Treasury, IRS Rules Affirm Tribal Sovereignty on Business Structuring and GWE Benefits

The U.S. Department of the Treasury and IRS on Dec. 15, 2025, issued final regulations providing long-awaited guidance for Tribes on the critical topics of 1) the tax treatment of entities wholly owned by Tribal governments and organized or incorporated exclusively under the laws of the Tribes that own them, and 2) the Tribal General Welfare Exclusion Act of 2014.

The publication of these regulations marks a win for Indian Country as the final rules recognize the importance of Tribal sovereignty and offer significant deference to Tribes. View the unpublished version of the final Entities Wholly Owned by Indian Tribal Governments regulations and unpublished copy of the Tribal General Welfare Benefits regulations. Official versions of these regulations will be published in the Federal Register on Dec. 16, 2025.

Holland and Knight's Native American Law Team has been actively tracking and reporting on the development of these regulations. (See our previous alerts: "Proposed Regulations Provide Clarity on Tax Treatment of Entities Wholly Owned by Tribal Governments," Jan. 10, 2025, and "Tribal GWE Proposed Regulations Are an Overdue Win for Indian Country," Sept. 18, 2024.)

In these publications, Holland & Knight attorneys Ken Parsons and Rachel Provencher explain the history, implications and next steps for each rule. The final regulations incorporate feedback Tribes provided to the Treasury Department and IRS, demonstrating the value of Tribal consultation and working with the Treasury Tribal Advisory Committee, for which each of these regulations has been a key issue.

Holland & Knight will publish a full exploration of the final rules later this week as a follow-up to our previous commentary.