RERI-ng Its Ugly Head - Part Two

Let’s continue our story of Stephen Ross, the billionaire owner of the Miami Dolphins and of his indirect contribution of an (unusual) partnership interest to the University of Michigan.

What made the partnership interest unusual was that it represented a future ownership interest in a partnership owning real estate. The real estate was quite valuable because of a sweet lease. When that ship came in, the future interest was going to be worth crazy money.

That ship was a “successor member interest” or “SMI.”

We talked about the first case, which went before the Tax Court in 2014 and involved legal motions. The case then proceeded, with a final decision in July, 2017.

COMMENT: Yes, it can take that long to get a complex case through Tax Court. Go after Apple, for example, and your kid will likely be finishing high school before that tax case is finally resolved.

The SMI was purchased for $2.95 million.

Then donated to the University of Michigan for approximately $33 million.

COMMENT: This is better than FaceBook stock.

After two years, the University of Michigan sold the SMI (to someone related to the person who started this whole story) for around $2 million.

OBSERVATION: Nah, FaceBook stock would have been better.

Now RERI was in Court and explaining how something that was and will be worth either $2 or $3 million is generating a tax deduction of $33 million.

And it has to do with the SMI being “part of” of something but not “all of” something.  SMI is the “future” part in “all of” a partnership owning valuable leased real estate in California.

The concept is that someone has to value the “all of” something. Once that is done, one can use IRS tables to value the “part of” something. Granted, there are hoops and hurdles to get into those tables, but that is little obstacle to a shrewd tax attorney.

Ross found a shrewd tax attorney.

Virtually all the heavy lifting is done when valuing the “all of” part. One then dumps that number into the IRS tables, selects a number of years and an interest rate and – voila! The entrée round, my fellow tax gastronomes, featuring a $33 million tasty secret ingredient.

The pressure is on the first number: the “all of.”

This will require a valuation.

There are experts who do these things, of course.

Their valuation report will go with your tax return.  No surprise. We should be thankful they do not also have to do a slide presentation at the IRS. 

And there will be a (yet another) tax form to highlight the donation. That is Form 8283, and – in general – you can anticipate seeing this form when you donate more than $5,000 in property.

There are questions to be answered on Form 8283. We have spoken about noncash donations in the past, and how this area has become a tax minefield. Certain things have to be done a certain way, and there is little room for inattention. Sometimes the results are cruel.

Form 8283 wants, for example:

·      A description of the property

·      If a partial interest, whether there is a restriction on the property

·      Date acquired

·      How acquired

·      Appraised fair market value

·      Cost

I suspect the Court was already a bit leery with a $3 million property generating a $33 million donation.

And the Court noticed something …

The Form 8283 left out the cost.

Yep, the $3 million.

Remember: there is little room for inattention with this form.

Question is: does the number mean anything in this instance?

Rest assured that RERI was bailing water like a madman, arguing that it “substantially complied” with the reporting requirements. It relied heavily on the Bond decision, where the Court stated that the reporting requirements were:

“… directory and not mandatory”

The counterpunch to Bond was Smith:

“ the standard for determining substantial compliance under which we ‘consider whether … provided sufficient information to permit … to evaluate the reported contributions, as intended by Congress.’”

To boil this down to normal-speak: could RERI’s omission have influenced a reasonable person (read: IRS) to question or not question the deduction. After all, the very purpose of Form 8283 was to provide the IRS enough information to sniff-out stuff like this.

Here is the Court:

“The significant disparity between the claimed fair market value and the price RERI paid to acquire the SMI just 17 months before it assigned the SMI to the University, had it been disclosed, would have alerted respondent to a potential overvaluation of the SMI”

Oh oh.

“Because RERI failed to provide sufficient information on its Form 8283 to permit respondent to evaluate its purported contribution, …we cannot excuse on substantial compliance grounds RERI’s omission from the form of its basis in the SMI.”

All that tax planning, all the meetings and paperwork and yada-yada was for naught, because someone did not fill-out the tax form correctly and completely.

I wonder if the malpractice lawsuit has already started.

The Court did not have to climb onto a high-wire and juggle dizzying code sections or tax doctrines to deny RERI’s donation deduction. It could just gaze upon that Form 8283 and point-out that it was incomplete, and that its incompleteness prejudiced the interests of the government. It was an easy way out.

And that is precisely what the Court did.

RERI-ng Its Ugly Head - Part One

Here is the Court:

The action involves RERI Holdings I, LLC (RERI). On its 2003 income tax return RERI reported a charitable contribution of property worth $33,019,000. Respondent determined that RERI overstated the value of the contribution by $29,119,000.”

That is considerably more than a rounding error.

The story involves California real estate, a billionaire and a university perhaps a bit too eager to receive a donation.

The story is confusing, so let’s use a dateline as a guide.

February 6, 2002 

Hawthorne bought California real estate for $42,350,000. Technically, that real estate is in an LLC named RS Hawthorne LLC (Hawthorne), which in turn is owned by RS Hawthorne Holdings LLC (Holdings).

Holdings in turn is owned by Red Sea Tech I (Red Sea). 

February 7, 2002 

Red Sea created two types of ownership:

First, ownership for a period of time (technically a “term of years,” abbreviated TOYS).

Second, a future and successor interest that would not even come into existence until 2021. Let’s call this a “successor” member interest, or SMI. 

QUESTION: Why a delayed ownership interest? There was a great lease on the California real estate, and 2021 had significance under that lease.

March 4, 2002     

RERI was formed.

March 25, 2002

RERI bought the SMI for $2,950,000.

August 27, 2003

RERI donated the SMI to the University of Michigan.

A key player here is Stephen Ross, a billionaire and the principal investor in RERI. He had pledged to donate $5 million to the University of Michigan. 

Ross had RERI donate the SMI. 

The University agreed to hold the SMI for two years, at least, before selling.

Do you see what they have done? Start with a valuable piece of leased real estate, stick it in an LLC owned by another LLC owned by another … ad nauseum, then create an LLC ownership stake that does not even exist (if it will ever exist) until 2021.

What did RERI donate to the University of Michigan?

You got it: the thing that doesn’t exist for 18 years.

I find this hard to swallow.

“Successor” LLC interests are sasquatches. You can spend a career and never see one. The concept of “successor” makes sense in a trust context (where they are called “remaindermen”), but not in a LLC context. This is a Mary Shelly fabrication by the attorneys.

So why do it?

Technically, the SMI will someday own real estate, and that real estate is not worth zero.

RERI hired a valuation expert who determined it was worth almost $33 million. This expert argued that the lease on the property – and its reliable series of payments – allowed him to use certain IRS actuarial tables in arriving at fair market value (the approximately $33 million).

Wait. It gets better.

The two years pass. The University sells the property … to an entity INDIRECTLY OWNED by Mr. Ross for $1,940,000.

This entity was named HRK Real Estate Holdings, LLC (HRK).

More.

HRK had already prearranged to sell the SMI to someone else for $3 million.

Still more.

That someone donated the same SMI and claimed yet another deduction of $29,930,000.

REALITY CHECK: This thing sells twice for a total of approximately $5 million but generates tax deductions of approximately $63 million.

Yet more.

Who did the valuation on that second donation? Yep, the same guy who did RERI’s valuation.

The IRS disallowed RERI’s donation to zero, zip, zilch, nada. The IRS was clear: this thing is a sham.

And there begins the litigation.

How something can simultaneously be worth $33 million and $2 million?

This is all about those IRS tables.

Generally speaking, the contribution of property is at fair market value, usually described as the price arrived at between independent buyers and sellers, neither under compulsion to sell or buy and both informed of all relevant facts.

Except …

For annuities, life estates, remainders, reversions, terms of years and similar partial interests in property. They are not full interests so they then have to be carved-out and adjusted to present value using IRS-provided tables.

OBSERVATION: Right there, folks, is why the attorneys created this Frankenstein. They needed to “separate” the interests so they could get to the tables.

RERI argued that it could value that real estate 18 years out and use the tables. Since the tables are concerned only with interest rates and years, the hard lifting is done before one gets to them.

Not so fast, said the IRS.

That real estate is in an LLC, so it is the LLC that has to be valued.  There are numerous cases where the value of an asset and the value of an ownership interest in the entity owning said asset can be different – sometimes substantially so. You cannot use the tables because you started with the wrong asset.

But the LLC is nothing but real estate, so we are back where we started, countered RERI.

Not quite, said the IRS. The SMI doesn’t even exist for 18 years. What if the term owner mortgages the property, or sells it, or mismanages it? That SMI could be near worthless by the time some profligate or incompetent is done with the underlying lease.

Nonsense, said RERI. There are contracts in place to prohibit this.

How pray tell is this “prohibited?” asked the IRS.

Someone has to compensate the SMI for damages, explained RERI.

“Compensate” how? persisted the IRS.

The term owner would forfeit ownership and the SMI would become an immediate owner, clarified RERI.

So you are making the owner of a wrecked car “whole” by giving him/her the wrecked car as recompense, analogized the IRS. Can the SMI at least sue for any unrecovered losses?

Uhhhh … no, not really, answered RERI. But it doesn’t matter: the odds of this happening are so remote as to not warrant consideration.

And so it drones on. The case goes into the weeds.

Who won: the government or the billionaire?

It was decided in a later case. We will talk about it in a second post.