CCA 200850030: coverage ended on the day rail operations stopped in the United States

Plain-English summary

A one page memorandum from the Office of Chief Counsel on the railroad coordination template, routed "CC:TEGE:EOEG:ET1" under control number "POSTN-130207-08", dated "date: September 04, 2008" and released 12/12/2008. It runs from the "from: Office of Division Counsel/Associate Chief Counsel" for "Tax Exempt & Government Entities" to the "to: Director, Submission Processing" in "Cincinnati, OH", marked "Attn: Entity Unit", under the subject line "subject: Railroad Retirement Tax Act Status".

This is another exit. The Railroad Retirement Board gave its opinion that the business "ceased to be a covered employer under the Railroad Retirement Act and the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act on" a redacted date, and Chief Counsel agrees under the tax statute.

The reason given is geographic, and it is the only one of its kind in this group. Coverage ended on the redacted date ", the date it ceased rail operations in the United States. Please take the appropriate action regarding this business." The qualifier is doing real work. Nothing here says the business dissolved, wound up, or went out of existence, and the wording leaves room for it to have carried on elsewhere. What ended was the domestic rail activity, and with it the reach of a United States payroll statute. Nothing is said about assets or about common carrier obligations either, and neither phrase appears anywhere in the document, so on this account nothing was handed to anyone. The business simply stopped running trains here.

The memorandum also has a drafting peculiarity that sets it apart from every companion in the run: it never uses the word effective. The word appears nowhere in the text. Its companions all fix the change with the formula effective plus a date. Here the Board sentence says the business ceased to be covered "on" a redacted date, and in Counsel's own sentence the preposition disappears altogether, so the clause runs from the statute name straight into a dash run and a comma. The meaning is not in doubt, because the appositive that follows supplies it, but the operative date is left hanging on a form document where the form supplies a word for exactly that job. It is recorded as released rather than repaired.

The contrast with the rest of the group is sharper than a template would suggest. At one end, docs/2008/0850032.md pins its exit to the "close of business" on the relevant date, narrowing the moment to part of a day. At the other end stands this memorandum, which does not manage the word effective at all. The same office, the same signature and the same one page form produced both in the same week.

The control numbers link this document to two of its neighbours. It carries POSTN-130207-08; docs/2008/0850031.md carries POSTN-130208-08 and docs/2008/0850033.md carries POSTN-130209-08. Three consecutive control numbers spread across release numbers 0850030, 0850031 and 0850033, with a memorandum from an unrelated block sitting in the gap. The working sequence and the release sequence are not the same thing, so adjacent release numbers in this group are no reason to think two of these businesses were connected.

The rest is the standard division of labour, stated rather than implied. Counsel reviewed the Board's opinion and rested on "the information submitted to us by the RRB", and the Entity Unit is left to act on it. The memorandum is signed "Janine Cook" above a rule, over an empty "cc:" line.

Identifying material is overstruck with runs of hyphens rather than replaced by lettered legend tokens. The business name and address survive as five dash runs, one more than most of the others in this group carry, and the date is a dash run in both places it appears. The overstriking leaves one artefact in the operative sentence, where a stray full stop sits between the dash run and the word that follows, giving ". ceased to be a covered employer under the Railroad Retirement Tax Act". The text came from a clean text layer rather than a scan, so nothing has been corrected and the stray point is recorded as released.

Two absences recur across this group and are recorded rather than repaired. There is no section 6110 disclosure paragraph, and the string 6110 appears nowhere in the document. No numeric Code section appears anywhere either: the memorandum names the Railroad Retirement Act, the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act and the Railroad Retirement Tax Act by title and cites nothing further. The index assigns UILC 3231.01-00, which points at section 3231, but the document never prints that section, so code_sections records that none was cited rather than importing a number from the index. The index subject, Employers v. Not Employers, fits this document.

The citation check this corpus normally runs could not be performed, because the legal research tool is unavailable in this session. Nothing here requires it: the memorandum cites no case, no regulation and no numbered provision, and none has been supplied or corrected from memory.

Ruling snapshot

• Question: When did a business stop being a covered employer under the Railroad Retirement Tax Act after it stopped running rail operations in the United States?
• Outcome: Advice given. Chief Counsel agreed with the Railroad Retirement Board that the business ceased to be a covered employer on the date it ceased rail operations in the United States, and told Submission Processing to take the appropriate action.
• Key authorities: The Railroad Retirement Tax Act, the Railroad Retirement Act and the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act, each named by title only. No numeric Code section, regulation or case is cited.

Full text (IRS public release)

```text
Office of Chief Counsel
Internal Revenue Service
Memorandum
Number: 200850030
Release Date: 12/12/2008
CC:TEGE:EOEG:ET1
POSTN-130207-08

UILC: 3231.01-00

date: September 04, 2008

 to:   Director, Submission Processing
       Cincinnati, OH
       Attn: Entity Unit

from: Office of Division Counsel/Associate Chief Counsel
Tax Exempt & Government Entities

subject: Railroad Retirement Tax Act Status

       In accordance with the coordination procedure established between the Service and the
       Railroad Retirement Board (RRB), the RRB has provided us with its opinion that the
       following business ceased to be a covered employer under the Railroad Retirement Act
       and the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act on -------------------:

                -----------------------------
       -------------------------------
       -----------------------------------------------
       --------------------------------
       --------------------

       We have reviewed the opinion of the RRB and, based upon the information submitted to
       us by the RRB, we also conclude that ---------------------------. ceased to be a covered
       employer under the Railroad Retirement Tax Act -----------------------, the date it ceased
       rail operations in the United States. Please take the appropriate action regarding this
       business.


                                                         _____________________________
                                                                 Janine Cook

       cc:

```