In this SCOTUSblog post, Alan Horowitz says that depending on how the Supreme Court resolves a threshold issue, United States v. Home Concrete & Supply, LLC could yield a decision of broad importance or instead one of interest only to tax lawyers. The ultimate issue concerns the scope of an extended statute of limitations applicable only to tax cases. The first possible ground for decision is purely a matter of interpreting the language of the tax statutes. But the government faces significant hurdles on that ground, notably the Court's 1958 decision in The Colony, Inc. v. Commissioner, which interpreted the same words in a predecessor statute in accordance with the taxpayer's position. If the Court rejects the government's position that the statutory language alone is dispositive, the case will move to the second issue presented – whether the Court must adopt the government's statutory construction because Chevron requires it to defer to recently promulgated Treasury regulations. A decision on that issue could be a significant administrative-deference precedent that would have broad ramifications outside the tax context as well.

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