⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The Ninth Circuit hears a tax advisory firm's challenge to IRS guidance on the employee retention credit. This refundable pandemic-era credit supports qualifying employer wage costs. The firm helps businesses claim it, and its fees depend on their refunds. It says IRS Notice twenty twenty-one dash twenty unlawfully narrowed eligibility without the required rulemaking process. The district judge ruled for the IRS, treating the notice as an interpretation of existing law rather than a new legislative rule. Under section five fifty-three of the Administrative Procedure Act, legislative rules normally require public notice and an opportunity to comment; interpretive rules generally do not. The firm will ask the Ninth Circuit to overturn that ruling. But first comes a separate question about access to judicial review: does the ability of the firm's clients to sue for tax refunds provide an adequate alternative remedy, blocking this challenge under the Act?

Stenson Tamaddon, LLC v. United States Internal Revenue Service, et al. (No. 25-4217) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, argued October 26, 2026.