Interest owed on a tax refund; MCL 205.30; Actions a taxpayer must take to trigger the accrual of interest on a refund; Ford Motor Co v Treasury Dep’t; Requirement that the claim or petition for a tax refund be made in writing; “Filed”; Unitary business group (UBG)

The court concluded that the memo on which plaintiff-taxpayer relied was not sufficiently “definite and specific to constitute an explicit demand or request for a tax refund without resorting to reliance on the implications of expressing disagreement with defendant’s treatment of this particular entity, which is not a proper manner of requesting a refund under” MCL 205.30. Thus, it affirmed summary disposition for defendant in this dispute over the amount of interest owed on a tax refund. In Ford, the Michigan Supreme Court addressed the actions a taxpayer has to take under MCL 205.30 to trigger accrual of interest on a tax refund. Plaintiff contended the “Holdings Memo, along with the contemporaneous related oral communications with defendant,” satisfied the second and third requirements under Ford to trigger interest accrual (the first, payment of the tax, was not in dispute). But the memo did “not contain any request or demand for tax money to be refunded. The email is solely focused on arguing that U.S. Steel Holdings should be included in plaintiff’s UBG.” Plaintiff essentially asserted that when the memo was “considered in the context of other information allegedly known to defendant as a result of the audit and other contemporaneous communications between the parties, the Holdings Memo can only be understood as a request for a tax refund. Even accepting as true plaintiff’s contention that defendant was aware that plaintiff’s purpose in disputing the exclusion of the entity U.S. Steel Holdings from plaintiff’s UBG was to achieve a position from which plaintiff could seek a tax refund,” the Supreme Court rejected this type of argument in Ford. “The only evidence of a clear demand, request, or assertion of a right to a tax refund made to defendant” cited by plaintiff was evidence that its representative “orally requested a refund in her discussions with” defendant’s audit supervisor. But the statute requires “the claim or petition for a tax refund must be made in writing.” While plaintiff did not have “to use specific ‘magic words,’ such as ‘refund,’ ‘claim,’ or ‘petition’ for the” memo to be a proper claim or petition for a refund, the memo “did not contain any reference to alleged losses suffered by U.S. Steel Holdings during the relevant tax years or any assertion that including U.S. Steel Holdings in plaintiff’s UBG would create an overpayment” it could claim as a refund.