Taxing Foreign Investment In U.S. Real Estate

One of the Ps buzzed me about a dividend item on a year-end brokers’ statement.

P:      “What is a Section 897 gain?”

CTG: It has to do with the sale of real estate. It is extremely unlikely to affect any of our clients.

P:      Why haven’t I ever seen this before?

CTG: Because this is new tax reporting.

We are talking about something called the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act, abbreviated FIRPTA and pronounced FERP-TUH. This thing has been around for decades, and it has nothing to do with most of us. The reporting, however, is new. To power it, you need a nonresident alien – that is, someone who is not a U.S. citizen or resident alien (think green card) – and who owns U.S. real estate. FIRPTA rears its head when that person sells said real estate.

This is specialized stuff.

We had several nonresident alien clients until we decided to exit that area of practice. The rules have reached the point of absurdity – even for a tax practitioner – and the penalties can be brutal. There is an encroaching, if unspoken, presumption in tax law that international assets or activities mean that one is gaming the system. Miss something – a form, a schedule, an extension, an election - and face a $10,000 penalty. The IRS sends this penalty notice automatically; they do not even pretend to have an employee review anything before mailing. The practitioner is the first live person in the chain, He/she now must persuade the IRS of reasonable cause for whatever happened, and that a penalty is not appropriate. The IRS looks at the file - for the first time, mind you - says “No” and demands $10,000.

And that is how a practitioner gets barreled into a time-destroying gyre of appealing the penalty, getting rejected, requesting reconsideration, getting rejected again and likely winding up in Tax Court. Combine that with the bureaucratic rigor mortis of IRSCOVID202020212022, and one can understand withdrawing from that line of work.

Back to Section 897.

The IRS wants its vig at the closing table. The general withholding is 15% of selling price, although there is a way to reduce it to 10% (or even to zero, in special circumstances). You do not want to blow this off, unless you want to assume substitute liability for sending money to the IRS.

The 15% is a deposit. The IRS is hopeful that whoever sold the real estate will file a nonresident U.S. income tax return, report the sale and settle up on taxes. If not, well the IRS keeps the deposit.

You may wonder how this wound up on a year-end brokers’ tax statement. If someone sells real estate, the matter is confined to the seller, buyer and title company, right? Not quite. The real estate might be in a mutual fund, or more likely a REIT. While you are a U.S. citizen, the mutual fund or REIT does not know whether its shareholders are U.S. citizens or resident aliens. It therefore reports tax information using the widest possible net, just in case.

State Taxation of Telecommuting

The year 2020 has brought us a new state tax issue.

To be fair, the issue is not totally new, but it has taken on importance with stay-at-home mandates.

Here is the issue: You work in one state but live in another. Which state gets to tax you when you are working from home?

Let’s start with the general rule: state taxation belongs to the state where the employee performs services, not the state where the employee resides. The concept is referred to as “sourcing,” and it is the same reason a state can tax you if you have rental real estate there.

Let’s follow that with the first exception: states can agree to not follow the general rule. Ohio, for example, has a reciprocal agreement with Kentucky. The agreement provides that an employee will be taxed by his/her state of residence, not by the state where the employee works.   A Kentucky resident working in Ohio, for example, will be taxed by Kentucky and not by Ohio.

Let’s pull away from the Cincinnati tristate area, however. That reciprocal agreement makes too much sense.

We need two other states: let’s use Iowa and Missouri.

One lives in Iowa and commutes to Missouri. Both states have an individual income tax. We have 2020, COVID and stay-at-home. An employee of a Missouri employer works from home, with home being Iowa.

Which state gets to tax?

This one is simple. Iowa.

Why?

Because both states have the same rule: the state of residence gets to tax a telecommuter.

So where is the issue in this area?

With states that are … less reasonable … than Iowa and Missouri.

Let’s go to Captain Obvious: New York.

New York has a “convenience of the employer” addendum to the above discussion. Under this rule, New York asks why the employee is working remotely: is it for the convenience of the employer, or is it for the convenience of the employee? The tax consequence varies depending on the answer.

* If for the convenience of the (New York) employer, then the employee’s state of residence has the first right to tax.

* If for the convenience of the (nonresident) employee, then New York has the first right to tax.

We for example have a Tennessee client with a New York employer who walked into this issue. He lives and works in Memphis, infrequently travelling to New York. We were able to resolve the matter, but New York initially went after him rather aggressively.

How does New York’s rule work with 2020 and COVID?

It doesn’t.

All those employees not commuting to New York were very much observing the convenience of their employer.

Clearly, this was an unacceptable answer to New York.

Let’s change the rule, said New York: the employee’s “assigned or primary” location will now control. If my accounting office was located in New York, for example, that would be my “assigned or primary” office and New York could tax me, no matter where I was.

How could I avoid that result? I would need to have my employer open a bona fide office where I lived. Some people could do that. Most could not.

Yessir.

There is no evolving tax doctrine here. This is ad hoc and reactive taxation, with much caprice, little constancy and the sense that New York will say and do whatever to lift your wallet.

There are few other states that follow this “convenience” rule: Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey come to mind. It is more convenient for them to tax you than not to tax you, to reword the rule.

COVID introduced us to two more states feuding over the taxation of telecommuters: Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Massachusetts decreed that any employee who began working outside the state for “pandemic-related” circumstances would continue to be subject to Massachusetts income tax.

It is the same issue as New York, one might initially think. New Hampshire will allow a tax credit for the tax paid Massachusetts. The accounting fee goes up, but it works out in the end, right?

Nope.

Why?

New Hampshire does not tax W-2 income.

How do states like Massachusetts or New York justify their behavior?

There is an argument: Massachusetts and New York have roads, infrastructure, schools, universities, hospitals and so forth that attracted employers to locate there. Their tax is a fair and appropriate levy for providing and sustaining an environment which allows a person to be employed.

Got it.

Don’t buy it.

I grew up in Florida, which does not have an individual income tax. Somehow the state nonetheless has roads, infrastructure, schools, universities, hospitals and so forth. The only explanation must be divine intervention, it appears.

Additionally, if I lived in New Hampshire – and worked from there – I might prefer that my taxes go to New Hampshire. I after all would be using its roads, infrastructure, schools, universities, hospitals and so on, putting little – or no – demand on Massachusetts. I might in fact be quite pleased to not commute into Massachusetts regularly, if it all. It seems grotesque that Massachusetts will chase me across the fruited plains just because I need a job.

New Hampshire has filed a complaint against Massachusetts with the Supreme Court. The argument is rather simple: Massachusetts is infringing by imposing its tax on New Hampshire residents working in New Hampshire.  Interestingly, Connecticut and New Jersey have filed amicus (“friend of the court”) briefs supporting New Hampshire’s position. Their beef is with New York and not Massachusetts, but they are clearly interested in the issue.

I personally expect the expansion and growing acceptance of telecommuting to be a permanent employment change as we come out of COVID and its attendant restrictions. With that as context, the treatment of telecommuting may well be one of the “next big things” in taxation.

Foreign Investment In U.S. Rental Real Estate

We have spoken about Congress’ and the IRS’ increasing reliance on penalties.

Here is one from the new Taxpayer First Act of 2019:

The minimum penalty for filing a return more than 60 days later will now be no less than the lesser of:

·        $330 or

·        100% of the amount required to be shown on the tax return.

The previous marker was $205, adjusted for inflation.

Thanks for saving the republic from near-certain extinction there, Congress.

There is another one that has caught my attention, as it impacts my practice.

By happenstance I represent a fair number of foreign nationals who own rental real estate in the U.S.

Why would a foreign national want to own rental real estate in Georgetown, KY, Lebanon, OH or Arlington, TN?

I don’t get it, truthfully, but then I am not a landlord by disposition. I certainly am not a long-distance landlord.

There is a common structure to these arrangements. The foreign national sets up an U.S.-based LLC, and the LLC buys and operates the rentals. Practitioners do not often use corporations for this purpose.

There is a very nasty tax trap here.

There is special reporting for a foreign corporation doing business in the United States. As a flip to that coin, there is also special reporting for a U.S. corporation that is 25%-or-more owned by nonresidents. We are referring to Form 5472, and it is used to highlight “reportable transactions,” with no dollar minimum.

“Reportable transactions” sounds scary. I suppose we are looking for laundering of illicit money or something similar, right?

Here is an example of a “reportable transaction”:

·        borrowing money

Here is another:

·        paying interest on borrowed money

Yep, we are going full CSI on that bad boy.

Let’s play with definitions and drag down a few unattentive tax practitioners, why don’t we?

An LLC with one owner can be considered to be the same as its owner for tax purposes.

Say that Emilio from Argentina sets up an Ohio LLC.  He is the only owner. The LLC goes on to buy rental properties in Cincinnati and Columbus.

For federal income tax purposes, the LLC is disregarded and Emilio is deemed to own the properties individually.

For purposes of information reporting, however, the IRS wants you to treat Emilio’s single-member LLC as a corporation.

A “corporation” that is more-than-25% owned by a nonresident.

Meaning that you have a Form 5472 filing requirement.

What happens if the tax practitioner doesn’t catch this wordplay?

An automatic penalty of $10,000 for not filing that 5472.

Granted, the practitioner will fight the penalty. What choice is there?

Let’s up the ante.

Buried in the new tax law for 2018 (that is, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act), Congress increased the minimum penalty from $10,000 to $25,000.

So a foreign national buys a rental house or two in name-a-city, and somehow he/she is on par with an Alibaba or Banco Santander?

The IRS automatically charges the penalty if the form is filed late. The practitioner would have to provide reasonable cause to have the penalty abated.  

Remember next that the IRS does not consider an accountant’s error to be necessarily provide reasonable cause, and you can anticipate how this story may not turn out well.

Someone Fought Back Against Ohio – And Won

I admit it will be a challenge to make this topic interesting.

Let’s give it a shot.

Imagine that you are an owner of a business. The business is a LLC, meaning that it “passes-through” its income to its owners, who in turn take their share of the business income, include it with their own income, and pay tax on the agglomeration.

You own 79.29% of the business. It has headquarters in Perrysville, Ohio, owns plants in Texas and California, and does business in all states.

The business has made a couple of bucks. It has allowed you a life of leisure. You fly-in for occasional Board meetings in northern Ohio, but you otherwise hire people to run the business for you. You have golf elsewhere to attend to.

You sold the business. More specifically, you sold the stock in the business. Your gain was over $27 million.

Then you received a notice from Ohio. They congratulated you on your good fortune and … oh, by the way … would you send them approximately $675,000?

Here is a key fact: you do not live in Ohio. You are not a resident. You fly in and fly out for the meetings.

Why does Ohio think it should receive a vig?

Because the business did business in Ohio. Some of its sales, its payroll and its assets were in Ohio.

Cannot argue with that.

Except “the business” did not sell anything. It still has its sales, its payroll and its assets. What you sold were your shares in the business, which is not the same as the business itself.

Seems to you that Ohio should test at your level and not at the business level: are you an Ohio resident? Are you not? Is there yet another way that Ohio can get to you personally?

You bet, said Ohio. Try this remarkable stretch of the English language on for size:

ORC 5747.212 (B) A taxpayer, directly or indirectly, owning at any time during the three-year period ending on the last day of the taxpayer's taxable year at least twenty per cent of the equity voting rights of a section 5747.212 entity shall apportion any income, including gain or loss, realized from each sale, exchange, or other disposition of a debt or equity interest in that entity as prescribed in this section. For such purposes, in lieu of using the method prescribed by sections 5747.20 and5747.21 of the Revised Code, the investor shall apportion the income using the average of the section 5747.212 entity's apportionment fractions otherwise applicable under section 5733.05, 5733.056, or 5747.21 of the Revised Code for the current and two preceding taxable years. If the section 5747.212 entity was not in business for one or more of those years, each year that the entity was not in business shall be excluded in determining the average.

Ohio is saying that it will substitute the business apportionment factors (sales, payroll and property) for yours. It will do this for the immediately preceding three years, take the average and drag you down with it.

Begone with thy spurious nonresidency, ye festering cur!

To be fair, I get it. If the business itself had sold the assets, there is no question that Ohio would have gotten its share. Why then is it a different result if one sells shares in the business rather than the underlying assets themselves? That is just smoke and mirrors, form over substance, putting jelly on bread before the peanut butter.

Well, for one reason: because form matters all over the place in the tax Code. Try claiming a $1,000 charitable deduction without getting a “magic letter” from the charity; or deducting auto expenses without keeping a mileage log; or claiming a child as a dependent when you paid everything for the child – but the divorce agreement says your spouse gets the deduction this year. Yeah, try arguing smoke and mirrors, form and substance and see how far it gets you.

But it’s not fair ….

Which can join the list of everything that is not fair: it’s not fair that Firefly was cancelled after one season; it’s not fair that there aren’t microwave fireplaces; it’s not fair that we cannot wear capes at work.

Take a number.

Our protagonist had a couple of nickels ($27 million worth, if I recall) to protest. He paid a portion of the tax and immediately filed a refund claim for the same amount. 

The Ohio tax commissioner denied the claim.

COMMENT: No one could have seen that coming.

The taxpayer appealed to the Ohio Board of Tax Appeals, which ruled in favor of the Tax Commissioner.

The taxpayer then appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court.

He presented a Due Process argument under the U.S. Constitution.

And the Ohio Supreme Court decided that Ohio had violated Due Process by conflating our protagonist with a company he owned shares in. One was a human being. The other was a piece of paper filed in Columbus.

The taxpayer won.

But the Court backed-off immediately, making the following points:

(1)  The decision applied only to this specific taxpayer; one was not to extrapolate the Court’s decision;

(2)  The Court night have decided differently if the taxpayer had enough activity in his own name to find a “unitary relationship” with the business being sold; and

(3)  The statute could still be valid if applied to another taxpayer with different facts.

Points (1) and (3) can apply to just about any tax case.

Point (2) is interesting. The phrase “unitary relationship” simply means that our protagonist did not do enough in Ohio to take-on the tax aroma of the company itself. Make him an officer and I suspect you have a different answer. Heck, I suspect that one Board meeting a year would save him but five would doom him. Who knows until a Court tells us?

With that you see tax law in the making.

By the way, if this is you – or someone you know – you may want to check-out the case for yourself: Corrigan v Testa. Someone may have a few tax dollars coming back.

Testa, not Tesla

Michael Jordan, The Grizzlies And The Jock Tax

I have been reading recently that the jock tax may be affecting where athletes decide to play. For example, Ndamukong Suh, an NFL defensive tackle formerly with the Detroit Lions, was wooed by the Oakland Raiders but opted instead to sign with the Miami Dolphins. I can understand a top-tier athlete not wanting to play for a team as dysfunctional as the Raiders, but one has to wonder whether that 13.3% top California tax rate was part of the decision. Florida of course has no income tax.

Let’s not feel sorry for Suh, however. His contract is worth approximately $114 million, with $60 million guaranteed.

So what is the jock tax?

Let’s say that you work in another state for a few days. You may ask whether that state will want to tax you for the days you work there. Some states tell you upfront that there is no tax unless you work there for a minimum number of days (say 10, for example). Other states say the same thing obliquely by not requiring withholding if you would not have a tax liability, requiring you (or your accountant) to reverse-engineer a tax return to figure out what that magic number is. And then there are … “those states,” the ones that will try to tax you just for landing at one of their airports.

Take the same concept, introduce a professional athlete, a stadium and a game and you have the jock tax.

It started in California. Travel back to 1991 when Michael Jordan led the Bulls to the NBA Finals. After the net was cut and the celebrations finished, Los Angeles contacted Jordan and informed him that he would have to pay taxes for the days that he spent there.

Illinois did not like the way California was treating their favorite son, so they in turn passed a law imposing income tax on athletes from other states if their state imposed a tax on an Illinois athlete. This law became known as “Michael Jordan’s Revenge.”

How do you allocate an athlete’s income to a given city or state? That is the essence of the jock tax and what makes it different from you or me working away from home for a week or so.

If we work a week in Illinois, our employer can carve-out 1/52 of our salary and tax it to Illinois. Granted, there may be issues with bonuses and so on, but the concept is workable.

But an athlete does not work that way. What are his/her work days: game days? Game and travel days? Game, travel, and practice days?

Let’s take football. There are the Sunday games, of course, but there are also team meetings, practice sessions, film study, promotional events, as well as minicamps and OTAs and so on. Let’s say that this works out to be 160 days. You are with Bengals and travel to Philadelphia for an away game. You spend two days there. Philadelphia would likely be eying 2/160 of your compensation.

This method is referred to as the “duty days” method.

Cleveland separated from the pack and wanted to tax players based on the number of games in the season. For example, the city tried to tax Chicago Bears linebacker Hunter Hillenmeyer based on the number of season games, which would be 20 (16 regular season and 4 preseason). Reducing the denominator makes Cleveland’s share larger (hence why Cleveland liked this method), but it ignores the fact that Hillenmeyer had duty days other than Sunday. What Cleveland wanted was a “games played” method, and it was shot down by the Ohio Supreme Court.

Cleveland also had an interesting twist on the “games played” method. It wanted to tax Indianapolis Colts center Jeff Saturday for a game in 2008.  However, Saturday was injured and did not play in that game, making Cleveland’s stance hard to understand. In fact, Saturday was injured enough that he stayed in Indianapolis and did not travel with the team, now making Cleveland’s position impossible to understand. Sometimes bad law surfaces when pushed to its logical absurdity, and the Ohio Supreme Court told Cleveland to stop its nonsense.

Tennessee wrote its jock tax a bit differently. Since the state does not have an income tax (more accurately, it has an income tax on dividends and interest only) it could not do what California, Illinois and Ohio had done before. Tennessee instead charged a visiting athlete a flat rate, irrespective of his/her income. For example, if you were a visiting NBA player, it would cost $2,500 to play against the Memphis Grizzlies.

Tennessee also taxed NHL players (think Nashville Predators) but not NFL players (think Tennessee Titans).

I guess the NFL bargains better than the NHL or NBA.

One can understand the need to fund stadiums, but this tax is arbitrary and capricious. What about a non-athlete traveling with the team? That $2,500 may be more than he/she earned for the game.

Tennessee has since abolished this tax for NHL players but has delayed abolishment until June 1, 2016 for NBA players.

In other news, NFL players remain untaxed.

We have talked about the denominator of the fraction to be multiplied against an athlete’s compensation. Are you curious what goes into that compensation bucket?

Let’s answer this with a question: why do so many athletes chose to live in Texas or Florida? The athlete may have an apartment in the city where he/she plays, but his/her main home (and family) is in Dallas, Nashville or Miami.

Let’s say the athlete receives a signing bonus. There is an extremely good argument that the bonus is not subject to the jock tax, as it is not contingent upon future performance by the athlete. The bonus is earned upon signing; hence its situs for state taxation should be tested at the moment of signing. Tax practitioners refer to this as “non-apportionable” income, and it generally defaults to taxation by the state of residence. Take residence in a state with no income tax (hello Florida), and the signing bonus escapes state tax.

Consider Suh and the Miami Dolphins. California’s cut of his $60 million signing bonus would have been almost $8 million. Florida’s cut is zero.

What would you do for $8 million?

The Mobile Workforce State Income Tax Simplification Act

I was glad to see that Senator Sherrod Brown (D – OH) introduced the Mobile Workforce State Income Tax Simplification Act on August 2, 2012.  The bill is being promoted by the American Institute of CPAs, and a version of the bill passed the House on voice vote May 15^th.

The bill would establish a uniform standard for the withholding of state income taxes on nonresident employees.  It would lessen the burden the current system places on employers and traveling employees. 

Both bills would require nonresidents to work in a state for more than thirty days before becoming subject to a state‘s income tax withholding.

Why is this an issue? Let’s say that you start a consulting firm. Business takes off. You develop a national client base and hire employees. You send your employees throughout the country, sometimes for 4 or 5 days and other times for longer. You meet with me to discuss your tax filing requirements, especially your payroll. You tell me that you have engagements coming up in the following states and ask me how to handle the employee withholding.

               State                                      Exempt from Employer Withholding if …

Arizona                                               60 days or less

California                                            exempt if less than $1,500

Delaware                                             no exception

Georgia                                               23 days or less

Hawaii                                                 60 days or less

Idaho                                                   exempt if less than $1,000

Maine                                                  10 days or less

Maryland                                             exempt if less than $5,000

Massachusetts                                     no exception

Ohio                                                    less than $300 in any quarter

Virginia                                               exempt if less than $7,000

Now seriously, how are we to work with this? Remember that payroll may have some very nasty penalties for just minor errors. Do we simply withhold from day one on all employees in all states? That is the safest way to go, but now you are going to have monthly or quarterly reporting to almost every state in the nation. Perhaps the report says “zero”, but it will still take time to prepare and file. You may have additional end of year considerations, such as submitting W-2s to the state. Why not just shut down the account every time, you ask? That likely will save little to no time overall and may create more problems whenever you try to reactivate an account.

This all takes time. It may be my time, it may be your employee’s time, but you will be paying for this time. You can now see the issue. If you ship an employee into Delaware for 1 1/2 days, do they really expect you to withhold, remit and keep reporting to Delaware until the cows come home? Perhaps this made sense years ago when our parents worked at the factory down the street, but it makes no sense today. It is unreasonable to threaten an employer with payroll taxes (and penalties) because they made the mistake of sending an employee into your state for 3 or 4 days. This is not the Lewis and Clark era.

Will this bill pass Congress? My hunch is that no tax bill will pass Congress until the elections are resolved, and then only a tax extender bill passed at the last hour of the last day. This bill will not pass this Congress, but at least the issue is being discussed and highlighted. Perhaps next time and next Congress.

Taxation and Renouncing Citizenship: Part I

Why would Eduardo Saverin renounce his U.S. citizenship?  Saverin is one of the Facebook insiders and presently is unbelievably wealthy.

Saverin was not born here. His family is from Brazil, and they were wealthy before Mark Zuckerberg starting working on a networking site from his Harvard dormitory. Saverin became a citizen in 1998 and is now expatriating to Singapore.

A possible reason is U.S. tax policy. The U.S. will tax a citizen or permanent resident (think green card) no matter where you are on planet earth, how long you have lived there or whether you have any intention of ever returning to the U.S. I have family, for example, that has lived outside the U.S. since the 80s, yet the IRS expects to receive a tax return from them annually. If they have over $10,000 in a foreign bank account, Treasury expects an FBAR every June 30^th. If they have accumulated enough assets over the last 30-something years, they are subject to the new IRS “specified foreign financial asset” filings. Their bank may even have to report their banking activity to the U.S. under the new FATCA rules. That is assuming the bank doesn’t close their account to avoid having to deal with these U.S. mandates.

Does this sound even remotely reasonable? Do we wonder why someone would renounce his/her citizenship?

Let’s go over the general rules in this area. The U.S. tax system differentiates between U.S. citizens and permanent residents, on the one hand, and nonresident aliens (NRAs) on the other. We can further differentiate the tax system between income taxes and estate and gift (i.e., transfer) taxes.

INCOME

A  U.S. citizen or permanent resident is taxed on his/her worldwide income. It doesn’t matter where you earned the income (you could be mining ore from the ocean floor) or whether you have or have not been in the U.S. since elementary school. That citizenship will follow you like a bad tattoo.

A nonresident alien (NRA) is a different matter. How an NRA pays income tax is generally based on one key question: is there a business activity involved? The tax term is “effectively connected.”

·         If no, then figure on a flat 30% tax rate

·         If yes, then the NRA gets the same graduated tax rates that you or I use

ESTATE AND GIFT

You can guess the drill at this point. A U.S. citizen or permanent resident is taxed on everything, wherever located, whether in the sky above or the earth below, in days past or yet to come. 

In contrast that NRA is subject to estate tax only on property located in the U.S.

There is an odd rule that stock of domestic corporations is treated as property located in the U.S. I have never quite understood that one. Fortunately, that tax overreach can be stymied by relatively easy tax planning, such as putting the stock in a foreign entity.

The gift tax applies to an NRA to the extent of tangible personal property or real estate located in the U.S. That definition excludes most stock from the reach of the gift tax.

EXPATRIATION

Let’s clarify terms. Any American who lives overseas is an expatriate. It doesn’t mean the one has renounced his/her citizenship. However, renouncing also uses the term “expatriate.” Unfortunate, somewhat like the track record of Bengals linebackers and the court system. We will use the term “expatriate” to refer to renouncing citizenship for the balance of this article.

Pre-2004

Back when, a person renouncing citizenship was subject to tax for the succeeding 10-year period, unless he/she could show that expatriation did not have as one of its principal purposes the avoidance of taxes.

The expatriate was subject to income tax on income from sources within the U.S. or effectively connected with the U.S. There were convoluted rules to slow down the tax planners, such as shutting-down nontaxable exchanges of property and outbound transactions with a controlled foreign corporation.

It didn’t take much to prompt the government to think that one was tax-driven:

(1)     Average income (not tax) for the last 5 years exceeding $100,000, or

(2)    Net worth of $500,000

The estate tax continued to apply, but it was generally limited to assets located in the U.S.

The gift tax however was expanded to include gifts of stock.

One could contest the government’s presumption that one was tax-motivated. One would request and pay for a tax ruling. I presume that everyone did so.

Also, one had to send-in an annual Christmas card to the U.S. government which included one’s address, the foreign country of residence as well as information on one’s assets and liabilities.

After-2004

The IRS found it very difficult to determine tax motivation as previously required under the tax Code. Interestingly, it also found that it could not keep up with the number of people requesting rulings. Congress in response changed the determination standard from a subjective to an objective test.

If one met the new income and asset thresholds, one was now presumed guilty of tax avoidance.

At least they increased the thresholds:

(1)    Average tax of $124,000 for the last 5 years

(2)    Net worth of $2 million

An expatriate under those limits would not be taxed under the expatriate rules even if the motivation was tax-driven. Conversely, one over those limits would be taxed, even if there was no tax motivation. Congress removed the option to request a ruling from the IRS to exempt the expatriate from taxation.

The annual Christmas card was revised to include one’s annual income and the number of days physically present in the U.S. The expatriate could not be present in the U.S. for 30 days in any one year, or one would be treated for tax purposes as a citizen and taxed on all worldwide income.

NOTE: This is pretty harsh stuff, and the U.S. may have been alone among advanced countries with this extraterritorial tax reach. Obviously, you do not spend 30 days in the U.S., for any reason.

2008 and the Heart Act

The current expatriation regime came into the Code in 2008, and it was a revenue-raiser intended to “pay” for other tax provisions of the Heart Act.

INCOME TAX

Let’s add one new threshold:

(1)    Average tax of $124,000 for the last 5 years

(2)    Net worth of $2 million, or

(3)    Fail to certify that one has complied with all tax requirements for the preceding five years

If one falls into one of these categories, one is a “covered” expatriate. Generally speaking, in taxation the adjective “covered” is bad.

There is a brand-new mark-to-market income exit tax.  The tax applies to the unrealized gain in the expatriate’s property as if the property had been sold for its fair market value. One is granted an exemption of $600,000, adjusted for inflation.

NOTE: This “make believe” sale may be surprising, but other countries – for example, Australia and Denmark – do it with their expatriates.

So you now pay tax on the way out.

The covered expatriate can defer tax on property by posting a bond or other security acceptable to the government. This is an election, and the election is irrevocable. One can elect on a property-by-property basis. The deferred tax is due the year the covered expatriate sells the property. 

There are special rules for deferred compensation, trusts and such matters which do not concern us here.

ESTATE AND GIFT

The key here is whether the “covered expatriate” transfers to a U.S. resident or permanent resident. These transfers are called “covered” gifts or bequests and have their very own special transfer tax. The rate will be the maximum estate or gift tax rate at the time.

If the transfer is made to a domestic trust, then the trust has to pay the tax. If made to a foreign trust, the tax is payable when distributions are made to a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.

  

The transfer tax appears to be in addition to existing estate and gift tax. One already had to pay transfer tax on property located in the U.S. This new tax also pulls-in transfers of property located outside the U.S., if the transfers are to a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.

So if my wife and I renounce but our daughter stays in the U.S., we would have a problem transferring assets to her. Those would be “covered” transfers and trigger tax at the maximum rate. I suppose our daughter will have to renounce with us to avoid that “covered” problem.

WHAT ISSUES HAVE BEEN CREATED BY THIS NEW TAX REGIME?

In truth, the new regime is an improvement - in many ways – over the previous system. The potential tax is now calculated once, although its payment may be deferred. The previous system required monitoring for 10 subsequent years and was very difficult to administer. In addition, this regime is not based on one’s ability to live on non-covered assets for 10 years. That of course was a previous way to wait-out the tax and favored the uber-wealthy over the merely wealthy.     

Expect disagreement with the IRS over the valuation of difficult-to-value assets. Here is an example: Eduardo Saverin’s pre-IPO stock in Facebook. The stock was restricted and non-tradable. What do you think it was worth, before its IPO, when Saverin renounced? I’ve got nickels-to-dollars that the IRS will come-in with higher numbers than Saverin does.

Another issue is when to expatriate. If one has assets that are going to appreciate significantly and soon, one wants to leave immediately. Why? Because there is little or no present appreciation in the asset, but the clock is ticking. An example would be land where a new interchange or mall will be built, or Facebook pre-IPO stock. Compare this to prior law where one would still be subject to U.S. tax for 10 years.

What if you have a big inheritance? Same incentive. The inherited asset received a step-up to fair market value at the date of death. If it is appreciating and fast, it is in one’s interest to exit as soon as possible.

NEXT

We will talk more about Eduardo Saverin and his expatriation in another post.