To the chagrin of creative tax lawyers who saw promising loopholes in the Trump administration’s sweeping tax reform legislation, the Internal Revenue Service has shut down avenues for high-earning lawyers to take advantage of a hefty new 20 percent deduction on pass-through partnership income.

In proposed regulations released Aug. 8, the IRS and Treasury Department addressed questions that have been raised about the new deduction for income from pass-through entities—and pointedly blocked the two main gambits for lawyers with law firm-specific examples.