes the tax benefit rule’s exclusionary aspect in its argument that it should not be required to reduce its losses-incurred deduction by the amount of its overestimation of its pre-1963 claims paid later. According to Home Mutual, when the company receives notice of a claim against one of its policies, its estimate of the amount necessary to cover the claim is entered as an accrued liability and, after 1962, effectively deducted as a “loss incurred” under § 832(b)(5). If in a later year a lesser amount satisfies the claim, the company “recovers” the amount by which it overestimated the claim, restores the amount of this “overaccrual” to its earned surplus, and pays tax on this amount as income, again through the workings of § 832(b)(5). See text at notes 10-12 supra.
The fact that the deduction occurred by means of a bookkeeping accrual and recovery by a mere reversal of that accrual, with the money never leaving the taxpayer’s coffers, does not preclude the application of the tax benefit rule.34 Tax benefit principles, if not the rule itself, have [345]*345been held to apply to the release of funds from reserve accounts.35
Similarly, it is not critical to the applicability of the tax benefit rule that, because the amount of Home Mutual’s underwriting losses was not relevant under the statute before 1963, no deduction was ever taken for pre-1963 unpaid losses incurred. Although the strict language of § 111 requires that a taxpayer have taken a deduction or credit before it may show that that deduction or credit produced no benefit and exclude the recovery from income, it has been held that taxpayers completely exempt from federal income taxation at the time the expense was taken are eligible for tax benefit treatment.36 Thus prior expenses not taken as deductions or credits because entirely irrelevant to the computation of taxpayer’s taxable income would seem eligible for tax benefit treatment.
On the basis of these principles, Home Mutual argues that, because the funds set aside to cover the claim provided it with no tax benefit, their transfer to earned surplus is not subject to tax under the exclusionary aspect of the tax benefit rule.37
More is required, however, for application of the tax benefit rule. Home Mutual wishes us to apply the exclusionary aspect of the tax benefit rule even though the rule has had no role in ensuring that the “recoveries” are taxed. In the cases we have examined, with the possible exception noted in the margin,38 the exclusionary as[346]*346pect of the tax benefit rule becomes relevant only after the Commissioner has employed the inclusionary aspect of the rule to include in gross income recoveries that according to the strict terms of the statute are not income.39 The historical origin of the rule noted above supports an interpretation of the rule that requires use of the inclusionary aspect of the rule before a taxpayer can employ the exclusionary aspect. The inclusionary aspect of the tax benefit rule does not come into play in the situation at bar. “Recoveries” of the amounts of overestimates of actual liability on unpaid losses are taxed not by operation of the tax benefit rule to make such recoveries items of gross income under § 61(a), but by the specific terms of a detailed statutory mechanism, which requires downward adjustment of a taxpayer’s unpaid losses outstanding at the end of the year during which the claim is actually paid by the amount of the original estimate. See text at notes 10-12 supra.40 Thus the case at bar does not fall within the established scope of the tax benefit rule. In light of the principle inhibiting creative judicial rewriting of the statutory language, see text at notes 13-14 supra, we decline to expand the tax benefit rule to allow Home Mutual to go beyond the literal terms of this statute and retroactively adjust its unpaid losses outstanding at the beginning of a taxable year by the amount by which it had originally overestimated its ultimate liability on claims paid during the year.
II.
In the alternative, Home Mutual argues that it need not include any cash salvage and subrogation recoveries made on pre1963 claims. Home Mutual concedes that the literal language of the statute and regulations would require such inclusion,41 but argues that the tax benefit rule allows exclusion of these recoveries from the computation of the losses-incurred deduction because they relate to losses from which Home Mutual derived no tax benefit. It cites American Financial Corp. v. Commissioner, 72 T.C. 506 (1979), in support of its position. Although we are not persuaded by the relevant reasoning in that case, see note 38 supra, possible grounds exist for distinguishing between the unpaid losses issue and the cash subrogation recoveries is[347]*347sue. For instance, because no explicit statutory basis exists for the regulation requiring the subtraction of cash salvage and reinsurance recoveries from paid losses in the computation of the losses-incurred deduction, it is arguable that the only authority for the regulation is the inclusionary aspect of the tax benefit rule. If the tax benefit rule is the ultimate authority for requiring that cash recoveries be used to increase a taxpayer’s taxable income, it might be appropriate to allow a taxpayer to invoke the rule’s exclusionary aspect. At oral argument counsel for the Commissioner admitted that the cash subrogation recoveries issue was a closer question than the unpaid losses issue.42 Because of the absence of prior Tax Court consideration of these complexities in the case at bar, we remand this issue to that court for its consideration.
III.
In an argument independent of its first two, Home Mutual contends that it should have been permitted to deduct the special transitional underwriting loss provided by § 821(e) from the total underwriting gain rather than from underwriting gain less the protection-against-loss deduction allowed by § 824(a). Home Mutual argues for this result on the grounds that the relevant statutory provisions are in irreconcilable conflict and that the legislative history of § 821(e) shows it to be remedial legislation, which must be broadly construed to effectuate its purpose. We find no irreconcilable conflict but merely a statutory scheme that does not by its terms allow Home Mutual as much benefit from its special transitional underwriting loss as it would like.
The special transitional underwriting loss allowed by § 821(e) is a special reduction in the “statutory underwriting income” of any mutual casualty insurance company that was taxable for the five taxable years preceding January 1, 1962 under § 821 as it existed before the 1962 Revenue Act and that sustained an underwriting loss in each of those five years. In any taxable year between 1963 and 1967 inclusive, a company can use the aggregate of these underwriting losses, to the extent not used before under this subsection, to offset its statutory underwriting income. After the company’s 1967 taxable year, any unused special transitional underwriting loss expires. For purposes of § 821(e), “statutory underwriting income” is defined in § 823(a)(1). Treas.Reg. § 1.821-5(a). That section specifies that to compute statutory underwriting income, one must subtract the deduction provided by § 824(a) for the amount added to the protection-against-loss account. Thus under the clear statutory language, Home Mutual is entitled to deduct its special transitional underwriting loss only after the protection-against-loss deduction has been taken.
Home Mutual argues, however, that § 821(b)(1)(C) and § 824(d) create an irreconcilable conflict. The latter section mandates that certain subtractions be made each year from the protection-against-loss (PAL) account. Under some circumstances, the entire amount of the PAL deduction added to the account under § 824(b) will immediately be subtracted from the account under § 824(d). Section 821(b) (1)(C) requires that the total amount subtracted from the PAL account under § 824(d) be included in a mutual insurance company’s taxable income. Thus the PAL deduction granted from the company’s statutory underwriting income for a year may effectively .be taken away that same year through the add-back requirement of § 821(b)(1)(C). Under the terms of the statute explained in the preceding paragraph the company may not use the special transitional underwriting loss to offset the amount of the PAL deduction added back to income but must employ the unused loss carryovers and carrybacks provided by § 825. Because of this limitation Home Mutual had to employ part of its unused loss carryovers available through 1968 and [348]*3481969, rather than part of its special transitional underwriting loss expiring after 1967, to offset the amount of the PAL deduction added back to income in 1965 and 1966. Home Mutual was left with unused, expired special transitional underwriting loss of $217,117.31 that could otherwise have offset this income and loss carryovers for 1968 and 1969 that were correspondingly depleted.43 Citing legislative history showing generally that § 821(e) was remedial legislation, Home Mutual argues that the special transitional underwriting loss should be available to offset statutory underwriting income after a “net” PAL deduction computed after the implementation of § 824(d). Only in this way, according to Home Mutual, can conflicting provisions be reconciled so as to give Home Mutual full use of its special transitional underwriting loss, in harmony with the remedial purpose of § 821(e).
We perceive no irreconcilable conflict in this statutory scheme. Home Mutual is not caught in a maze of conflicting statutory demands with no exit. There is an exit, just not one to Home Mutual’s liking. The PAL deduction is added back to income, but as an element totally separate from statutory underwriting income. Congress established the protection-against-loss account in recognition of mutual casualty insurance companies’ lack of access to the capital market for funds with which to pay losses. Section 824 allows companies to set aside part of their underwriting gain each year, which would otherwise be taxed, in a special account for protection against losses. The bulk of the funds is set aside for a period as long as five years until needed to pay losses. All the gain set aside will eventually be taxed, but the tax is deferred until the funds are used to cover losses or until the five-year period expires. Section 824(d) serves as the detailed formal mechanism for withdrawal of money from the account as losses occur during those five years, for establishment of a ceiling on the total amount set aside at one time, and for return of most of the unused funds to earned surplus after the five-year period. See S.Rep.No.1881, 87th Cong., 2d Sess. 54-55 (1962), reprinted in [1962] U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, pp. 3297, 3357-58 and 1962-3 C.B. 703, 760-61; H.R.Rep.No. 1447, 87th Cong., 2d Sess. (1962), reprinted in 1962-3 C.B. 402, 446-47; see also 8 J. Mertens, The Law of Federal Income Taxation § 44.58a, at 209-11 (rev. ed. 1978). Thus the amount of underwriting gain removed to the protection-against-loss account becomes a special category of income on which taxation is deferred. That the financial performance of a company in a particular taxable year may require that the amount removed from that year’s underwriting gain be used, in effect, to cover losses of the same year does not transform those funds back into statutory underwriting income. The statutory scheme is both clear and comprehensible.44
Home Mutual cites legislative history to show that enactment of § 821(e) was [349]*349intended as a remedial measure. That it was, and Home Mutual has benefitted from its use. However, that legislative history does not permit us to ride roughshod over the statutory language and provide greater benefit to a taxpayer than that provided by the terms of the statute itself.
Pursuant to Rule 39(a) and (b) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure,45 the costs of this appeal will be taxed against Home Mutual. The decision of the Tax Court is hereby affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded in part.