US SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

BOEING CO. ET AL. v. UNITED STATES 537 U.S. 437

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OCTOBER TERM, 2002

Syllabus

BOEING CO. ET AL. v. UNITED STATES

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

No. 01-1209. Argued December 9, 2002-Decided March 4, 2003*

Under a 1971 statute providing special tax treatment for export sales made by an American manufacturer through a subsidiary that qualified as a "domestic international sales corporation" (DISC), no tax is payable on the DISC's retained income until it is distributed. See 26 U. S. C. §§ 991-997. The statute thus provides an incentive to maximize the DISC's share-and to minimize the parent's share-of the parties' aggregate income from export sales. The statute provides three alternative ways for a parent to divert a limited portion of its income to the DISC. See §§ 994(a)(1)-(3). The alternative that The Boeing Company chose limited the DISC's taxable income to a little over half of the parties "combined taxable income" (CTI). In 1984, the "foreign sales corporation" (FSC) provisions replaced the DISC provisions. As under the DISC regime, it is in the parent's interest to maximize the FSC's share of the taxable income generated by export sales. Because most of the differences between these regimes are immaterial to this suit, the Court's analysis focuses mainly on the DISC provisions. The Treasury Regulation at issue, 26 CFR § 1.861-8(e)(3) (1979), governs the accounting for research and development (R&D) expenses when a taxpayer elects to take a current deduction, telling the taxpaying parent and its DISC "what" must be treated as a cost when calculating CTI, and "how" those costs should be (a) allocated among different products and (b) apportioned between the DISC and its parent. With respect to the "what" question, the regulation includes a list of Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) categories (e. g., transportation equipment) and requires that R&D for any product within the same category as the exported product be taken into account. The regulations use gross receipts from sales as the basis for both "how" questions. Boeing organized its internal operations along product lines (e. g., aircraft model 767) for management and accounting purposes, each of which constituted a separate "program" within the organization; and $3.6 billion of its R&D expenses were spent on "Company Sponsored Product Development," i. e., product-specific research. Boeing's accountants treated all

*Together with No. 01-1382, United States v. Boeing Sales Corp. et al., also on certiorari to the same court.


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Syllabus

Company Sponsored costs as directly related to a single program and unrelated to any other program. Because nearly half of the Company Sponsored R&D at issue was allocated to programs that had no sales in the year in which the research was conducted, that amount was deducted by Boeing currently in calculating its taxable income for the years at issue, but never affected the calculation of the CTI derived by Boeing and its DISC from export sales. The Internal Revenue Service reallocated Boeing's Company Sponsored R&D costs for 1979 to 1987, thereby decreasing the untaxed profits of its export subsidiaries and increasing its taxable profits on export sales. Mter paying the additional taxes, Boeing filed this refund suit. In granting Boeing summary judgment, the District Court found § 1.861-8(e)(3) invalid, reasoning that its categorical treatment of R&D conflicted with congressional intent that there be a direct relationship between items of gross income and expenses related thereto, and with a specific DISC regulation giving the taxpayer the right to group and allocate income and costs by product or product line. The Ninth Circuit reversed.

Held: Section 1.861-8(e)(3) is a proper exercise of the Secretary of the Treasury's rulemaking authority. Pp. 446-457.

(a) The relevant statutory text does not support Boeing's argument that the statute and certain regulations give it an unqualified right to allocate its Company Sponsored R&D expenses to the specific products to which they are factually related and to exclude such R&D from treatment as a cost of any other product. The method that Boeing chose to determine an export sale's transfer price allowed the DISC "to derive taxable income attributable to [an export sale] in an amount which does not exceed ... 50 percent of the combined taxable income of [the DISC and the parent] which is attributable to the qualified export receipts on such property derived as the result of a sale by the DISC plus 10 percent of the export promotion expenses of such DISC attributable to such receipts .... " 26 U. S. C. § 994(a)(2) (emphasis added). The statute does not define "combined taxable income" or specifically mention R&D expenditures. The Secretary's regulation must be treated with deference, see Cottage Savings Assn. v. Commissioner, 499 U. S. 554, 560561, but the statute places some limits on the Secretary's interpretive authority. First, "does not exceed" places an upper limit on the share of the export profits that can be assigned to a DISC and gives three methods of setting the transfer price. Second, "combined taxable income" makes it clear that the domestic parent's taxable income is a part of the CTI equation. Third, "attributable" limits the portion of the domestic parent's taxable income that can be treated as a part of the CTI. The Secretary's classification of all R&D as an indirect cost of all export


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