The Augusta Rule And Renting To Yourself

I came across the Augusta rule recently.

This is Code section 280A(g), the tax provision that allows one to rent their home for less than 15 days per year without paying tax on the income. It got its name from the famous Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia. There would not be sufficient housing during the Masters without participation by local homeowners. The section has been with us since the 1970s.

There are requirements, of course:

(1)  The property must be in the U.S.

(2)  The property needs to be a residence. Mind you, it does not need to be your primary residence. It can be a second home. Or a third home, if you are so fortunate.

(3)  The house cannot be a place of business.

a.    The Augusta rule does not work well with an office-in-home, for example.

(4)  Rental expenses (excluding expenses such as mortgage interest and taxes which are deductible irrespective of any rental) become nondeductible.

(5)  A proprietorship (or disregarded single-member LLC) does not qualify. Mind you, a corporation you wholly own will qualify, but your proprietorship will not.

a.    Another way to say this is that both the rental income and expense cannot show up on the same tax return.

(6)  The rent must be reasonable.

(7)  There must be a business purpose for the rental.

Tax advisors long ago realized that they could leverage the Augusta rule if the homeowner also owned a business. How? Have the business rent the house from the homeowner for less than 15 days over a rolling 12-month period.

Can it work?

Sure.

Will the IRS challenge it?

Let’s look at a recent case to see a common IRS challenge to Augusta-rule rentals.

Two anesthesiologists and an orthopedic representative owned Planet LA, LLC (Planet). Planet in turn owned several Planet Fitness franchises in Louisiana. It opened its first one in 2013 and was up to five by 2017 when it sold all its franchises.

The three shareholders had issues with regular business meetings because of work schedules and distance. Beginning in 2015 they decided to have regular meetings at their residences. Planet would pay rent (of course), which varied in amount until it eventually settled on $3,000 per month to each shareholder.

One of the advantages of having three shareholders was being able to apply the Augusta rule to three houses. If you think about it, this allowed Planet to have up to 42 meetings annually without voiding the day count for any one residence.

Let’s do some quick math.

$3,000 x 3 shareholders x 14 meetings = $126,000

Planet could deduct up to $126,000 and the shareholders would report no rental income.

Sweet.

The IRS wanted to look at this.

Of course.

The first IRS challenge: show us agendas and notes for each meeting.

Here is the Court:

Petitioners failed to produce any credible evidence of what business was conducted at such meetings, and their testimony was vague and unconvincing regarding the meetings.”

Oh, oh.

The second challenge: the revenue agent researched local rental rates for meeting space. He determined that one could rent space accommodating up to 1,200 people for $500 per day.

The shareholders could not prove otherwise.

Here is the Court:

While petitioners argue that the $500 rent determined by … was not reasonable, we disagree and find to the contrary that $500 allowed per month is actually generous.”

This was almost too easy for the IRS.

·      Prove the number of meetings.

·      Multiply that number by $500.

The IRS allowed Planet rent deductions as follows:

          2017           none, as no meetings were proven

          2018           12 meetings times $500 = $6,000

          2019           9 meetings times $500 = $4,500

The shareholders had deducted $290,900 over three years.

The IRS allowed $10,500.

Yep, that is an IRS adjustment of over $280 grand over three years, with minimal effort by the IRS.

And that is how the IRS goes after the Augusta rule in a self-rental context.

The takeaway?

The Augusta rule can work, but you want to document and substantiate everything.

You want to have agendas for every meeting, perhaps followed up with minutes of the same.

Be careful (and reasonable) with the rental rate. This is not VRBO. You are renting a portion of a house, not the full house. You are renting for a portion of a day, not for days or weeks. You cannot just look up weekly house rentals online and divide them by seven. Those rental rates are for a different use and not necessarily comparable to business use of the residence.

You may want to formally invoice the business.

You want to pay the rent from the business bank account.

Our case this time was Sinopoli et al v Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2023-105.

No Harm No Foul? Fuhgeddaboudit!

I am looking at a case involving whether a penalty requires a supervisor’s approval before being imposed.

It is dry stuff.

The rest of the case is what caught my eye.

Mr and Mrs Allen extended their individual tax return. They also owned 100% of an S corporation.

COMMENT: An S corporation’s income is reportable on its shareholder’s personal return. Since M/M Allen owned 100% of their S, all of the S corporation’s income would be reported on their return.

Somebody somewhere forgot to extend the S corporation return. It was due March 15, and it was filed on September 13.

COMMENT: Meaning it was filed 6 months late. The penalty is $195 per month per owner. The math is ($195 times 2) times 6 = $2,340. Not filing that extension got expensive.

The Allens thought that this was outrageous. After all, all of the corporation’s income went on their return, and their return was properly extended. There was no harm to the Treasury. Surely that lack of harm was reasonable cause for abatement.

The IRS told them to pound salt.

Off to Tax Court they went.

Let’s slide to the side a bit. If this had been a partnership, they would have requested abatement under Rev Proc 84-35. A partnership comes under 84-35 scope if:

·        There are 10 or fewer partners

·        Who are individuals (except nonresidents) or an estate

·        The partners each have the same income/loss allocation percentage

·        Each partner has reported his/her share of the income/loss on a timely filed return

·        There is one more requirement concerning audit procedures, which need not concern us here

Rev Proc 84-35 says that – if you meet the above – you have “reasonable cause.” Consider that reasonable cause is grounds to abate a penalty and 84-35 is a way out of a penalty.

Guess what: S corporations have no equivalent to Rev Proc 84-35. Why? Who knows? Is it fair? What does fair have to do with anything?

So the Allens have no 84-35 pass. They instead based everything on their correctly extended underlying personal return.

Here is the Court:

[] evidently conceives that the sole purpose of the Form 1120S is to give the shareholder the information that he or she needs in order to file a Form 1040 tax return; and since Mr. and Mrs. Allen knew the affairs of [], did eventually file their Form 1040 timely …, and did not fail to report any income, the intended purpose of the S corporation’s filing requirement was accomplished and the penalty was moot.”

Lots of shade here, Tax Court. The Allens were instead arguing no loss to the Treasury, so the Treasury could afford to be magnanimous and not impose an otherwise burdensome penalty just because. Save us from the French court of Louis XVI, why don’t you?

Back to the Court:

[] cites no authority in support of its claim that the penalty should be waived on the grounds that its two shareholders were aware of the information to be shown on the return. Section 6699 does not include a condition of harm before the penalty is imposed; it simply imposes a penalty when the filing is late (without reasonable cause).”

I am at a loss why the Court is looking for “authority” when all the Allens are requesting is reasonable cause. Reasonable cause is an equity and not statutory argument. It does not need to be based on chapter and verse from the dustiest tome in the most unvisited tax library in the land. Statutory says you stop and wait at a red light. Equity says you stop and then run the light because you are transporting someone experiencing a heart attack to the hospital.

Ahh, you know how this case turned out.

And I continue to point out that the IRS long ago stopped using penalties to disincentive bad tax behavior and abatement to incentivize good tax behavior. The IRS is now using penalties to pad its budget. In that world, abatement is tantamount to the IRS taking money from its own wallet, something it will not do willingly.

I was saddened to see the Tax Court drink the same Kool-Aid. To be fair, I suppose the Court did not want to go where the IRS has been reluctant to proceed regulatorily. I nonetheless argue that the Court whiffed on a chance to force the IRS to be reasonable when determining reasonable cause.

Our case this time was ATL & Sons Holding Inc v Commissioner.