Overview of New Section 385 Regulations

The IRS has issued final and temporary regulations under Code Section 385. These provisions, intended to limit earnings stripping, will enhance the IRS’ ability to characterize related party ownership arrangements, purportedly established as debt, as equity instead.

One set of rules provides prerequisite requirements …

Recent News

09 Aug 2020

GRANTOR TRUSTS OWNING AN ANNUITY

The income tax treatment of annuities is provided for under Code § 72. That section provides various rules, including extra income tax for some distributions to younger taxpayers and limits on deferral for entity owners. The provisions can be difficult to interpret when the owner of the annuity is a grantor trust, and the annuitant and current beneficiary of the trust is not the grantor. A recent private letter ruling gives the IRS’ take on some of these issues. The following conclusions are based on the above scenario – a grantor trust is the owner of the annuity, and there is a current beneficiary that is not the grantor and whose life is the measuring life for the annuity.

Code § 72(q) 10% additional tax on early distributions. This provision imposes. . .

19 Jul 2020

Applicable Federal Rates – August 2020

For the applicable federal rates for the above month, preceding months, and a data table that visually shows trends. . .

17 Jul 2020

Jenna Rubin appears on Wealth and Law Podcast

Jenna Rubin joined Brent Nelson and Rachel Sass to talk about electronic wills, differences between the Arizona and Florida electronic will statutes, how these wills work, the current limitations of electronic wills, and to prognosticate about electronic wills’ future.

Episode 8: Electronic Wills

Listen Now

15 Jul 2020

Jenna Rubin presents at ABA Webinar

On July 15, 2020, Jenna Rubin presented to the American Bar Association, Real Property Trust and Estate, Litigation and Ethics Malpractice Committee on Meditations in the COVID-19 World.

05 Jul 2020

FBAR NON-WILLFUL PENALTY NOT CALCULATED BASED ON NUMBER OF ACCOUNTS

The FBAR rules require the filing of a FinCEN Report 114, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) to report for accounts of U.S. persons aggregating $10,000 or more. For a non-willful failure to disclose, the maximum penalty imposed is $10,000.

Since one FBAR is used to report multiple accounts, a basic question is whether the non-willful failure to report several accounts gives rise to only one $10,000 penalty (based on one return), or $10,000 multiplied by the number of unreported accounts. This can make a big difference . . .

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