- 21 -
that individual, it is hardly a stretch to surmise that the rule
presupposes the shareholder status of the referenced individual.
4. Revisiting the 1986 Conference Report
Having concluded that our interpretation of section
382(l)(3)(A)(i) does not do violence to the plain language of the
statute, we return to the legislative history to determine
whether it is any more supportive of our view than it is of the
views of the parties. As indicated above, see supra part III.C.
and note 10, the 1986 conference report contradicts the statutory
language by including an individual’s grandparents (rather than
his grandchildren) among the family members who are aggregated
for purposes of section 382. If that disconnect were
attributable to a simple typographical error, one might
reasonably expect that the subsequently issued report of the
Joint Committee on Taxation explaining the 1986 Act (the so-
called Blue Book) would point out the error. See, e.g., Staff of
Joint Comm. on Taxation, General Explanation of Tax Legislation
Enacted in the 104th Congress at 81 n.59 (J. Comm. Print 1996),
(noting that the conference report accompanying H.R. 3448, the
bill eventually enacted as the Small Business Job Protection Act
of 1996, mistakenly refers to the lessee rather than the lessor
in the context of new section 168(i)(8)). The Blue Book for the
1986 Act, however, retains the reference in the 1986 conference
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