Cite as: 532 U. S. 822 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
subparagraph," the "separate net operating loss of a member of the group shall be determined under § 1.1502-12 . . . , adjusted for the . . . items taken into account in the computation of" the CNOL. As the Court of Appeals said, the directive of § 1.1502-79(a)(3) (unlike the definition of STI) "takes into account, for example, [a] member's charitable contributions" and other consolidated deductions. 208 F. 3d, at 460-461.
But this sounds too good. It is true that, insofar as § 1.1502-79(a)(3) accounts for gains and losses that STI does not, it gets closer to a commonsense notion of a group member's "separate" NOL than STI does. But the fact that § 1.1502-79(a)(3) improves on STI simply by undoing what § 1.1502-12 requires in defining STI is suspicious, and the suspicion turns out to be justified. Section 1.1502-79(a)(3) unbakes the cake for only one reason, and that reason has no application here. The definition on which the Court of Appeals relied applies, by its terms, only "for purposes of" § 1.1502-79(a)(3), and context makes clear that the purpose is to provide a way to allocate CNOL to an affiliate member that seeks to carry back a loss to a "separate return year," that is, to a year in which the member was not part of the consolidated group. See Treas. Reg. § 1.1502-79 (titled "Separate return years"); § 1.1502-79(a) (titled "Carryover and carryback of [CNOL] to separate return years"); § 1.1502-79(a)(1) ("[i]f a [CNOL] can be carried . . . to a separate return year . . ."). No separate return years are at issue before us; all NOL carrybacks relevant here apply to years in which the five corporations were affiliated in the group. The Court of Appeals thus applied concepts addressing separate return years to a determination for a consolidated return year, without any statutory or regulatory basis for doing so. Cf. 49 Fed. Reg. 30530 (1984) ("[A]lthough the consolidated net operating loss is apportioned to individual members for purposes of carry backs to separate return years [under § 1.1502-79(a)], the apportioned amounts are not
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