IRS scraps 71 more pieces of tax guidance under Trump's deregulation orders

The notice says clearing the 71 will "reduce the volume of guidance that taxpayers and their advisors need to review for compliance with the tax laws" ^[6]. For an advisor the first effect runs the other way. Someone has to check 71 citations against the memos and return positions that might rest on them ^[1]. The same search comes due again with each later round, since Treasury and the IRS say they expect to obsolete more similar guidance soon ^[7].

Most of the list should clear that search quickly, or rather, the entries tied to a single year or a single program should. They include qualified school construction bond allocations for 2010, a change of address for clean renewable energy bond applications, census tracts for the D.C. Enterprise Zone and two rulings on the windfall profit tax ^[9]. Three are 2023 and 2024 notices, each setting a revised timeline for implementing amended section 6050W(e) ^[8].

The rest need reading. Some titles cover questions a business still runs into: incidental repairs as business expenses, storage tanks, ISO 9000 costs, package design costs and the election for environmental remediation costs ^[10]. Others cover partnership basis and liabilities in Rev. Rul. 88-77, cash balance pension plans and employee stock ownership plans ^[11]. Several entries are listed by citation alone, among them Rev. Rul. 56-60 and Rev. Proc. 2019-30 ^[13]. The report does not say what now governs each question in their place.

Treasury's side of this is a count. The IRS obsoleted 83 documents last year under the same two executive orders ^[5], so the two reported rounds total 154 ^[14]. Executive Order 14192 directs agencies to identify 10 existing regulations to repeal for each new one ^[3]. Executive Order 14219 calls for eliminating "overbearing and burdensome" regulations and other guidance documents ^[4]. Assume each obsoleted document counts toward the 10-for-1 ratio. Then 154 would offset about 15 new rules ^[16].

In the notice's own words, the documents removed "no longer provide useful information" ^[6]. On that account the tally climbs by 71 while nothing the agency considers useful to taxpayers is repealed ^[1].

Two outcomes are open for this notice. In the first, all 71 are obsolete in substance as well as in label, and the search turns up nothing. In the second, one of the repair or partnership rulings still supports a live position, and the advisor is left citing guidance the IRS has declared obsolete ^[11]. I'd expect the first for nearly all of the list, given the IRS's stated basis and the age of the entries: the oldest come from the 1954 Cumulative Bulletin ^[12], 70 years before the 2024 notice on section 6050W(e) ^[15]. That view fails if any of the 71 turns out to be the only published authority for a position taxpayers still take.