I see the Portland Business Journal finally caught up with the case of the OHSU docs whose tax-avoidance moves involving an ostensible charitable donation of their practice were busted by the IRS and the U.S. Tax Court. We covered it here on Monday.

The PBJ misleads readers as to the size of the case, however. It says the group of physicians who lost "are liable for more than $450,000 in back taxes and penalties." That's a fair figure for the five docs (and their CPA) who were named in the consolidated case that was tried, but as the court noted, "the parties in 20 related but nonconsolidated cases also pending before the Court have stipulated to be bound by the final decisions rendered herein. The parties in the 20 related nonconsolidated cases have stipulated to be bound by the final decisions herein on the penalties only if our holding on the penalties is the same for all consolidated petitioners." (And it was.)

In other words, it was a test case. There are 20 more OHSU docs out there with the same issue, and they all lost as well. There's no way to tell how much they had at stake, but the outstanding tab for the whole lot of them is probably well north of $1 million.