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According to Law360, the Tax Court ruled that estate of actor James Caan, who played Sonny Corleone in "The Godfather," owes income taxes on $1.5 million from a retirement account that was emptied early and then liquidated while being overseen by Caan's advisers.

An individual retirement account belonging to Caan, who died in July 2022, included a non-publicly traded partnership interest that was held in custody by UBS and which is taxable after unanswered letters from the bank triggered its full distribution to Caan in 2015.

The estate is also ineligible for a waiver of the 60-day deadline for rolling the distribution into another IRA, the court said, upholding a determination by the Internal Revenue Service. A year after UBS distributed the account, one of Caan's advisers ordered the asset liquidated and then transferred its cash value into another IRA, making it ineligible for tax-free treatment under Internal Revenue Code Section 408.

"This Case Is A Quintessential Example Of The Pitfalls
Of Holding Nontraditional, Non-Publicly Traded Assets
In An IRA," Tax Court Judge Elizabeth A.

Copeland wrote for the court. "Failure to follow the labyrinth of rules surrounding these assets can mean forfeiting their tax-advantaged status."

According to Caan's custodial agreement with UBS, he was required to provide the bank with the fair market value of the partnership interest every year or the bank would drop its custody and distribute its contents back to him. When Caan failed to give the bank the 2014 value by the due date in January 2015, the bank tried to obtain the value from the hedge fund and then sent two letters, in August and October, to the California firm that served as Caan's business manager. The final letter warned that the account was about to be distributed and outlined the tax implications, the decision said.

Caan's advisers testified that they never saw the letters, that UBS must not have sent them, and that they didn't know about the distribution, according to the decision. The bank made a so-called phantom distribution by resigning as custodian and purportedly distributing the interest without telling Caan, the advisers said.

Judge Copeland found the advisers' testimony lacked credibility, pointing out that they had received all previous mail for Caan from UBS and would have noticed when suddenly account statements stopped coming, according to the decision.

"It Seems Far More Likely That There Was Simply A Lack
Of Communication And Coordination Between The Professionals Overseeing Mr. Caan's Affairs,"
Judge Copeland Said.

Caan reported the partnership interest distribution for 2015 on his tax return but claimed it was nontaxable. Based on the bank's initial value of the partnership interest at nearly $2 million, rather than the $1.5 million both Caan and the IRS eventually agreed was more accurate, the IRS issued a notice of deficiency for $780,000 for 2015 and an accuracy-related penalty of $156,000, according to the decision.

In addition to petitioning the Tax Court for a redetermination of the deficiency, Caan asked the agency to issue a private letter ruling giving him an extension on the 60-day rollover period. One of Caan's advisers liquidated the partnership interest to move it to a different financial institution after realizing it couldn't be transferred through a national automated account transfer service, according to the decision.

Have An IRS Tax Problem?

Marini & Associates, P.A. 

Read more at: Tax Times blog

According to IRS release IR-2023-194 the IRS announced new initiatives to ensure large corporations pay taxes owed. This is in addition to the initiatives to improve compliance among high-income individuals and complex partnerships.

The IRS is working to ensure large corporate and high-income individual filers pay the taxes they owe. Prior to the Inflation Reduction Act, more than a decade of budget cuts prevented the IRS from keeping pace with the increasingly complicated set of tools that the wealthiest taxpayers use to hide their income and evade paying their share. The IRS is now taking swift and aggressive action to close this gap.

• Large foreign-owned corporations transfer pricing initiative: The IRS is increasing compliance efforts on the U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies that distribute goods in the U.S. and do not pay their fair share of tax on the profit they earn of their U.S. activity. These foreign companies report losses or exceedingly low margins year after year through the improper use of transfer pricing to avoid reporting an appropriate amount of U.S. profits. To crack down on this strategy, the IRS is sending compliance alerts to approximately 150 subsidiaries of large foreign corporations to reiterate their U.S. tax obligations and incentivize self-correction.

• Expansion of the Large Corporate Compliance program: The IRS' Large Business & International Division's (LB&I) Large Corporate Compliance (LCC) program focuses on noncompliance by using data analytics to identify large corporate taxpayers for audit. LCC includes the largest and most complex corporate taxpayers with average assets of more than $24 billion and average taxable income of approximately $526 million per year. As new accountants come on board in early 2024, 
• LB&I is expanding the program by starting an additional 60 audits of the largest corporate taxpayers selected using a combination of artificial intelligence and subject matter expertise in areas such as cross-border issues and corporate planning and transactions.

• Cracking down on abuse of repealed corporate tax break: Following the 2017 repeal of a provision of the code that provided a deduction for producing goods in the U.S., the IRS received hundreds of claims collectively seeking more than $6 billion in refunds, with a significant portion of filers claiming the deduction for the first time. The IRS launched a campaign to address noncompliance and review high-risk claims in this area. IRS efforts have been incredibly successful in ensuring revenue is collected. The efforts have recently been supported by a significant win in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, which sided with the Tax Court and IRS in denying a refund claim based on a $1.8 billion deduction. This will have far-reaching benefits to the IRS' ongoing efforts in this space.

• Prioritization of high-income cases: The IRS has been ramping up efforts to pursue high-income, high-wealth individuals who have either not filed their taxes or failed to pay recognized tax debt. These efforts are concentrated among taxpayers with more than $1 million in income and more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt. Building off earlier successes that collected $38 million from more than 175 high-income earners, dozens of revenue officers are focusing on these high-end collection cases in the coming fiscal year. As announced in September, the IRS has begun contacting about 1,600 new taxpayers in this category that owe hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.

• The IRS has now collected $122 million dollars in 100 of these already assigned 1,600 cases. Examples of cases closed since the Inflation Reduction Act passed follow:
   
  • An individual last month was ordered to pay more than $15 million in restitution. The individual falsified millions of dollars of personal expenses as deductible business expenses and financed construction of a 51,000-square-foot mansion, including expenses of interior and exterior construction costs; an outdoor pool and pool house; and tennis, basketball and bocce courts. The individual falsified millions of dollars of expenses for luxury vehicles, artwork, country club memberships and homes for his children.
     
  • An individual last week pled guilty to filing false tax returns and skimming more than $670,000 from his business. The individual spent $110,000 on personal expenses and $502,000 on gambling.
     
  • An individual was sentenced to 54 months in federal prison for fraudulently obtaining $5 million in COVID relief loans for sham businesses. The individual then spent the money on himself, purchasing Ferrari, Bentley and Lamborghini cars.

Have An IRS Tax Problem?

     Contact the Tax Lawyers at

Marini & Associates, P.A. 

for a FREE Tax HELP Contact us at:
www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com
or Toll Free at 888 8TAXAID (888-882-9243)

 

Read more at: Tax Times blog

According to Law360, Property seized by the Internal Revenue Service to satisfy tax debts could sell for more money under proposed regulations released October 13, 2023 that the agency said would create a more competitive bidding process, remove barriers to online sales and for the first time allow buyers to pay by credit card.

These proposed regulations, mark the first major changes to its process for selling seized property since 1954, would allow the agency to solicit bids online from people in the county in which the property was seized. The agency is currently allowed to sell properties online only after obtaining a special order from the U.S. Treasury secretary, the notice of proposed rulemaking said.

The proposed regulations also would allow the IRS to pursue special permission to sell properties online to buyers outside the county in unusual situations and when doing so would be more efficient or more likely to attract more competitive bids. Those unusual situations include sales of property in places where internet access is limited or when property has been put into storage elsewhere, according to the proposed regulations.

• The bidding itself would become more competitive under the proposal by ending the current regulatory requirement that the agency draw lots to settle a bidding war when there is a tie. 
• Under the proposed regulations, bidding would remain open until the highest bid is submitted.
• Bidders also would be allowed to submit and withdraw bids electronically, rather than only in writing through sealed envelopes or by public auction, according to the proposed regulations. 
• Winning bidders would be allowed to pay by credit card or other electronic means for the first time, rather than only by check or money order.

The Proposed Regulations Would Allow The IRS To Set
The Down Payment On A Case-By-Case Basis.

Have An IRS Tax Problem?

     Contact the Tax Lawyers at

Marini & Associates, P.A. 

for a FREE Tax HELP Contact us at:
www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com
or Toll Free at 888 8TAXAID (888-882-9243)

 

Read more at: Tax Times blog

According to Law360, The Internal Revenue Service would furlough two-thirds of its staff if Congress can't reach an agreement to avoid a shutdown of the federal government, under a contingency plan released On September 28, 2023.

Have An IRS Tax Problem?

     Contact the Tax Lawyers at

Marini & Associates, P.A. 

for a FREE Tax HELP Contact us at:
www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com
or Toll Free at 888 8TAXAID (888-882-9243)

 

Read more at: Tax Times blog