{"id":218115,"date":"2016-01-07T06:00:14","date_gmt":"2016-01-06T20:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=218115"},"modified":"2016-01-07T06:00:14","modified_gmt":"2016-01-06T20:00:14","slug":"guam-governor-to-appeal-tax-refunds-case-to-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/guam-governor-to-appeal-tax-refunds-case-to-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Guam governor to appeal tax refunds case to Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

HAGATNA, Guam<\/strong> (AP)\u2014Guam Gov. Eddie Calvo is continuing to challenge a federal court order that requires the U.S. territory to pay tax refunds no later than six months after the tax-filing deadline.<\/p>\n

The Pacific Daily News reports that the governor\u2019s attorneys filed an emergency application on Tuesday asking the U.S. Supreme Court to continue a stay on the government\u2019s mandate to pay the plaintiff\u2019s attorney fees.<\/p>\n

Calvo\u2019s legal team has previously argued that the government of Guam shouldn\u2019t be liable for any attorney fees because Guam should be treated as a federal agency collecting taxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe federal court ordered us to pay $1.7 million to the plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers based upon a federal law that the U.S. Supreme Court and even the Ninth Circuit previously ruled did not apply to Guam because of our sovereignty,\u201d Calvo said in a news release.<\/p>\n

Calvo\u2019s attorneys have stated their intent to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

The tax code does not set a payment deadline, but requires the payment of annual interest on unpaid refunds. The government of Guam for years has opted to pay the interest. The past four governors, including Calvo, have had to borrow money on the bond market to catch up with deluinquent tax refund payments.<\/p>\n

The administration has been resisting requests by the taxpayers; plaintiffs in the case to pay their attorney fees, citing their intention to continue appeal the case.<\/p>\n

After losing on appeal to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court earlier this year, the governor had until Dec. 31 to file the petition with the U.S. Supreme Court for possible consideration of the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HAGATNA, Guam (AP)\u2014Guam Gov. Eddie Calvo is continuing to challenge a federal court order that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[51,1806,9026,139],"class_list":["post-218115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-guam","tag-hagatna","tag-ninth-circuit-court","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}