Jack Bogdanski (Lewis & Clark), After the Sigh, a Gasp:

I wrote back in June about how relieved some of us were that the U.S. Supreme Court decided two tax cases this term in favor of the IRS. To have ruled in favor of the taxpayers in either of the cases would have wreaked havoc on the federal tax system.

But as the summer has worn on, a few other decisions that the Court rendered have come to us tax types' attention, and it appears they are going to make trouble for the tax system. Indeed, they're going to create a fair amount of tsuris for the entire federal government of which the tax system is a part.

You may have heard about one of the decisions. In a case called Loper Bright, the Court overruled a 40-year-old precedent known as Chevron. … Under Loper Bright, … any federal judge can second-guess the administrative agency about what the act of Congress was supposed to mean. … 

It gets worse. In another case, Corner Post, the Court ruled that a regulation can be challenged at any time, no matter how old the regulation is, if the challengers can show that they promptly sued to invalidate the rule as soon as it first applied to them. …

Meanwhile, the High Court has ruled that everyone has a constitutional right to a trial by jury before being subjected to a civil fine – at least, a fine for fraud. The case so holding, called Jarkesy, involved the Securities and Exchange Commission and securities fraud penalties, but already the focus is shifting to the IRS. …

Anyway, although it got its two hard-core tax cases right in this past term, the Supreme Court's administrative law pronouncements are probably going to cause as much heartburn for the tax system as if the Court had gotten the tax cases wrong. All of a sudden, it's the wild, wild West.