Tribune settles with the IRS

This involves the long-running tax dispute pre-dating Tribune's purchase of Times Mirror and goes back to the 1998 sale of Matthew Bender, a legal publishing company, and Harcourt General, a health publishing group. Times Mirror reported gains of nearly $1.4 billion on the two deals, but claimed it owed no taxes because they were accomplished through tax-free reorganizations. The IRS said poppycock to those claims and went to court in 2001. By then, Tribune had inherited the headache. The case dragged out until 2005, when a U.S. Tax Court judge ruled against Tribune - and left the company holding a $1 billion tax bill. Some consider this to be the beginning of Tribune's financial troubles (and another reason why it got sucker-punched by purchasing Times Mirror). Under terms of the settlement, the IRS would return about $350 million that the company paid out after the 2005 decision. Here's the AP story and the Tribune release.