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Jamin Koo

Jamin Koo advises clients across a broad range of tax issues, including international and domestic tax planning and acquisition and financing transactions. He works with numerous U.S. and non-U.S. clients (in particular, several Asia-based clients) on cross-border investments, joint ventures, and restructurings. His expertise includes taxation of debt instruments, derivatives, and other financial instruments, and he has been providing tax advice related to digital assets to a number of clients.

Most recently, with his background in engineering and environmental science, Jamin has been advising clients in a number of industries on various issues involving tax credits and other tax provisions of the Chips & Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act and drafting comments to Treasury and the IRS.

On March 28, 2023, the United States and Japan entered into a bilateral agreement, titled the Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of Japan on Strengthening Critical Minerals Supply Chains (“U.S.-Japan Critical Minerals Agreement” or “Agreement”). 

Context and Significance of the U.S.-Japan Critical Minerals Agreement

Prompting this

On March 21, 2023, the Department of Commerce (“Commerce”) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (the “Commerce Proposed Rule”) to implement certain provisions of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (“CHIPS Act”) that place restrictions on certain activities of businesses receiving federal funding pursuant to the CHIPS Act (“Commerce Guardrails”).  On the same day

On October 5, 2022, the Treasury Department and the IRS issued notices requesting comments on different aspects of the energy tax benefits in the Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”). All comments are due by Friday, November 4, either electronically on www.regulations.gov or alternatively by mail to the IRS. Written comments submitted after that date will be considered as long as such consideration will not delay the issuance of guidance.

In each case, the Notices focus on a subset of the IRA expanded and enhanced existing consumer and business energy tax credits and the new credits, including tech-neutral production and investment tax credits, a clean hydrogen production credit, a nuclear power production tax credit, and credits for producing necessary components for clean energy production, among others. The Notices solicit general comments, but also focus on specific definitional and operational issues. The requests emanate from, among other things, the new domestic production and sourcing requirements in the IRA, including requirements for sourcing critical minerals for the manufacturing of electric vehicles and for constructing certain qualified facilities using materials produced in the United States. Requests also arise in reference to the new two-tiered credit structure, where, for many of these credits, taxpayers are eligible for a higher credit (typically five times the base amount) if they meet certain wage and apprenticeship requirements. And one Notice focuses on the new direct pay or transferability feature for some credits, which essentially results in a cash payment to the taxpayer regardless of whether they have any tax liability in the year in which the credit is claimed.Continue Reading IRS issues notices requesting comments on IRA clean energy tax credits