Tag Archives: taxes

Business Taxes, Part II of III on year-end tax planning

Posted on by

This is Part II of three parts on year-end tax planning under the Tax Cut and Jobs Act. In our first part, we discussed the impact of the new law on personal taxes. In this part, we focus on small businesses.

Choice of Entity for Small Businesses

One of the biggest changes from the new tax law is the massive reduction in the tax rate for regular or “C” corporations. That may sound very appealing, but does this mean you should convert your S Corp. or LLC into a C Corp.? It could, if you expect to keep net income in your business.

If that is not your plan, i.e., if you want to take out money for yourself and other members, then use a pass-through entity instead of a C Corp. While a C Corp. may only pay taxes of 21% on its income, the amount the C Corp. distributes, via dividends or otherwise, will be taxed again to shareholders. If the shareholders are in the highest bracket, then income that started in the corporation had to pay over 52% in total taxes before getting into shareholders pockets. If you are a pass-through such as an LLC or partnership, then no tax is imposed at the entity level and entity members may qualify for the QBID on their personal returns – see below.

Be clear on your goals: do you want to leave net income in to grow the business for sale or an IPO? Or do you want to distribute net income to business members?  Deciding makes the choice clear.

Section 199A QBID

In our first part, we discussed the qualified business income deduction of 20% for certain pass-entities.. The deduction is complicated and subject to limitation. One such limitation is the total income of the taxpayer reported on her individual or joint tax return. The deduction phases out for high income taxpayers, starting at $157,500 of income for single taxpayers and $315,000 for married taxpayers, and phasing out when income exceeds $207,500 for single taxpayers and $415,000 for married taxpayers. There are wage and capital limits that can bring back a deduction when the phase out is exceeded, but that does not help service businesses as discussed below.

The deduction is “below the line,” so it does not reduce self-employment taxes or any items that are keyed to adjusted gross income (“AGI”). It also does not affect net operating losses.

Another limit is on income from a service business. This is defined as income from the following:

Health, law, accounting, consulting, financial services, performing arts, actuarial science, athletics, brokerage services, investing or trading in securities, or any business where the principal asset is the reputation or skill of its employees (there are now regulations on this last type, but those do not answer all questions).

Architects and engineers were excluded from the list in the final bill.

For those within the definition of service business, QBID drops to zero when the phase out is exceeded.

If you are bumping up against any limits for 2018, you will want to review ways to defer income to 2019 or reduce taxable income in 2018 by increasing your deductions.

Businesses use of Home

The new tax law imposes limits on Schedule A deductions, including state and local income and real estate taxes. If some of your real estate taxes otherwise subject this limit are for a home office or other business use, then the business portion is not limited and can be used to shelter business income.

New Rules on Entity-level Audits

Under the new tax law, LLCs and partnerships face substantial changes for the IRS audit procedures:

  1. Beginning in 2018, the IRS can audit such entities at the partnership or LLC level under the Centralized Partnership Audit Rules or “CPAR.” This gives the IRS new powers, one of which is the ability to impose a tax at the entity level and let the partners sort it all out, rather than the pre-2018 requirement to audit each partner; and
  2. The IRS would contact the Partnership Representative for the entity. If no PR has been designated, then the entity loses by default.

This means (a) updating your operating agreement to designate the PR in place of the tax matters partner and (b) electing out of the CPAR rules on your 2018 tax filing to avoid application of these unfavorable rules.

What is a WISP?

You have probably received e-mails and other notices asking you to review updated privacy policies from various vendors. Many of these were generated in response to adoption of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) by the European Union in May of 2018.

What too few companies know is that there are laws in the US that require implementation of privacy safeguarding. One affecting companies doing business in Massachusetts is the Standards for the Protection of Personal Information of Residents of the Commonwealth in force since 2010.

If you are affected and have not either established or reviewed your company’s WISP (written information security program), please act right away to avoid liability for any potential breach.  Also, check the laws of any other state in which your do business to see what laws apply to your use of personal information.

Conclusion

If any of this raises questions for your year-end planning, let me know. I will be glad to see if can help.

Facebook page for our law firm

Posted on by

We are excited to announce the Facebook page for our law firm.

We hope you use this to keep informed about changes in the tax law and other financial planning issues.

Please check it out and “like” the new page.  Also, feel free to give us feedback.

Thank you

Impact of New Tax Law, Part I of III on year-end tax planning

Posted on by

New Tax Law

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act made substantial changes to tax rates, deductions and credits for individuals, corporations and other entities. It also affected changes to estate taxes. For a summary of all changes, please see our post from December in 2017 year-end tax planning – a year of uncertainty.  Please also see the other parts of this series:  in the second part, we discussed planning for small businesses; in the third part, we provided a practical guide for year-end action; and in Tax Planning Hacks, we discussed planning ideas for your Itemized Deductions and more.

The purpose of this post is to get you started on year-end planning to take advantage of the TCJA changes.

What is the Impact of New Tax Law?

We have been reviewing the impact of the new law with projections in our CCH ProSystem Fx tax software. While many individuals lose deductions in 2018 that they were previously allowed, that does not mean that their taxes increase as much they feared. Here are some reasons why:

  • They probably do not owe the AMT as they have in the past.
  • The change in rates lowers total taxes for many.
  • The passthrough deduction discussed below can make a big change.

If you want us to review the impact on your taxes, please let me know.

Clarifications on New Tax Law

Mortgage interest remains deductible even on an equity line of credit (ELOC), provided proceeds from the ELOC were used to purchase or substantially improve your home. However, if the proceeds were used for consumption, then the interest is not deductible.

The deduction for state and local income taxes (SALT) and property taxes is capped at $10,000. However, property taxes for rental properties are still fully deductible against rental income on Schedule E. And farmers and self-employed taxpayers can still deduct the business portion of the taxes on Schedules F and C. Finally, you may be able to use a trust to share ownership of a property with beneficiaries so that they can deduct a portion of the property taxes.

Change for Small Businesses

One of the biggest changes is the qualified business income deduction (“QBID”) under section 199A, also know as the pass-through deduction. This deduction reduces taxable income from qualifying businesses by 20% for taxpayers under the income limitations. This is, net profits form the business after any W-2 salary paid to the owners is reduced.

Pass through businesses include sole proprietors, S corporations, LLCs and partnerships. They also include real estate investment trusts (“REITs”) and certain publicly traded partnerships (“PTP”). But there are income limits and thresholds that eliminate the QBID service companies. Here is a good chart on that may help you see if you qualify for the 20% deduction. Also, watch for more in our next post.

Planning under 199A for QBID

If you have a pass-through business and your year-end planning shows that you may hit the income limits that reduce or eliminate the deduction, you can move income and deductions for Schedule A to change that. Push income into next year and bring any deductions from next year into this year. If you succeed in getting back under the income the limitation, you get a 120% benefit for the right offs – that is, 100% deduction value on Schedule A and 20% QBID value.

The income limits are toughest on service companies. If your small business is a service company, you may want to break out any non-service business to get the benefit of QBID. A professional office that does billing, debt collection or operates a professional building may be able to put those activities in separate entities that qualify for QBID. Furthermore, if your small business is considering buying an office, keep that in a separate entity from the business.

Conclusion

Watch for Part II coming soon. In the meantime, please contact us if you have any questions.

Be wary of these scams – IRS and investments

Posted on by

It seems that we hear of a new internet or phone scam on a weekly basis. These scam artists are getting bolder and more sophisticated with each new endeavor. So, we wanted to alert you to a few new ones where the scammers are pretending to be IRS agents and financial planners.

**Taxpayer Scams**
This past year, the IRS issued a strong warning to consumers against an aggressive telephone scam. The scammers call taxpayers to inform them they owe outstanding taxes and demand payment over the phone. To lend to their credibility, the scammers will have the last four digits of the taxpayer’s social security number. If the taxpayer refuses to make a payment, the caller threatens the taxpayer with jail time, loss of driver’s license and, in some cases, deportation. When the taxpayer refuses to provide this information, the scammers call back pretending to be a local police officer.
If you receive one of these calls, the IRS requests that you take these steps:
• “If you know you owe taxes or you think you might owe taxes, call the IRS at 1.800.829.1040. The IRS employees at that line can help you with a payment issue, if there really is such an issue.
• If you know you do not owe taxes or have no reason to think that you owe any taxes (for example, you’ve never received a bill or the caller made some bogus threats as described above), then call and report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at 1.800.366.4484.
• If you’ve been targeted by this scam, you should also contact the Federal Trade Commission and use their “FTC Complaint Assistant” at FTC.gov. Please add “IRS Telephone Scam” to the comments of your complaint.”
The IRS wants you to know that they never initiate contact with taxpayers via email to request personal or financial information. They also never ask for PINs, passwords or similar confidential access information for credit cards, banks for other accounts. If you receive an email claiming to be from the IRS, you should forward it to phishing@irs.gov.

**Investor Scams**
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) recently published a warning to registered representatives about three different scams where registered representatives may be subject to “Firm Identity Theft”.
The first scheme involves scammers fraudulently using the identity of legitimate registered representatives and brokerage firms to con investors out of their money by building websites that mirror legitimate websites of broker-dealers and registered representatives. The scammers claim they are registered with FINRA and SIPC. Victims who fall for this tactic are tricked into making payments or investments through the site. The scam artists collect the money and then disappear.
The second one puts a new twist on an old tactic by perusing international investors with and “advance fee scheme” or “mirror fraud.” Again, scammers use the identity of a legitimate broker-dealer and contact investors with an attractive offer. Examples of these offers include lifting a stock restriction or purchasing investors’ shares for an amount significantly above their market value. In return, the investor is asked to pay certain fees and expenses in advance. Once the investor has paid the fees, the fake broker-dealer steals the money and disappears.
The last scheme involves fraudulent checks. The scammer, using the stolen identity of a registered broker-dealer, contacts a customer is an attractive offer, like offering to overpay for an item on Craigslist. When the scammer sends the check, it’s for a much larger amount than the agreed-upon price. The scammer then requests the seller to mail the difference back to the scammer. In an effort to convince the customer of the stolen identity, the fraudster will use the broker-dealer’s true address as the return address on the mail sent to the customer. Believing they are dealing with a real broker-dealer, the customer is persuaded to send money. But, when the seller cashes the original check, it bounces.

Protecting yourself from these scams requires vigilance. If someone contacts you with and offer that’s too good to be true, it likely is!

Roth Conversions – decisions on 2010, recharacterize now or pay taxes over two years?

Posted on by

You can still decide as late as October 15th (if you extend filing of your tax returns) to either recharacterize or pay the taxes in 2011 and 2012 instead of on your 2010 taxes for your 2010 conversion to a Roth IRA.

Recharacterize – if you have the misfortune of losing value on the IRA after converting, you can “un-convert” by “recharacterizing” the Roth IRA as a traditional IRA using an IRA-to-IRA transfer (do not distribute funds to yourself, as that distribution voids the recharacterization). You can do this for all or a portion of the account. Once you do so, you cannot convert again until later of 30 days after the recharacterization or the year after the year of the original conversion.
This strategy is useful to address a decreased IRA value or to shift the conversion into future years with less income, so you are in a lower tax bracket.

Tax payments – 2010 is the only year where you can choose to have the income of the conversion split in half and carried onto your 2011 and 2012 tax returns. This (1) spreads the time to come up with funds to pay the taxes (you never want to use the funds in the IRA as that defeats the purpose) and (2) gives you earnings on funds already available to pay the taxes until the payment due date.

Note: if you are paying taxes on the conversion with your 2010 taxes, the amounts are due April 18, 2011, even if you extend to have the option of recharacterizing. If you do recharacterize, then you will have over paid and have a refund due …. until you convert again.