The ongoing Oakbrook joust has ensnared yet another multifaceted conservation Section 170 in Kevin A. Sells, et al., Docket No. 6762-12, filed 11/13/19. All y’all will recollect the Reg. 1.170A-14(g)(6)(ii) validity kerfuffle, featuring 2500 (count ‘em, 2500) pages of comments when said reg was first promulgated.

What, no? Then see my blogpost “Technologically Challenged – Part Deux, 5/15/19. In fact, the conservation easement deduction is a hot topic with IRS; the online megablog Accounting Today had a piece on it yesterday.

Kev and the als may well have the Oakbrook issues, so Judge Mark V Holmes ordered supplemental briefing, lest these points be precluded from appellate review.

“Respondent duly filed a supplemental brief… in which he argued about the validity and application of the regulation that is being contested in Oakbrook. Petitioners have done likewise. …respondent moved for leave to file a first supplement to his reply brief. It shows the coordination of arguments across the spectrum of conservation-easement cases that the Court was encouraging. We will accordingly allow it to be filed. Respondent likewise moved to reopen the record to add the administrative record of the rulemaking. We don’t think this is quite the right pigeonhole—the record of an administrative rulemaking is a legal resource, and the Court’s request for its production in Oakbrook was analogous to asking a party to produce an unpublished opinion that couldn’t be found online. (In an ideal world, the administrative record would be on a website somewhere for all to access and cite, but it is so bulky that it has defeated our Court’s efforts to make it available online.).” Order, at pp. 1-2.

But the record does get reopened. So maybe, just maybe, we will get the whole saga.