Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case dealing with the arcane subject of administrative law that has left lawyers in a tizzy.

The ruling overturned the long-standing “Chevron doctrine,” which required courts to defer to a government agency’s (such as the IRS’s) interpretation of ambiguous federal statutes.

The case will alter the way courts deal with legal challenges to IRS regulations and will likely weaken the IRS.

A Little Background: The Chevron Doctrine

When Congress enacts laws, it typically delegates authority to the federal agencies that enforce those laws so they can adopt administrative regulations that interpret ambiguous provisions or fill in administrative gaps.

After all, Congress can’t think of everything when it writes a law—especially a tax law.

Over the years, the IRS has enacted so many regulations that they dwarf the tax code: the tax code is about 2,600 pages long, while all the regulations written by the IRS amount to ... Log in to view full article.