Late last week the Tax Appeals Tribunal issued a decision (in Matter of Purcell) reversing several prior Administrative Law Judge determinations on a technical issue related to the calculation of the tax reduction credit that was available in the old Empire Zone Program. I actually covered this issue several years ago in a Noonan's Notes article. And though that alone doesn’t make this very exciting, the case is noteworthy given that the tax department had lost as many as 4 cases at the Administrative Law Judge level over the past several years on this issue, and undoubtedly has probably settled several others favorably for taxpayers. The Purcell case goes in the exact opposite direction as all these prior cases, and holds that the tax department’s methodology for computing this “tax reduction credit” was reasonable.