The US Supreme Court [official website] on Monday denied certiorari [order list, PDF] in an appeal from Dow Chemical Company [corporate website], rejecting the Michigan-based corporation’s request to consider its $1 billion tax deduction claim. The case stems [district court opinion] from Dow’s partnership with two entities: Chemtech I, a tax shelter product operating out of Switzerland created with Goldman Sachs [website] and operating from 1993 to 1997, and Chemtech II, a similar company set up by the law firm King and Spalding [website] and operating from 1998 to 2003. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled [opinion, PDF] in 2014 that the partnership between Dow and Chemtech was “a sham,” with no legitimate business purpose beyond avoiding tax liability. While the court of appeals vacated a lower court’s 20 percent penalty award in that decision, it reinstated [opinion, PDF] the penalty in 2016.

High profile instances of tax avoidance have made news headlines in recent years. Tulane University Law School Professor Shu-Yi Oei wrote [JURIST op-ed] about the tax evasion investigation of HSBC Suisse [corporate website] in 2015. Last April the Department of Justice began investigating [JURIST report] hundreds of US citizens after leaked confidential documents, known as the “Panama Papers,” revealed the names of those potentially involved in tax evasion through the international law firm Mossack Fonesca [corporate website].