Merck & Co.’s Schering-Plough unit isn’t entitled to a new trial after a judge rejected its claim to $473 million of federal income tax refunds, a U.S. appeals court ruled. Schering-Plough, which was acquired by Merck for $51 billion in November 2009, sued the Internal Revenue Service in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, in May 2005 to recoup the taxes, which the IRS assessed in 2004 after an audit. Schering-Plough argued that funds it received as the result of two interest-rate swap transactions weren’t taxable as proceeds of loans from foreign subsidiaries and that the company was being treated unfairly by the IRS, which hadn’t demanded the same taxes from other companies that were in similar situations.
