The New Israeli Trust Tax

Have you settled (that is, funded) a trust with an Israeli beneficiary?

I have not, but many have.

If this is you: heads up. The tax rules have changed, and they have changed from the Israeli side, not the U.S.

Until this year, Israel has not taxed a trust set up by a foreign person, even if there were Israeli beneficiaries. It also did not bother to tax the beneficiaries themselves. This was a sweet deal.

The deal changed this year. The Israel Tax Authority (ITA) now says that many trusts previously exempt will henceforth be taxable.

Israel is looking for a beneficiary trust, meaning that all settlors are foreign persons and at least one beneficiary is a resident Israeli.

EXAMPLE: The grandparents live in Cincinnati; the son moves to Israel, marries and has children; the grandparents fund a grandchildren’s trust.

A beneficiary trust can be either

·        A “relatives trust,” meaning the settlor is still alive and related (as defined) to the beneficiary

·        A “non-relatives trust,” meaning the settlor is not alive or not related (as defined) to the beneficiary 

EXAMPLE: The grandparents in the above trust pass away.

The tax will work as follows:

·        A relatives trust

o   Pay tax currently at 25% on the portion allocable to Israeli beneficiaries, or

o   Delay the tax until distributed to an Israeli beneficiary, at which time the tax will be 30%.

·        A non-relatives trust

o   Pay tax on income allocable to Israeli beneficiaries at regular tax rates (meaning up to 52%)

If one does nothing by the end of 2014, a relatives trust is presumed to have elected the “pay currently” regime.

The ITA has indicated verbally that any U.S. tax paid will be accepted as a tax credit against the Israeli tax, whether the tax was paid by the settlor (think grantor trust), the trust itself or the beneficiary.

The retroactive part of the tax goes back to 2006, and the ITA is allowing two ways for beneficiary trusts to settle up:

·        The trust can pay a portion of its regular tax liability, depending upon the influence on the trust by the Israeli beneficiary.

·        The trust can pay tax on the value of the trust as of December 31, 2013.

Again, the rules have changed, and – if this is you – please contact your attorney or other advisor immediately. 

What New Paperwork Does An Employer Have Under ObamaCare?

You are an employer. You are a bit unclear on the new paperwork you need to file to comply with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare.  As we go into the fourth quarter of 2014, this issue is taking on greater urgency.

You are completely normal. Many companies, including their advisors, are in the same situation. The rules are new, complicated and – and in some cases – repetitively postponed. Are you supposed to do anything different when you send out the 2014 Forms W-2 in early 2015, for example?

The easiest way to make sense of this is to divide employers into three categories. Why? Because each employer category has its own rules.

The first category is an employer with less than 50 employees (technically, “full-time equivalents”). The Government is quick to point out that this encompasses 96% of all employers, although of course it encompasses a much smaller percentage of employees.

If this is you:

·        You do not have to do anything different with your 2014 W-2s.

·        You are not required to provide health insurance coverage to your full-time employees.

·        You are not required to pay an employer penalty.

·        This is true for 2014, 2015 and all years thereafter.

So, if you are an employer in this category you may or may not offer health insurance to your employees, but this remains a business decision. You are not required to do anything – including filing any new paperwork – to be in compliance with the ACA.

Let’s make our second category employers with 100 or more employees. Why? Technically the original ACA divided employers into two groups: under 50 employees and 50 employees and over. There have been numerous regulatory changes to the law, and one change divided employers further into 50-but-99-and-under employees and 100-employees-and-over.

If this is you… you need to get ready to make changes. 

·         You do not have to do anything different with your 2014 W-2s (fortunately). However, see below for your 2015 W-2s, which you will file in 2016.

·        You will have to provide health insurance to your employees starting January 1, 2015.

o   The ACA itself defines what is acceptable insurance, referred to as “minimum essential coverage.”

§  It also has to be “affordable.”

§  These are areas you want to review with your insurance agent or benefits consultant.

o   There is a sub-rule in here that may or may not impact you. The ACA originally required employers to cover 95% of their full-time employees in 2015. That rule has been changed. You are now required to cover 70% of your full-time employees in 2015 and then 95% for 2016 and later years.

·        You will be required to pay an employer penalty if you don’t provide minimum essential and affordable health insurance.

o   Interestingly enough, this penalty will not appear on your business income tax return. The IRS has to wait until your employees have filed their individual tax returns, then match any information provided to the IRS by the health-care exchanges and by you as the employer.

o   This is expected to be in the form of an IRS notice. You will be given time to respond, after which the IRS will issue another notice and demand for payment.

o   You can therefore expect that this notice will not go out until the end of 2016 or more likely in 2017. This is approximately one-year after you paid the underlying payroll itself.

§  We should expect that this penalty will also eventually be required to be paid via estimated tax payments.

·        You will have new paperwork when you file your 2015 year-end payroll tax returns in 2016. These are known as the “Section 6056 rules” and are in place to provide employees the information they need to calculate their ACA penalty, if any, on their individual tax returns.

o   You will file Form 1095-C Employer-Provided Health Insurance Offer and Coverage. A copy of this goes to your employee. It will also go to the IRS with its transmittal – Form 1094-C Transmittal of Employer-Provided Health Insurance Offer and Coverage Information Returns.

§  It is therefore similar to sending the W-2s with their transmittal Form W-3.

o   By the way, filing Forms 1095-C and 1094-C are optional for 2014 (to be filed in 2015). The IRS has said it would like you to file and consider them a “trial run,” but you do not have to.

o   But they are mandatory for 2015 (to be filed in 2016).

Finally, our third category: employers with 50 to 99 employees.

This category is different because in February, 2014 the IRS segregated what it called “midsized employers” (that is 50 to 99 employees). These employers received a one-year delay before facing ACA penalties – until January 1, 2016.

The “large employers” (100-or-more employees) received no such break and have to comply starting January 1, 2015.

If this is you… you need to get ready to make changes. 

·        You do not have to do anything different with your 2014 W-2s (fortunately). However, see below for your 2015 W-2s, which you will file in 2016.

·        You will have to provide health insurance to your employees starting January 1, 2016 (not 2015).

o   There is an interesting requirement, though.

§  You will have to certify – for 2015 - that…

·        You have not reduced your workforce to qualify for this relief; and

·        You have not materially reduced or eliminated any health coverage.

§  This certification is on Form 1094-C, which you will be filing anyway.

o   Otherwise, the requirements are the same as 100-and-more employers, as discussed above.

·        You will have an employer penalty for not complying, but you do not have to comply until January 1, 2016. That is, you have one additional year to comply (as compared to 100-and-more employers).

o   Otherwise, the requirements are the same as for 100-and-more employers, as discussed above.

·        You will have new paperwork when you file your 2015 year-end payroll tax returns in 2016. These are known as the “Section 6056 rules” and are in place to provide employees the information they need to calculate their ACA penalty, if any, on their personal tax returns.

o   You will file Form 1095-C Employer-Provided Health Insurance Offer and Coverage. A copy of this goes to your employee. It will go to the IRS with its transmittal – Form 1094-C Transmittal of Employer-Provided Health Insurance Offer and Coverage Information Returns.

§  It is therefore similar to sending the W-2s with their transmittal Form W-3.

o   By the way, filing Forms 1095-C and 1094-C are optional for 2014 (to be filed in 2015). The IRS has said it would like you to file and consider them a “trial run,” but you do not have to.

o   But they are mandatory for 2015 (to be filed in 2016).

You now have a high-altitude view of what you, as an employer, are to do to comply with the ACA filing requirements. Unless you are a less-than-50 employer, you will have additional reporting requirements. Please consider that some of this information is not presently collected as part of your routine accounting process. Both 50-to-99 and more-than-100 employers should review that new procedures will be in place to collect the information needed to complete these new ACA tax forms. Whereas these forms will not be filed until early 2016, they will contain information going back to January, 2015.

Barriers to Tax Reform

The New York Times ran an article yesterday titled “The Real Barrier to Tax Reform” written by Bruce Bartlett. I have no issue with Mr. Bartlett, although I rarely read The New York Times. Nonetheless, what caught my eye is the following table of “tax expenditures”:

These “expenditures” make it difficult to raise enough “revenues” to cover whatever the government’s spending binge of the moment is.

I can see how reasonable people may debate the tenth – accelerated depreciation – as an expenditure. Instead look at categories such as the 401(k), medical insurance and employer-provided pension plans.

 A couple of observations on this:

(1)   Since when are monies taken from us as taxes to be called “revenues?”

(2)   Since when are monies we keep to be called “expenditures?”

There is an odor of bad fish with the vocabulary. Apple has revenues, as they have something I want and am willing to pay for. The government - not so much. This damage to the language is itself a barrier to tax reform.

Oh, you may be wondering about “exclusion of net imputed rental income.” Here is the concept: if you rented out your home rather than lived in it, someone would pay you rent. The government would then tax you on your rent. So, by living in your home rather than renting it out, you are costing the government money.

You, dear homeowner-living-in-your-home, are an “expenditure.”

Bruce Bartlett "The Real Barrier to Tax Reform"

Would You Like To Buy a Tax Credit?

Let’s talk about an esoteric tax topic: selling tax credits.

You didn’t know it could be done, did you? To be fair, we have to divide this discussion between federal tax credits and state tax credits. Some states by statute allow the sale of their tax credits. Massachusetts will allow the sale its “motion picture” tax credit and Colorado will allow its “conservation easement” tax credit.

The federal rules are a bit different. These transactions usually involve the use of partnerships and LLCs, and the purchaser takes on the role of a “partner” in the deal. The business problem commonly present is that the purchaser (the “investor”) has little interest in the project other than the credit and a great deal of interest in getting out of the project as soon as possible. It is somewhat like a Kardashian marriage. There are technical problems lurking here, not the least of which is the IRS determining that a genuine partnership never existed. Tax planners and attorneys have stretched this specialized area to unbelievable lengths, and – in most cases – the IRS has gone along. Congress has said that it wants to incentivize the construction of low-income housing, for example, and to do so it has provided a tax credit. Say that someone decides to develop low-income housing, and to make the deal work that someone decides to “sell” the credit. If the IRS come in and nixes the deal, there are negative consequences - to the participants, to the industry and to the advisors to the industry. The IRS may also be called in before a Congressional tax committee for a lecture on overreach.  

Which makes the recent decision in Historic Boardwalk Hall LLC v Commissioner unnerving to tax pros. The property in question was the Atlantic Center convention center (known as the Historic Boardwalk Hall or the East Hall). We know it as the home of the Miss America pageant. The Boardwalk was owned by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA). The NJSEA solicited bids for the historic rehabilitation tax credit. The winner was Pitney Bowes.

They put a deal together. NJSEA would be the general partner with a 0.1% partnership interest.  Pitney Bowes would be the limited partner with a 99.9% partnership interest, including a 99.9% right to profits, losses and tax credits. Goodness knows that NJSEA – a government agency – did not need tax credits. Government agencies do not pay tax.

Pitney Bowes agreed to make capital contributions of approximately $16 million.  Each installment depended on attaining certain benchmarks. Pitney Bowes was to receive 3% preferred return on its cash investment and approximately $18 million in historic tax credits

In case Pitney Bowes and the NJSEA had a falling-out, the NJSEA could buy-out Pitney Bowes for an amount equal to the projected tax benefits and cash distributions due them. 

NJSEA also had a call option to buy-out Pitney Bowes at any time during the 12-month period beginning 60 months after East Hall was placed in service.  Pitney Bowes decided to make certain on this point, and they included a put option to force NJSEA to buy them out during the 12-month period beginning 84 months after East Hall was placed in service. 

To make sure they had beaten this horse to death, Pitney Bowes also obtained a “tax benefits guaranty” agreement.  This agreement assured Pitney Bowes that, at minimum, it would receive the projected tax benefits from the project.  The guarantee also indemnified Pitney Bowes for any taxes, penalties, interest and legal fees in case of an IRS challenge. 

The IRS challenged. Its principal charge was simple: the partnership had no economic substance. That arrangement was as likely as Charlie Sheen and Chuck Lorre spending a golf weekend together. The Tax Court did not see it the IRS’ way and decided in favor of Pitney Bowes. Not deterred, the IRS appealed to the Third Circuit.

The Third Circuit reversed the Tax Court and decided in favor of the IRS.

More specifically, the Circuit Court decided that Pitney Bowes had virtually no downside risk. Pitney Bowes was not required to make capital contributions until a certain amount of rehabilitation work had been done. This meant they knew they would be receiving an equivalent amount of tax credits before writing any checks.   Then you have the tax benefits guaranty, which gave them a “get out of jail free” card.

The Court did not like that the funds contributed by Pitney Bowes were unnecessary to the project. NJSEA had been appropriated the funds before it began the renovation. NJSEA had been approached by a tax consultant with a “plan” to generate additional funds by utilizing federal historic tax credits.

Still, Pitney Bowes could argue that it had upside potential. That is a powerful argument in favor of the validity of a partnership arrangement. Wait, Pitney Bowes could not argue that it had any meaningful upside potential. While It was entitled to 99.9% of the cash flow, Pitney Bowes had to wait until all loan payments, including interest, as well as any operating deficits had been repaid.  The put and call options also did not help. NJSEA could call away any upside potential from Pitney Bowes. The Court decided Pitney Bowes had no skin in the game. 

This tax pro’s opinion: The deal was over-lawyered. The problem is that many of these deals are constructed in a very similar manner, which fact has thrown the industry (rehabilitation credit, low-income housing credit, certain energy credits, etc.) and their tax advisors into tumult. The advisors have to back this truck up a little, at least enough to giving the illusion that a valid partnership is driving the transaction.

Do not feel bad for Pitney Bowes. Remember that they have a tax indemnity agreement with NJSEA. I wonder how much this tax case just cost the state of New Jersey.

Reviewing Two ObamaCare Taxes Springing Up in 2013

We are beginning over here to re-review the tax aspects of ObamaCare after the Supreme Court’s decision last week. There are several tax changes, but today we will revisit the new investment income tax and the new earned income tax. These will happen in 2013, so let’s go over them.

Investment Income

If you are single, you will owe a new investment tax if your adjusted gross income (AGI) is over $200,000. If you are married, you will owe the new tax if your AGI is over $250,000. (I know, twice $200,000 is considerably more than $250,000. I did not write the law). If this is you, will owe a brand-new 3.8% tax on your investment income.

Let’s be clear: it is not necessarily ALL your investment income. Rather it will be on investment income over $200,000 or $250,000, as the case may be. If you are married and retired and your entire adjusted gross income of $250,000 is interest and dividends, you will owe no NEW tax. You will owe plenty of OLD tax, though.

What is investment income? Let’s go with the easy examples: dividends, interest, capital gains (short-term and long-term), royalties and annuities outside retirement plans

NOTE:  Net investment income is also defined to include income from a passive activity. This concerns me, as the rental of a duplex is a passive activity, as is passthrough income to a “passive” member in an LLC. Under Section 469, these activities were considered “trades or businesses,” although the activity could be further tagged as “passive” or “nonpassive.” They were not however tagged as “investment.” This new tax appears to use the language differently from Section 469 and equates “passive” with “investment.” The IRS unfortunately has yet to issue formal guidance in this area.

How can this tax surprise you? Here are a few ways:

(1)   You sell your business.

(2)   You get married.

(3)   You sell your principal residence, and the gain exceeds the $250,000/$500,000 exclusion.

(4)   You inherit and sell stock from a parent’s estate.

Earned Income

If you are single, you will pay an extra 0.9% Medicare tax on your earned income over $200,000. If married, that threshold changes to $250,000.

What is earned income? The easiest way is to ask whether you paid or will pay social security or self-employment tax on the income. If the answer is “yes”, you have earned income. Note that this definition excludes your pension, 401(k) and IRA distributions.

Let’s go over a few examples.

EXAMPLE 1: A married couple filing jointly has $360,000 of adjusted gross income—$240,000 of wages plus $120,000 of interest, dividends and capital gains. They have $110,000 of investment income` over the $250,000 threshold. They will owe an extra 3.8% of that $110,000, or $4,180, in tax.

EXAMPLE 2: In the following year, the same couple has $400,000 of income, the difference being a $40,000 bonus. All their investment income is now above the threshold amount. Their new investment income tax will be $4,560. In addition, since their earned income is now above $250,000 they will owe the new earned income tax of $270 ((280,000- 250,000) times 0.9%).

EXAMPLE 3:  After many years, you move from Purchase, New York. You sell your house for $920,000 and are single.  Your exclusion amount on the sale is $250,000 so the taxable gain is 670,000. Assuming that you earned income is over $200,000, the new investment income tax will be $25,460 ((920,000 – 250,000) times 3.8%).

We will discuss other tax changes in a future blog. Some are delayed (such as the employer penalty) and others are already in place but are somewhat esoteric (the prescription drug fee).