On 26 October the US Tax Court has denied Coca-Cola’s motion for leave to file out of time a motion for reconsideration on the grounds that the application for leave would be “futile” as the court would, since the court will ultimately approve the application would refuse to think. In the reconsideration petition that Coca-Cola filed in June, it argued that it had “reasonable trust interests” in a 1996 agreement it entered into with the Internal Revenue Service.
The tax court has now effectively denied Coca-Cola’s application to re-examine the 2020 decision, stating that the application was not submitted within the usual 30-day period – but 196 days after the November 2020 opinion – and that the reasons for the delay were not imperative. In rejecting the application, the court also criticized Coca-Cola’s underlying arguments, finding that “the positions the petitioner is trying to take are pointless”.
