Altera’s Tax Saga—Is It All Just Foofaraw?

Intel subsidiary Altera Corp. and the Internal Revenue Service will meet again this month in the 9th Circuit in a case watched by Facebook, Google, and others. A loss for the computer chip-maker could be detrimental to Silicon Valley. A central question in the case turns on the complicated question of allocating costs. But is the case anything more than procedural foofaraw? And was it appropriate for the court to withdraw a previous opinion and replace a deceased judge five months after his death? In this week’s special edition of Talking Tax, Bloomberg Tax reporter Sony Kassam and legal editor Carolina Vargas get the answers to these questions and more. This episode features Susan Yorke, an attorney in the Ninth Circuit; Barbara Mantegani, a tax advisor and founder of Mantegani Tax; and Calvin Johnson, a professor at the University of Texas in Austin. This episode is part two of a three-part series examining the case. Hosts: Sony Kassam and Carolina Vargas. Producer: Nicholas Anzalotta-Kynoch.