On December 20, 2019, President Donald Trump signed the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement (Secure) Act into law as part of the year-end spending bill. The Secure Act (the “Act”) goes into effect on January 1, 2020 and makes a host of changes to retirement plan laws. Among these changes are significant changes to…
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As the race for the Democratic nomination for President heats up and the first primary election taking place in just 3 months, candidates have begun to release more details about their proposed tax plans. While these proposed plans will undoubtedly evolve and change over time and are of course subject to being passed by Congress,…
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On October 28, 2019, the Tax Court released its opinion in Coal Property Holdings, LLC v. Comm’r, 153 T.C. No. 7 (2019). This case comes at a sensitive time of year where deadlines are looming in order to file conservation deeds to qualify for the deduction under Section 170(h), relating to qualified conservation contributions, for…
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A couple of recent cases illustrate situations where moving assets from one state to another may have the effect of shielding those assets from creditors. In both of the cases, judgment debtors moved assets to another state and succeeded in avoiding enforcement of the judgment. In re Cleopatra Cameron Gift Trust, a California Judgment Against…
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On October 9, 2019, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) released its latest buzzkill, Rev. Rul. 2019-24, answering questions involving hard forks of cryptocurrency, which, as explained more below, is where a new type of cryptocurrency is created and there is a permanent diversion from legacy currency or existing distributed ledger. In conjunction with the release…
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In 2018, taxpayers enjoyed an increase in take-home pay as a result of revisions to the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) withholding tables that decreased the amount of federal income taxes withheld from their paychecks. The revisions to the withholding tables were made to reflect changes from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (“TCJA”).…
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The Tax Court has just ruled against a CPA in a case involving income tax, self-employment tax, deductions for personal expenses, fraud, and other items. The CPA at issue, Al Benavides, had previously been criminally convicted for assisting a client in evading income tax liabilities. Although there are a number of substantive issues in the…
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On September 16, 2019, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS“) announced that it would be mailing settlement offers for certain taxpayers under audit who participated in “abusive” micro-captive insurance transactions. The micro-captive transactions were listed as a transaction of interest by the IRS back in 2016. Section 2 of Notice 2016-66 described the transaction itself as…
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For a few months, the short and mid-term applicable federal rates have been on the heels of one another. These rates ride with treasury rates and the economy in general. For some reason, here lately the mid-term rates have been lower on occasion than the short-term rates. I even caught myself thinking, is this a…
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Overview The United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion on June 21, 2019 in North Carolina Department of Revenue v. Kimberley Rice Kaestner 1992 Family Trust ruling that a trust beneficiary’s residence alone is not sufficient grounds for a state to tax a trust’s undistributed income. This decision disallowed the assessment of more than…
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