Apache Corp. Could Split NOL Treatment for $24 Million Refunds

Apache Corp. was allowed to make different elections for how to treat its different types of net operating losses in order to take advantage of favorable tax treatment and recoup about $24 million in tax refunds, the US Tax Court said Thursday in a precedent-setting opinion.

The company’s maneuver to carry back a portion of its losses for 2016 and 2017 is backed by the “text of section 172, its structure, the context in which it developed, judicial precedent interpreting it, and even the Government’s past interpretation of the statute as expressed in regulations,” Judge Emin Toro wrote for the ...