CCA 200850031: coverage ended on the day this carrier's assets and obligations passed to other entities

Plain-English summary

A one page memorandum from the Office of Chief Counsel on the standard railroad coordination template, routed "CC:TEGE:EOEG:ET1" under control number "POSTN-130208-08", 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".

Like several others in this release it removes a business from the railroad retirement system rather than adding one. 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 effective" a redacted date, and Chief Counsel reaches the same conclusion under the tax statute.

The memorandum says that coverage ended on the redacted date, "the date it transferred its assets and common carrier obligations to other entities. Please take the appropriate action regarding this business." It does not say whether the business continued to exist or operate, and it does not state a general rule about what makes a business a covered employer.

The memorandum refers to "other entities" as the recipients, but it does not identify which entity received which assets or obligations. Its conclusion addresses only when the transferor ceased to be covered.

This one also dates the change to a day and leaves it there. Its companion refines the moment to the close of business; this memorandum does not, so it fixes coverage as ending on the transfer date without addressing where within that date the line falls. Nothing in the document suggests the omission was deliberate, and it is recorded here rather than read as a difference in rule.

The control numbers are worth a note, because they show the release order is not the working order. This memorandum carries POSTN-130208-08 and the file docs/2008/0850033.md carries POSTN-130209-08, consecutive numbers on documents two apart in the release sequence. Sitting between them, docs/2008/0850032.md carries POSTN-137996-08, from a different block entirely. At least two batches of these coordination memoranda were therefore interleaved when the December 12, 2008 release was assembled, so a reader should not infer from adjacent release numbers that two of these documents concern related businesses or were worked at the same time.

The rest follows the template. Counsel reviewed the Board's opinion and nothing else, concluding on "the information submitted to us by the RRB", and the Entity Unit is left to act. 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, so the business name and its address survive as four dash runs and the effective date is a dash run in both places. One artefact of the method shows in the operative sentence, where the closing dash run runs into the comma and the following word without a space, giving ",the date it transferred". The text was extracted from a clean text layer rather than scanned, so nothing has been corrected and the missing space 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, describes this document accurately.

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 transferring its assets and common carrier obligations to more than one recipient?
• Outcome: Advice given. Chief Counsel agreed with the Railroad Retirement Board that the business ceased to be a covered employer effective the date it transferred its assets and common carrier obligations to other entities, 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: 200850031
Release Date: 12/12/2008
CC:TEGE:EOEG:ET1
POSTN-130208-08

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 effective ---------------------:

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

       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 effective -------
       ---------------------,the date it transferred its assets and common carrier obligations to
       other entities. Please take the appropriate action regarding this business.


                                                             _____________________________
                                                                     Janine Cook

       cc:

```