Tax Treatment

The Internal Revenue Service has concluded that federally recognized tribes are not subject to federal income taxes.66 As noted earlier, the IRS has ruled that the income earned by a state, a political subdivision of a state, or an integral part of a state or political subdivision "is generally not taxable in the absence of specific statutory authorization for taxing such income."67 The IRS has taken this same approach to the taxation of income earned by Indian tribes, their unincorporated businesses and their federally chartered corporations because they share the same tax status as the tribe and as such are not taxable entities.68 In Revenue Ruling 81-295 and Revenue Ruling 94-16, the IRS ruled that any income earned by a federal corporation organized under Section 17 of the Indian Reorganization Act shares the same tax status as the tribe and is therefore not subject to federal income tax regardless of the location of the activities that generated the income.69 Similarly, in Revenue Ruling 94-65, the IRS has ruled that a tribal corporation organized under Section 3 of the Oklahoma Welfare Act is not subject to federal income tax on income earned in the conduct of commercial business on or off the tribe’s reservation.70