Court Opinion

ID: 9838387
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-06 14:00:41.327281+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:24.624059
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-12646     Document: 38-1     Date Filed: 09/06/2023   Page: 1 of 7

                                                     [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                    In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                         For the Eleventh Circuit

                           ____________________

                                 No. 22-12646
                           Non-Argument Calendar
                           ____________________

       ROCKY BRANCH TIMBERLANDS LLC,
       ROCKY BRANCH INVESTMENTS LLC,
       individually and as Tax Matters Partner for
       Rocky Branch Timberlands LLC,
                                                     Plaintiﬀs-Appellants,
       BRIAN KELLEY,
       individually and as the Tax Matters Partner
       Representative for Rocky Branch Investments
       LLC as Tax Matters Partner for Rocky Branch
       Timberlands LLC,
                                                                 Plaintiﬀ,
       versus
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       2                     Opinion of the Court                 22-12646

       UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
       INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE,
       IRS MANAGER LEE VOLKMANN,

                                                    Defendants-Appellees.

                           ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                    for the Northern District of Georgia
                    D.C. Docket No. 1:21-cv-02605-MLB
                          ____________________

       Before NEWSOM, LAGOA, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
              Rocky Branch Timberlands, LLC, claimed a $26.5 million
       tax deduction on its 2017 tax return for a conservation easement.
       The IRS undertook a review of the return and ultimately issued a
       Final Partnership Administrative Adjustment (FPAA) that disal-
       lowed the deduction. Rocky Branch Timberlands then sued the
       IRS and related parties, seeking various forms of injunctive and de-
       claratory relief. The district court dismissed the lawsuit on juris-
       dictional grounds because the relief that Rocky Branch Timber-
       lands sought was barred by the Anti-Injunction Act and the tax ex-
       ception to the Declaratory Judgment Act. We agree.
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       22-12646               Opinion of the Court                          3

                                          I
              We review de novo a district court’s decision to grant a mo-
       tion to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. McElmurray
       v. Consolidated Gov’t of Augusta-Richmond Cnty., 501 F.3d 1244, 1250
       (11th Cir. 2007).
               The Anti-Injunction Act provides that, with exceptions not
       relevant to this case, “no suit for the purpose of restraining the as-
       sessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court
       by any person.” I.R.C. § 7421(a). To determine whether the suit
       seeks to restrain the assessment or collection of taxes, “we inquire
       not into a taxpayer’s subjective motive, but into the action’s objec-
       tive aim—essentially, the relief the suit requests.” CIC Servs., LLC
       v. Internal Revenue Serv., 141 S. Ct. 1582, 1589 (2021). “When the
       Anti-Injunction Act applies, it deprives federal courts of jurisdic-
       tion.” In re Walter Energy, Inc., 911 F.3d 1121, 1136 (11th Cir. 2018).
                                         A
               Rocky Branch Timberlands first argues that its suit is not
       barred by the Anti-Injunction Act because it does not seek to re-
       strain the assessment or collection of a tax.
               In CIC Services, the Supreme Court considered whether a suit
       challenging an information-reporting requirement was barred by
       the Anti-Injunction Act. 141 S. Ct. at 1588. Failure to comply with
       the reporting requirement would lead to both tax and criminal pen-
       alties. Id. at 1587–88. The Court held that the suit fell “outside the
       Anti-Injunction Act because the injunction” that it requested did
       not “run against a tax at all.” Id. at 1593. Instead, the tax penalty
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       4                       Opinion of the Court                  22-12646

       functioned “only as a sanction for noncompliance with the report-
       ing obligation,” so the plaintiff’s suit seeking to enjoin the reporting
       requirement was not barred by the Anti-Injunction Act. Id. at 1594.
              Three considerations led to that conclusion in CIC Services:
       (1) The reporting rule at issue “impose[d] affirmative reporting ob-
       ligations, inflicting costs separate and apart from the statutory tax
       penalty”; (2) the taxpayer was “nowhere near the cusp of tax liabil-
       ity” because the “reporting rule and the statutory tax penalty
       [were] several steps removed from each other”; and (3) the require-
       ment was enforced through criminal penalties in addition to tax
       penalties. Id. at 1591–92.
               Those same three considerations lead to the opposite con-
       clusion here. First, Rocky Branch Timberlands will not be subject
       to any “costs separate and apart” from the tax penalty that may re-
       sult from the FPAA. Id. at 1591. The cost of litigating the tax as-
       sessment doesn’t count—that’s why the Anti-Injunction Act pro-
       vides a pay-now-sue-later procedure. Second, Rocky Branch Tim-
       berlands was on “the cusp of tax liability” when it filed its suit, id.,
       because the FPAA is the statutory prerequisite to assessing a tax on
       Rocky Branch Timberlands, see I.R.C. § 6232(b), and Rocky Branch
       Timberlands concedes that if the FPAA is allowed to stand, the IRS
       will be able to immediately assess a tax. Third, Rocky Branch Tim-
       berlands will suffer no criminal punishment by following the Anti-
       Injunction Act’s “familiar pay-now-sue-later procedure.” CIC
       Servs., 141 S. Ct. at 1592.
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       22-12646               Opinion of the Court                         5

               At its heart, this suit is “a dispute over taxes.” Id. at 1593
       (quotation marks omitted). Unlike in CIC Services, the “legal rule
       at issue” here is a tax provision, not a reporting requirement backed
       up with a tax provision. See id. Rocky Branch Timberlands’s single
       claim alleged that the IRS violated § 7803(e)(4) by failing to provide
       Rocky Branch Timberlands with administrative review of its tax
       case. To remedy that alleged violation, Rocky Branch Timberlands
       sought to compel the IRS to provide it with administrative review
       and, until it did, to prevent the IRS from issuing an FPAA (which
       the IRS had already issued). The FPAA that the IRS had issued
       found that Rocky Branch Timberlands improperly claimed a de-
       duction on its tax return, resulting in an underpayment of taxes.
       Because the relief Rocky Branch Timberlands’s lawsuit seeks
       would restrain the IRS from assessing and collecting those taxes, it
       is barred by the Anti-Injunction Act.
                                         B
               Rocky Branch Timberlands argues that even if its lawsuit
       seeks to restrain the assessment of a tax, it falls within a narrow
       exception to the Anti-Injunction Act. That exception permits in-
       junctive relief for plaintiffs who show that they will “suffer irrepa-
       rable injury if collection [of the tax] were effected” and show that
       “it is clear that under no circumstances could the [IRS] ultimately
       prevail.” Enochs v. Williams Packing & Navigation Co., 370 U.S. 1, 7
       (1962).
              Rocky Branch Timberlands cannot make either showing. A
       plaintiff suffers irreparable injury for injunctive purposes when
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       6                      Opinion of the Court                  22-12646

       there is no adequate remedy at law. Rosen v. Cascade Int’l, Inc., 21
       F.3d 1520, 1527 (11th Cir. 1994). The district court correctly
       pointed out that Rocky Branch Timberlands had “another ade-
       quate remedy [at law] for challenging the FPAA, specifically . . .
       Tax Court.” Rocky Branch Timberlands has already challenged the
       FPAA in tax court in a parallel proceeding. If issuing the FPAA
       without providing Rocky Branch Timberlands administrative re-
       view was a violation of I.R.C. § 7803(e)(4), that parallel proceeding
       can provide a remedy.
               It is also far from “clear that under no circumstances could”
       the IRS prevail on the merits of Rocky Branch Timberlands’s claim.
       Williams Packing, 370 U.S. at 7. Rocky Branch Timberlands’s strict
       interpretation of § 7803(e)(4) is not the only plausible one. Section
       § 7803(e)(5)(A) contemplates requests for referral to the Appeals
       Office by “taxpayer[s] . . . in receipt of a notice of deficiency.” The
       district court interpreted that provision as contemplating appeals
       for taxpayers already “in receipt of a notice of deficiency”—or, in
       the case of partnerships, an FPAA. It is at least debatable whether
       Rocky Branch Timberlands would succeed on the merits of its
       claim, which is enough to foreclose application of the Williams
       Packing exception. See Bob Jones Univ. v. Simon, 416 U.S. 725, 749
       (1974) (holding that the petitioner’s arguments were “sufficiently
       debatable to foreclose any notion that” the Williams Packing excep-
       tion applied).
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       22-12646               Opinion of the Court                          7

                                         II
              Rocky Branch Timberlands also argues that its requested de-
       claratory relief is not barred by the tax exception to the Declaratory
       Judgment Act.
              The tax exception to the Declaratory Judgment Act forbids
       courts from issuing declaratory judgments “with respect to Federal
       taxes.” 28 U.S.C. § 2201(a). And it is “clear that the federal tax
       exception to the Declaratory Judgment Act is at least as broad as
       the prohibition of the Anti-Injunction Act.” Alexander v. “Americans
       United” Inc., 416 U.S. 752, 759 n.10 (1974); accord Mobile Republican
       Assembly v. United States, 353 F.3d 1357, 1362 n.6 (11th Cir. 2003).
              Rocky Branch Timberlands concedes that “courts have de-
       termined [the two Acts] to be coextensive and coterminous.” Be-
       cause we hold that the Anti-Injunction Act bars Rocky Branch Tim-
       berlands’s suit, it follows that the tax exception to the Declaratory
       Judgment Act bars the declaratory relief Rocky Branch Timber-
       lands seeks. See Mobile Republican Assembly, 353 F.3d at 1362 n.6
       (holding that the conclusion that the Anti-Injunction Act prohib-
       ited the appellees from seeking injunctive relief “also foreclose[d]
       the appellees from seeking declaratory relief”); see also Alexander,
       416 U.S. at 759 n.10 (“Because we hold that the [Anti-Injunction]
       Act bars the instant suit, there is no occasion to deal separately with
       the [tax exception to the Declaratory Judgment Act].”).
              AFFIRMED.