It sets a precedent for other tax areas.
Grewal ’16 [Amandeep; 2016; Joseph F. Rosenfield Scholar and Professor of Law at the University of Iowa; Iowa Law Review, “The Un-Precedented Tax Court,” vol. 101]
The nonprecedential status of these Tax Court opinions gives rise to practical problems, however. A judicial exposition of a case is difficult to ignore, and taxpayers frequently invoke Memo or S opinions as authority in connection with their tax disputes, whether in front of the IRS, the Tax Court, or other federal courts. And the Tax Court seemingly cannot ignore its own opinions. Although plenty of cases dismiss Memo opinions as nonprecedential, other cases treat them like persuasive or binding authorities. More troubling still, Memo opinions sometimes address controversial issues of tax law, and not only heavily factual or clear-cut legal issues. The ambiguous weight of Memo opinions thus sows confusion in the tax law.