Worldwide Equipment of TN, Inc. v. United States

876 F.3d 172
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedNovember 20, 2017
Docket17-5031
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 876 F.3d 172 (Worldwide Equipment of TN, Inc. v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Worldwide Equipment of TN, Inc. v. United States, 876 F.3d 172 (6th Cir. 2017).

Opinion

OPINION

ROGERS, Circuit Judge.

This case presents the question of what one must do in order to sue for the refund of a tax that someone else paid. Worldwide Equipment, Inc. remitted a 12% federal excise tax collected from purchasers of its heavy duty trucks, and sought a refund from the United States, claiming that the trucks qualified as exempted, “off-highway” vehicles under 26 U.S.C. § 7701(a)(48). The refund statute for such a case, 26 U.S.C. § 6416(a), requires a refund claimant to show that it has made arrangement to avoid double payments by, as relevant to this case, submitting written customer consent forms. Worldwide did not supply such consents to the IRS. The district court, relying on long-standing Supreme Court and Sixth Circuit precedents applying predecessor statutory provisions, United States v. Jefferson Electric Mfg. Co., 291 U.S. 386, 64 S.Ct. 443, 78 L.Ed. 859 (1934) and United States v. Standard Oil Co,, 158 F.2d 126 (6th Cir. 1946), dismissed Worldwide’s refund claims on non-waivable sovereign immunity grounds because the consent forms were statutorily required as part of a “duly filed” claim under 26 U.S.O. § 7422(a). Notwithstanding Worldwide’s arguments oh appeal, dismissal was proper.

Worldwide Equipment, Inc. is an authorized dealer for Mack Trucks, Inc. Part of Worldwide’s' business is selling heavy Mack trucks that are designed to be used in Appalachian coalfields. One such truck is the GU713, which Mack began selling in 2008 as part of the “Granite”'or “GU” Series. Depending on a customer’s needs and the truck’s applications, the GU713 is available in several classifications, including normal duty, heavy duty, and severe duty. According to Worldwide, the Severe Duty GU713 (“subject truck”) is designed and sold to Worldwide’s customers for the specific purpose of off-road, coal-industry use. The subject trucks are uniformly wider than standard GU713 models, with larger and heavier components, and they generally cost between $27,000 and $32,000 more than the Normal or Heavy Duty GU713 models.

Between 2008 and 2014, the IRS taxed Worldwide’s sales of the subject trucks under 26 U.S.O. § 4051(a)(1)—(2), which requires a retailer to pay a twelve-percent excise tax on the “first retail sale” of an “[ajutomobile truck chassis” or “bod[y]” weighing more than 33,000 pounds sold for use as part of a highway vehicle. See id. During those tax periods, Worldwide collected the •§ 4051(a) excise tax from customers purchasing the subject trucks and remitted the taxes to the Government. Worldwide then filed administrative claims for refund of the taxes collected from its customers, on the grounds that the subject trucks were “off-highway transportation vehicles” excepted from § 4051(a) by 26 U.S.C. § 7701(a)(48).

As part of a refund claim, the excise tax refund statute, 26 U.S.C. § 6416(a), requires refund claimants to demonstrate that they would not be unjustly enriched by a refund and identifies a number of methods for claimants to make such a showing. Relevant to this case, § 6416(a) allows a refund claimant to show that it has' made arrangement to avoid double, payments by submitting written customer consent forms with the claimant’s administrative claims. Id. Worldwide, however, did not file any written customer consent forms with its administrative refund claims to the IRS,

While Worldwide’s administrative refund claims were pending, the IRS requested that Worldwide provide its customer consent forms for the vehicles included, in its claims, but Worldwide never provided written consents to the IRS in response to this request or at any time during the pendency of the IRS’s administrative review. The IRS subsequently denied all of Worldwide’s administrative claims, finding that the subject trucks did not qualify as exempt “off-highway vehicles” under § 7701(a)(48); The IRS’s decision, however, did not mention Worldwide’s failure to file customer consents as grounds for denying its refund claims.

Worldwide then brought separate actions in the district court challenging the IRS’s decision. The district court consolidated the separate actions, and, after fifteen months of discovery, the parties cross-filed dispositive motions. Worldwide sought summary judgment, reasserting its contention that the subject trucks were “off-highway” .vehicles as defined under § 7701(a)(48). The United States moved to dismiss the entire suit for lack of jurisdiction. According to the Government, Worldwide’s failure to file its customer consent forms at the administrative stage violated § 6416(a); therefore, the claims had not been “duly filed with the Secretary, according to the provisions of law in that regard,” as required by 26 U.S.C. § 7422(a). Because failing to “duly file[ ]” one’s claims violates § 7422(a)’s jurisdictional standard, the Government argued, the district court lacked jurisdiction over Worldwide’s refund suit.

The district court denied Worldwide’s motion for summary judgment, finding that “a genuine issue of material fact remains” whether the subject trucks qualify as “off-highway vehicles.” The court also denied the United States’ motion to dismiss the entire action. Based on the plain language of § 6416(a), the court concluded that Worldwide’s failure to include the consents prior to suit was not a material deficiency in its claims that deprived the court of jurisdiction, because § 6416(a)(1)(D) “says nothing about what a plaintiff must do before filing a claim” and “nothing else in the statute suggests that a plaintiff must file the consents before filing a lawsuit.”

Prior to trial, the United States renewed its motion to dismiss the entire case for lack of jurisdiction based on Worldwide’s failure to file its customer consents at the administrative stage. This time, in support of its argument that § 6416(a) requires refund claimants to file customer consents at the administrative stage, the Government cited United States v. Jefferson Electric Mfg. Co., 291 U.S. 386, 64 S.Ct. 443, 78 L.Ed. 869 (1934) and United States v. Standard Oil Co., 158 F.2d 126 (6th Cir. 1946), both of which had interpreted earlier versions of § 6416(a). Adhering to Jefferson Electric and Standard Oil, the district court held that § 6416(a) imposes a substantive limitation on a taxpayer’s right to a refund by prescribing an additional substantive . element that the • taxpayer must prove in order to recover: the refund claimant must show that it did not shift the burden of the excise tax to another. Moreover, according to the district court, those cases added an element of timing in addition to substance.

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Bluebook (online)
876 F.3d 172, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/worldwide-equipment-of-tn-inc-v-united-states-ca6-2017.