Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Tag: Tax Courts

“Even liars and hucksters have First Amendment rights”

A horrible fate must await an attorney when a judge has these things to say about him:

“Just because other accountants and professionals were doing something wrong does not excuse Defendant’s misconduct.”

“Defendant’s reasoning is so specious that he should have known it was wrong.”

“Defendant has been quite adept at hiding his involvement in these activities in an effort to develop what he believes is plausible deniability. Ultimately, his denials are implausible.”

“As stated earlier, the Court believes that promotion of tax schemes and structures is now Defendant’s modus operandi. These were not isolated occurrences, and the nature of his preferred method of business indicates it will continue to ng business.”

“Defendant describes himself as a “rainmaker,” and the Court finds that practically everything he has done in that capacity has been improper. The Court has no reason to believe he would not concoct and promote some other scheme of doubtful validity.”

So this led to…maybe a referral to the local attorney disciplinary board? A broad and sweeping injunction against doing further tax work?

Well, a Kansas City judge barred defendant A. Blair Stover from promoting three “schemes” he no longer promotes anyway. The judge also required him to run any other tax planning ideas by the IRS before marketing them. No disbarment. No banishment. Just “sin no more.”

Why the seeming leniency?

An injunction prohibiting Defendant from providing tax advice raises serious First Amendment concerns. The Government has a strong and valid interest in preventing fraud, and the First Amendment does not protect fraudulent statements. However, the Government has no interest in preventing true statements, and even liars and hucksters have First Amendment rights. Conceivably, Defendant could provide lawful and accurate tax advice, and the Court is unwilling (and probably unable) to prevent him from doing so.

I like the First Amendment. Without it I might have been moved to an oubliette underneath IRS Headquarters long ago. Yet the first in line in the bill of rights hasn’t stopped other judges from shutting down tax scheme promoters. For example, a federal judge enjoined tax protest guru Bill Benson from:

promoting, organizing, or selling (or helping others to promote, organize, or sell) any other tax shelter, plan, or arrangement that incites or assists others to attempt to violate the internal revenue laws or unlawfully evade the assessment or collection of their federal tax liabilities or unlawfully claim improper tax refunds.

Benson appealed on First Amendment grounds. The Seventh Circuit turned him down:

Benson purported to be selling a way to avoid tax liability; what he was actually selling was a way to increase tax and criminal liability for failing to pay taxes. That is false advertising, which may be banned consistent with the First Amendment.

Some years back a Des Moines gentleman vigorously promoted Employee Stock Ownership Plans as a tax cure-all, which had a number of unfortunate consequences. The Eighth Circuit didn’t let the First Amendment get in the way from permanently enjoining him and his CPA practice “…from acting as a service provider to any ERISA plan.”

Perhaps there’s something in ERISA that overrides the First Amendment the same way “ERISA preemption” keeps states from regulating many features of pension plans. Maybe the Eighth Circuit was wrong. But if the Kansas City judge’s opinion gets it right, you can get away with a lot in tax practice before you are drummed out altogether.

Land Yachts and the Tax Law: Four Tips to Avoid “At-Risk” Pitfalls

If there’s one thing the economy offers to businesses nowadays, it’s opportunities to lose money. As unpleasant as that is, it at least will reduce your taxes, right?

Maybe.

Even tax loss parties have their poopers, and the “At-risk rules” of Code Sec. 465 are as poopy as can be. Drafted to fight the first generation of retail tax shelters in the 1970s, these rules have faded into obscurity, but remain available for annoyingly competent IRS agents to wield against your loss deductions. The rules are supposed to defer losses when it’s really the lender on the hook for them, rather than the nominal owner of the money-losing activity. The losses carry forward to offset future income on the activity, or gain on a sale someday.


These rules pooped all over the tax loss of CTI Leasing, an LLC owned by Kieth Roberts, an Indiana man, to lease trucks to his trucking company. He loanded the LLC $425,000 to buy a “Vantare H3-45 Super S2” RV. The Tax Court says “Vantare RVs are custom-built, fully furnished, luxury coach RVs known for their ‘yacht quality fit and finish.'”

The leasing business cranked out tax losses. The IRS disallowed $425,000 of them on the grounds that the $425,000 loan didn’t give the LLC owner “at-risk” basis in his leasing activity. The Tax Court said the taxpayer failed to show that the land yacht was used in the truck leasing business or was owned by it, so the $425,000 wasn’t “at-risk” in the leasing activity.

Not every business can afford a nice land yacht, but they all can lose money. Some pointers to help keep you from trippng over the at-risk rules:

• If your loan is “non-recourse” — if you don’t pay, all the lender can do is repossess the property — that’s an at-risk rule red flag.

• Limited partners and LLC members are likely to face at-risk issues; the whole point of a “limited liability company” is to limit owner liability, after all.

• Be careful of loans from related parties. If you borrow from the wrong person, the tax law will treat the loan as not “at-risk,” even if you borrow from a business partner who might leave you under an end-zone somewhere if you don’t pay up.

• If you are in the real-estate business, “qualified” non-recourse debt – generally third-party commercial loans – are O.K. under the at-risk rules.

If you trip over the at-risk rules, your losses may not be gone forever. Form 6198 tracks your deferred losses, and you can lose them if your activity generates income someday.

Joe Kristan is a shareholder of Roth & Company, P.C. in Des Moines, Iowa, author of the Tax Update Blog and Going Concern contributor. You can see all of his posts for GC here.

S Corp Shareholders Are Going to Have Basis Issues at Year End – Four Things for Them to Keep in Mind

When somebody repays a loan, that’s not income to the lender, is it? It can be when a shareholder loans money to an S corporation. New York businessmen Ira and Sheldon Nathel learned that the hard way in court this week. Ira and Sheldon each owned shares in food distributors that were set up as S corporations. When you own an S corporation you may deduct corporate losses on your 1040, but only if you have basis in your S corporation stock or in loans you have made to the corporation (guarantees of corporate debt don’t work).

Yes, there’s a catch. When you take S corporation losses, they reduce your basis — first in your stock, then in your loans. Subsequent income, including tax-exempt income, restores your basis in your debt andr. If you repay a loan with reduced basis, you have taxable income to the extent the repayment exceeds your basis.


At the end of 2000, IRA and Sheldon each loaned $649,775 to one of their S corporations. That enabled them to take losses of $537,228 or so, leaving them with $112,547 in remaining loan basis. That would have been fine if they had waited patiently until S corporation income had restored their basis. Their patience ran out in February 2001, when they repaid the loan in full.

They may have had second thoughts. In August 2001 Ira and Sheldon each made a capital contribution to the S corporation — $537,228, coincidentally. They then took a novel position on their 2001 tax returns. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals takes up the story:

In calculating their 2001 taxes, the Nathels treated their capital contributions… as constituting “tax-exempt income” to the corporations for the purposes of § 1366(a)(1)(A). Therefore, because the Nathels’ bases in their stock previously had been reduced to zero and because their bases in the loans they made to the corporations were also reduced, the Nathels used their capital contributions to restore their bases in the loans pursuant to § 1367(b)(2)(B). Without such an increase in their bases, the petitioners would have been taxed on the ordinary income that would have resulted from the corporations’ repayment of the petitioners’ loans in amounts above the petitioners’ previously reduced bases.

The IRS didn’t buy the idea that a capital contribution was some sort of income. They said a capital contribution increases capital, not debt, and is allocable to stock basis. That meant $537,228 in ordinary taxable income. Unfortunately for Ira and Sheldon, the Tax Court, and now the Second Circuit, continue to recognize the capital/income distinction that has been around for approximately forever.

The economy being what it is (still crappy), lots of S corporation shareholder are going to have basis problems at year end. They should keep a few points in mind:

• Basis is necessary to deduct losses, but it isn’t sufficient – Your basis has to be “at-risk” and you have to clear the maze of the “passive loss” rules.

• Use caution when repaying loans – When you make a year-end loan to your S corporation to enable you to deduct losses, repaying the loan will trigger taxable income until the loan basis is restored by subsequent S corporation income.

• “Open account” loans can be tricky – Regulations split “open account” debt into separate “loans” when the loan amounts exceed $25,000. That means fluctuating open account balances during the tax year can lead to taxable income, even if the balance ends up higher at year end than it was at the start of the year.

• Related party issues – It’s dangerous to borrow from one S corporation you control and loan the funds to another one. The IRS likes to attack such loans as lacking substance.

So Ira and Sheldon get to write some big checks to the IRS. They have the consolation of having $537,228 more basis in their stock, to offset other income somewhere, somehow, someday.

Joe Kristan is a shareholder of Roth & Company, P.C. in Des Moines, Iowa, author of the Tax Update Blog and Going Concern contributor. You can see all of his posts for GC here.

One Diligent CPA Forced the IRS to Use a ‘Staggering’ Amount of Resources

Sure, NYU has produced lots of fancy-pants tax lawyers. And many high-powered big-school tax accountants haunt the cubicles of the Final Four accounting firms. But if driving the IRS to distraction is a mark of tax distinction, an obscure Kansas City attorney/CPA, formerly of Grant Thornton and Coopers and Lybrand, is a true tax all-star.


Or was. A federal judge this week made it inconvenient for GT alum Allen R. Davison to pursue his tax practice by enjoining him from marketing some of his most creative ideas:

Davison is hereby enjoined from organizing, establishing, promoting, selling, offering for sale or helping to organize, establish, promote, se any tax plan, as addressed herein, involving sham parallel C management companies, sham 412(i) plans, sham flock contracts or any other illegal tax scheme, plan, or device, even if not specifically addressed herein. Additionally, Davison shall not organize, establish, promote, sell, offer for sale or assist in any financial or tax related arrangement without submitting in writing to an IRS designee, a detailed plan explaining the financial or tax arrangement and all steps necessary for the arrangement to be legal under the tax code.

That would all be rather inconvenient for a practitioner. Why are the feds so down on Mr. Davison? From the injunction order:

Davison’s numerous, complex, ever-changing, tax-fraud schemes and his deliberate efforts to disguise his true involvement in the promotion of these tax-fraud schemes have required the IRS to expend a “staggering” amount of resources on discovering and combating these schemes. If this outlay of resources continues – and it almost certainly will continue in the absence of an injunction barring Davison from offering tax advice without significant restraint, then these resources will not be available to service honest tax paying Americans. Nor will these resources be available to investigate other promoters of tax-fraud schemes.

What were these “schemes”? Some of them used “management fees” to shift income from taxable businesses to sham S corporations owned by tax-exempt ESOPs or Roth IRAs. Others involved improper pension plans. But good old Midwestern farm ingenuity was behind what may be his most creative plan:

Davison drafts purported flock contracts for his clients. (Tr. 398:21-399:4). He argues that by executing these agreements, his clients become farmers, who are eligible to claim deductions for the cost of purchasing a flock of layer hens during the tax year in which that cost is incurred, pursuant to Revenue Ruling 60-191. (Tr. 412:10-20; PX 165). That revenue ruling provides “that farmers employing the cash method of accounting may deduct the cost of baby chicks and egg laying hens in the year of payment therefor, provided such method is consistently followed and clearly reflects income.”

The judge found that Mr. Davison has an overly-inclusive view of what “farming” means. The judge said that a guy with dirty boots who actually fed and raised chicks might be a farmer, but a “self-employed insurance salesman,” for example, who loaned money to a real farmer, did not.

There are many fascinating threads here, but let’s just hit three for now:

• Mr. Davison began selling many of these ideas while working for Grant Thornton, and according to the court order, marketed them through a network of CPA firms set up by GT alums. Networking pays!

• The elaborate system of preparer registration, testing and continuing education that IRS Commissioner Shulman is ramming through will spend enormous resources making honest and competent preparers jump through hoops; they would have done nothing to stop Mr. Davison. Shulman’s plan will spend money on driving honest preparers crazy with paperwork rather than chasing scammers.

• The cash-basis chicken flock technique that is outrageous for an insurance salesman is hunky-dory when done by a wealthy farmer. Because America Needs Farmers!

Joe Kristan is a shareholder of Roth & Company, P.C. in Des Moines, Iowa, author of the Tax Update Blog and Going Concern contributor. You can see all of his posts for GC here.

Sex Change Expenses Are Deductible but You’re on Your Own for the C Cup

He seemed to have it all — a wife, three kids, a successful career. But it wasn’t enough. What he really wanted was another X chromosome. Our taxpayer, explains the Tax Court, “was uncomfortable in the male gender role from childhood and first wore women’s clothing secretly around age 10…discomfort regarding her gender intensified in adolescence…[The taxpayer] was a female trapped in a male body, and continued to secretly wear women’s clothing.”

So our taxpayer consulted a licensed social worker, which is apparently how these things are done, and after suitable counseling, decided to try on XX for size. The first steps down the path the the Misses Department seemed to suit the taxpayer, so he took the next big leap. $21,741 of surgical and related expenses later, the taxpayer was Ms. Rhiannon O’Donnabhain.


The Tax Court got involved when she deducted these expenses on her 2001 tax return. The IRS said that the expenses were not “medical” expenses under Sec. 219. It would be an unusual man who would undergo this sort of thing absent dire medical need: “The procedures that Dr. Meltzer carried out included surgical removal of the penis and testicles and creation of a vaginal space using genital skin and tissue.”

It took 139 pages and 4 separate opinions, but the Tax Court agreed that the gender reassignment surgery is a deductible medical expense. It’s surprising that it was so difficult, considering that the court is largely composed of men who wear dresses at work. But they felt it was necessary to go into the sort of privacy-killing detail that makes taxpayers think twice before spurning an appeals offer and going to Tax Court (oh, you mean you’re that Rhiannon O’Donnabhain!):

Petitioner, anticipating the formal recommendations for her surgery, went for a consultation and examination by Dr. Meltzer in June 2001 at his offices in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Meltzer concluded that petitioner was a good candidate for sex reassignment surgery. Dr. Meltzer’s notes of his physical examination of petitioner state: “Examination of her breasts reveal [sic] approximately B cup breasts with a very nice shape.”

Nice enough for government work, anyway. The Court ruled that while the hormone therapy, vaginoplasty, feminizing facial surgery and penis and testicle removal were deductible, breast augmentation was, well, too much:

given the contemporaneous documentation of the breasts’ apparent normalcy and the failure to adhere to the Benjamin standards’ requirement to document breast-engendered anxiety to justify the surgery, we find that petitioner’s breast augmentation surgery did not fall within the treatment protocol… Instead, the surgery merely improved her appearance.

So if the Tax Court’s view holds up on appeal, you can deduct the cost of changing sides, but if that’s not enough to make you sufficiently hot, you’re on your own.

Tax Court: “…religious, charitable, scientific…literary, or educational purposes…” Doesn’t Mean “Sex with Kids.”

Private charitable efforts are as American as can be. Toqueville noted our vigorous civil society back in the early days:

Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools. If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society.

The tax law recognizes this all-American tendency in Sec. 501(c)(3), which grants a tax exemption for associations with the proper purpose, like those in the headlines.

So along comes Eddie C. Risdal from Iowa. Eddie wanted tax exemption for a cause dear to his heart, “Mysteryboy Incorporation”:

MENBERS SHALL NOT PROMOOT, BUT WILL NOT DENY THE FACT OF PAST & PRESENT HUMAN HISTORY THAT HUMANKIND FROM YOUTH ON-THROUGH ADULTHOOD HAS IN MAJORITY BEEN SEXUAL ACTIVE WHETHER BE IN PROMISIOUS, DEVENTCY, OR EXPERIMENTATION SEXUAL ACTS, AND MENBERS WILL PROMOOT SAFE SEX EDUCATION AND SAY NO TO ILLEGAL DRUGS USES UNTIL THE EVENT THAT THEY BECOME LEGALIZED, MENBERS WILL PROMOOT FEED THE HUNGARY, SUEICIDE PREVENTION AND ANY AMENDED PROGRAMS AS THE INCORPORATION FINDS SUCH A PUBLIC NEED TO ADD SUCH PROGRAMS THAT WILL BENEFIT SOCIETY AT LARGE.

The IRS somehow found this suspicious and asked a few more questions. They came to this conclusion:

The facts of this case show that Mysteryboy Incorporation was organized and operating primarily for influencing a change in the laws concerning sexual exploitation of children.

The Tax Court found that cause a bit too close to Eddie’s heart (my emphasis):

The activities in which petitioner proposes to engage seek to decriminalize the type of behavior (1) for which Mr. Risdal, petitioner’s founder, sole director, sole officer, and executive director, was convicted and incarcerated and (2) which formed the basis for his having been adjudicated a sexually violent predator subject to civil commitment under Iowa Code Ann. ch. 229A (West 2006).10 On the record before us, we find that petitioner has failed to show that those activities will not provide Mr. Risdal with a platform from which he will seek to legitimize the illegal behaviors in which he has engaged, for which he was convicted, and which formed the basis on which he is civilly committed under the laws of the State of Iowa. On that record, we find that petitioner has failed to carry its burden of establishing that its proposed activities will not further the private interests of Mr. Risdal in violation of section 501(c)(3) and the regulations thereunder.

The moral? Civil society ends where civil commitment begins.

Cite: Mysteryboy Incorporation v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2010-13.

Joe Kristan is a tax shareholder for Roth & Company, a Des Moines, Iowa CPA firm, where he works with closely-held businesses and their owners. Prior to helping start Roth & Company, he worked for two of what are now the Final Four CPA firms. He writes the Tax Update Blog and is available for seminars, first communions, Bar Mitzvahs, etc. You can see all his posts for GC here.

That Apology from the IRS? Yeah, Not Going to Happen

shulman.jpgIf you’re a bigshot at the IRS there are a lot of things that you don’t have to do. For one, you don’t really have to meet anyone’s expectations. For another, you don’t have to worry about delaying plans just because some practicing CPAs have some silly concerns.
The latest perk of being Doug Shulman? Not having to apologize to anyone.
TaxProf Blog:

The Tax Court yesterday ruled that it lacks jurisdiction to order the IRS to apologize to a taxpayer. Caldwell v. Commissioner, T.C. Summ. Op. 2009-169 (Nov. 18, 2009):
The part of Caldwell’s motion which we characterize as a “Request for Apology” asks that we require the IRS to enter into the record “a written apology to the Petitioner, signed by the Commissioner, Internal Revenue Service” …
…
The IRS objected to the Request for Apology on the ground that Congress has not, through section 7430 (relating to administrative or litigation costs) or otherwise, authorized us to grant such relief. [Fn.3] We agree.

There you have it American Taxpayer. Under the law, the IRS doesn’t have to apologize to anyone, despite the evidence that they should probably be apologizing constantly. Going forward, if you want an apology, run down a Republican member of the House of Representatives.
Court Lacks Jurisdiction to Order IRS to Apologize to Taxpayer [TaxProf Blog via Tax Update Blog]