This article examines when ordinary loss treatment will be allowed for hedging transactions, based on FNMA and the final regulations.

The recently adopted Internal Revenue Service rules on hedging transactions certainly are welcome but, on examination, seem to do little more than capitulate to the decision on hedging rendered by the Tax Court in FNMA v.

The whipsaw possibility was obliterated to a large extent by the Tax Court decision in Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), 100 TC 541 (1993), in which losses sustained on certain interestrate futures, short sales of Treasury securities and put options on Treasury futures were allowed as ordinary, since they were an "integral part" of a system by which FNMA purchased and held mortgages.