Tax Controversies

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This past weekend, as part of passing New Jersey’s 2019 budget, Governor Murphy signed into law a series of changes to the state tax laws. These changes have will have a disproportionate effect on the state’s highest earners and corporations. These affected taxpayers will undoubtedly look for alternative structures to mitigate the impact of the new laws.

This relatively small group of high earners pegged to contribute to this spending plan is still reeling from the stunning blow delivered to New Jersey residents by Congress through the virtual elimination of the SALT deduction. The only question that remains is how many members of that group will seek refuge to states that do not levy a personal income tax and have much lower property and franchise taxes.

How these aggressive tax policies will attract new corporations and high net worth persons to New Jersey is also of significant concern for the state’s long-term fiscal growth and prosperity.

Below is a list of changes to the Gross Income Tax, Sales Tax, Corporate Business Tax and a new Tax Amnesty Program that are intended to increase revenue to pay for the state’s new spending plan.

Gross Income Tax

  • Top income tax bracket of 10.75 percent for income exceeding $5 million.
  • Employers that are subject to the state’s income tax withholding requirements to withhold 15.6 percent on salaries and wages in excess of $5 million for tax year 2018.
  • Eliminates an exclusion from New Jersey source income (for nonresidents) for carried interest/income from providing investment management services and imposes a 17 percent surtax on such management income for Gross Income Tax and Corporation Business Tax purposes.
  • Eliminates tax exemption provided to pass-through entities receiving and selling Grow New Jersey credits.

Sales Tax

  • Sales tax nexus of: $100,000 in taxable sales or 200 or more separate transactions.
  • Sales tax collection and reporting requirements on a “marketplace facilitator,” which is defined to mean any person or business that provides a forum to a retailer to advertise, promote and list the retailer’s products and that also collects receipts from the customer and remits payment to the retailer.

Corporation Business Tax (CBT)

  • For corporations with allocated net income of more than $1 million annually other than public utilities, the new law imposes a surtax of 2.5% for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2019 and 1.5% for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2021.
  • For tax years beginning after December 31, 2016, the 100% dividends-received-deduction (“DRD”) for dividends paid to the taxpayer by one or more subsidiaries owned by the taxpayer (if more than 80% ownership defined by voting power) is reduced to 95 percent for 80 percent-owned subsidiaries.
  • The law also only allows a deduction for interest paid to a foreign related member if the related member is in a foreign country with a comprehensive US tax treaty in place and is subject to tax in the foreign country at an effective rate within three percentage points of the New Jersey rate.
  • The law changes the sourcing rules for certain service providers that operate in and out of New Jersey. Under the new law, the service is sourced to the location where the benefit is received and not where the service is performed. If the benefit is received in more than one state, reasonable approximation may be used. For individuals, the default sourcing rule is the customer’s billing address; for others it could be the location from where the services are ordered in the customer’s regular course of operations or the billing address if the location from where the order was made is unavailable.
  • No deduction is allowed for the deduction under IRC Section 965. This section requires a taxpayer to be taxed on a deemed dividend for deferred foreign income and provides for a deduction to achieve the lower repatriation tax rate. This deduction will not be relevant to the calculation of CBT. Likewise, the deduction provided in new IRC Section 199A, which acts to minimize income from flow-through entities, will have no effect on the CBT. Aside from clarifying the states’ position on these Federal changes, these will ensure that there is no reduction in revenue because of the new Federal tax laws.

Tax Amnesty

  • A 90-day tax amnesty period to run through no later than January 15, 2019.
  • Under the new amnesty program, any taxpayer with liabilities for returns due on or after February 1, 2009, can pay the tax, plus half the interest due as of November 1, 2018 and avoid any penalties with the exception of criminal and civil fraud penalties.

Many of our clients are evaluating the impact of the latest tax changes by asking their accountants to run individual and corporate projections to assess the impact for 2018, 2019 and beyond. Many are also contemplating taking up residence in lower tax jurisdictions such as Florida.

Our next blog post will detail the feasibility of achieving non-resident status (only paying tax on New Jersey source income) while maintaining a residence in New Jersey, but avoiding New Jersey tax on your worldwide income by becoming a permanent resident of Florida.

 

With the continued proliferation of online sales projected to reach $414 billion by the end of 2018, the states, eager to capture their share of this online revenue, have reached for businesses that have no physical contact with the state.

Until the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last week in South Dakota v. Wayfair, 2018 WL 3058015 (Sup. Ct. June 21, 2018), physical contact was the traditional hallmark for establishing “nexus.”  Nexus is the link between an out-of-state business and a given state that provides that state with the jurisdiction under the U.S. Constitution to impose sales tax on businesses participating in inter-state commerce.

The Supreme Court finally caught up to the changing market place last week overturning in Wayfair the “physical presence” test established in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 U.S. 298 (1992).  The Court ruled that the physical presence test is “unfair and unjust” to the brick and mortar businesses competing against virtual competitors.  To level the playing field, South Dakota passed an “economic nexus” law requiring out-of-state sellers to collect sales tax if they derive more than $100,000 of gross revenue from the state or conduct more than 200 transactions in the state.  South Dakota prevailed on the constitutional challenge brought by the e-commerce company Wayfair even though the law imposed sales tax without requiring a business to have physical presence in the state.

The Court in Wayfair expressed that the states should be allowed to “seek long-term prosperity” through economic nexus legislation (estimates indicate the physical presence test has cost states billions of dollars in uncollected sales tax).  In fact, many states’ laws had already blurred the once bright-line Quill physical presence rule.  For example, New York passed click-through nexus legislation in 2008, creating a presumption of physical presence for online retailers that had referral agreements with residents of the state as a result forcing online retailers to collect sales tax on New York shipments.  The online retailers Overstock and Amazon challenged this law but it was upheld by New York’s highest court.  In the aftermath of this decision, New Jersey passed its own similar law and also entered into a tax collection and job creation agreement with Amazon.  The online giant conceded having nexus with the state and then, as an apparent concession, built fulfillment distribution centers in New Jersey in conjunction with collecting sales tax on its online sales.

Under this new Supreme Court precedent, New York, New Jersey and other states do not need to prove physical presence by indirect means, but can move forward with implementing legislation to directly impose sales tax on online businesses on receipts generated from the state.

In light of the Supreme Court decision and the liberation of the states from the yoke of the physical presence test, online and other hybrid businesses should not delay conducting “nexus studies” of their business practices, which we regularly conduct for our clients.  This helps companies determine and plan for potential exposure in an audit, including the personal liability exposure for owners and officers for uncollected sales tax that is not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

 

On March 13, 2018, the IRS announced that the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) will be closing on September 28, 2018. This program has been in place since 2009.

In general, US persons, that is, citizens and residents of the US, must report their worldwide income on their US income tax returns. They also must report their financial accounts held outside the US on an annual FBAR (FinCEN Form 114) if the aggregate balance of their accounts exceeds $10,000.

The OVDP offers a structured program for taxpayers to amend income tax returns to report any unreported foreign income, submit any unfiled international tax filings, and disclose the existence of financial accounts outside the United States.

To participate in the OVDP, taxpayers have had to pay a substantial civil penalty based on the value of the unreported accounts, in addition to paying back taxes with a 20% penalty and interest.

The incentive to participating in the OVDP is that the IRS will not criminally prosecute the taxpayer for the failure to report his or her accounts and that all other potential civil penalties will not be assessed in lieu of the one OVDP penalty.

The OVDP is intended for those taxpayers who knew that the law required reporting of their foreign accounts but who decided to not report such accounts on an FBAR or on other international tax filings. These taxpayers have the most to gain from participating in the OVDP and remain exposed if they choose to not come into compliance.

The OVDP requires eight years of amended return filings, six years of FBAR filings, as well as several other items to be submitted to the IRS. The IRS requires a complete OVDP submission by the September 28 deadline. These submissions require time to compile the necessary documentation and to prepare amended returns. It is important for those not in compliance to decide on participating now – well before the September deadline – or you will not be able to complete the OVDP.

What options do taxpayers have if they didn’t file FBAR’s or report their foreign income but their mistakes were inadvertent? This is referred to as a “non-willful” case and is common for many taxpayers who have accounts from their home country that were opened before moving to the US or for those whose tax return preparer did not advise them as to what the tax law requires. The IRS is continuing a program known as “Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures,” for non-willful violations. These procedures, which may also require a penalty, will continue past September. There are also other ways to return to compliance.

What will IRS enforcement in this area look like once the OVDP is ended? We believe that examinations in this area will only increase. The IRS has gathered a decade’s worth of material on foreign institutions and bankers through the OVDP. This data, along with the information that the IRS now receives from many foreign countries pursuant to a law known as FATCA, allows the IRS to identify non-compliant taxpayers much more easily today than in the past. These international audits are quite intrusive and can expose taxpayers to substantial penalty. We expect the number of these audits to increase.

Once the OVDP option has ended, taxpayers will still be able to voluntarily come forward to disclose past misdeeds. (The IRS has stated that the precise details how to do so will be forthcoming.) It is clear, though, that as onerous as the OVDP penalty is now, the toll to come into compliance in the future will only be greater.

The new tax bill passed by Congress is expected to be signed into law by President Trump in the next few days.  Based on the changes that will take place as of January 1, 2018, there are several items that taxpayers should consider implementing prior to December 31, 2017.

Please note that each taxpayer’s situation is different and each suggestion below should be discussed with the taxpayer’s tax and financial advisors to determine what steps, if any, should be implemented now or deferred until next year or whether it should be implemented at all depending on the taxpayer’s business and tax attributes.

Items to consider:

  • Prepay real estate property taxes if you have amounts due for 2018 (cannot prepay NJ or NY state income taxes)
  • Prepay home equity interest (no deduction after this year)
  • Make charitable contributions this year, especially if not itemizing deductions in 2018
  • Accelerate business deductions
  • Medical expense deduction floor reduction to 7.5% only lasts through 12/31/18, so incur medical expenses if possible before then
  • Delay or accelerate Roth conversion
  • Defer or accelerate income*
  • If you are a US person with foreign businesses, potentially converting to an S corporation before year end could be beneficial due to a “deemed repatriation” of profits in the new bill
  • If you have children in private elementary, junior high or high schools and have not already been funding 529 plans, consider use of 2017 annual exclusions not otherwise exhausted to fund 529 plans

 

*Deferral of income until 2018 could save taxes for some taxpayers because of the lower marginal rates, while acceleration of income could save taxes for others due to the limitation on deductions of state and local taxes.  Whether or not a taxpayer is subject to AMT also plays a role.  Again, each taxpayer should consult his or her own tax and financial advisors for specific advice.

Beginning January 1, 2018, the IRS will begin implementing Section 7345 of the Internal Revenue Code to certify tax debt to the State Department.  This will allow the State Department to revoke or withhold the issuance of passports to delinquent U.S. taxpayers.

To warrant IRS certification to the State Department, the IRS debt has to be deemed “seriously delinquent tax debt.”  This is defined as: (a) an amount exceeding $50,000, as adjusted annually for inflation and including penalties and interest; (b) a levy or notice of federal tax lien has been issued by the IRS; and (c) all administrative remedies, such as the right to request a collection due process hearing, have lapsed or been exhausted.  This only relates to Title 26 of the United States Code and does not include other tax-related penalties, such as FBAR penalties.

The IRS will be required to notify the taxpayer in writing at the time it issues a tax debt certification to the State Department. Before denying a passport, the State Department will hold a passport application for 90 days to allow the taxpayer to resolve the tax debt or enter into a payment alternative with the IRS.

It is also possible to seek relief in U.S. Tax Court or District Court.  The court can order the IRS to reverse the certification if it was erroneously issued, or was required to be reversed but the IRS failed to do so.

The certification will not apply or will be reversed in the following scenarios:

  • The debt is paid in full. (The IRS will not reverse the certification if the taxpayer pays down the debt to an amount below $50,000.)
  • The taxpayer enters into an installment agreement with the IRS to pay off the debt.
  • The IRS accepts an offer in compromise to satisfy the debt, or the Justice Department enters into a settlement agreement with the taxpayer to satisfy the debt.
  • Collection is suspended based on a request of innocent spouse relief, or for collection due process based on a notice of levy, but only if the request is with respect to the debt underlying the certification.
  • The debt becomes unenforceable based on statute of limitations.

The law affects expatriates living abroad and individuals traveling regularly overseas for work.  If the taxpayer finds himself or herself traveling or living outside of the country with a revoked passport, the Secretary of State has the discretion to limit the existing passport, or issue a limited one, for return travel to the United States.

It is not clear if this statute will ultimately pass constitutional challenges.  In the meantime, starting January 1, 2018, you may be at risk of having your U.S. passport revoked if you travel outside of the U.S. without first addressing delinquent tax debts exceeding $50,000 through any administrative remedies and/or collection alternatives available to you.