In a press release of August 30, 2016 issued by the European Commission, the Commission held that Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13 billion to Apple pursuant to an agreement (rulings) that it entered into with Apple in 1991. This was “improper illegal aid” in clear violation of the EU state aid rules which state quite simply that “Member States cannot give tax benefits to selected companies..”. See Article 107(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFE…
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Berkshire 2006-5, LLC, et al, v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2016-25 (Buch, J.). The TEFRA partnership entity level audit rules are still with us for at least 5 years and cases will continue to be decided under the TEFRA legislation enacted in 1982. Under the new centralized partnership audit rules, which generally go into effect for partnership taxable years commencing in 2018, the ability of a notice partner to intervene in a partnership audit, appeal or in litigation will be denied. Under TEFRA…
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On April 4, 2016, the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service issued proposed regulations on the treatment of certain interests in corporations as stock or indebtedness, or as partly stock and debt. REG-108060-15.[1] One of the stated purposes of the proposed regulations was to follow through on the anti-earnings stripping guidance that was issued by the Service in Notice 2014-62, 2014-42 IRB 712 (10/14/2014) and Notice 2015-79, 2015-49 IRB 775 (12/7/2015) to guard against post-inversion earni…
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Introduction All countries, including underdeveloped countries, are well aware of the strain that has been placed on tax administrators throughout the world in grappling with the billions if not trillions of revenue loss associated with base erosion techniques and strategies utilized by many multinational business enterprises (MNEs) that are principally driven by tax avoidance and not primarily based on sound business practices. This base erosion is visibly greater when comparing the aggregate t…
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There is much irony in the US Chamber of Commerce’s desire to prevent the Treasury and the current Administration from stopping inversions, at least unilaterally, by asking a Federal District Court to hold a part of the temporary regulations on inversions invalid. Viewed from a narrow lens of legality (and not legality and tax policy) the recently issued temporary (anti-inversion) regulations stray beyond permitted boundaries of proper rule-making. But looking through a wider lens into tax pol…
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For business organizations formed and operated as partnerships for federal and state income tax purposes it has long been assumed that when the partnership and its owners wish to take the business “to market” in terms of a public offering, it has been the general consensus that the partners needs to convert into a corporation before the IPO is effectuated. But that is not, however, the only available model for a partnership’s venturing into an IPO. In this regard, another model involves th…
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On Tuesday July 14, 2015, American Law Institute presents the audio webcast, FATCA for Estate Planners: A Practical Approach. Jerry August of Kostelanetz & Fink, LLP will facilitate the audio webcast as the Planning Chair and Megan L. Brackney will participate as a Faculty role for the conversation. The provisions of Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) mandates U.S. taxpayer, foreign financial institutions (FFIs) and non-financial foreign entities (NFFEs) comply with informational re…
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The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, which President Obama signed into law on November, 2015, repealed the complex and much-criticized TEFRA partnership entity-level audit rules, including the electing large partnership rules. On December 18, 2015, Congress passed, and President Obama signed into law, the Protecting Americans From Tax Hikes (PATH) Act of 2015. This act sets forth certain corrections to the new audit rules. In this course, Jerald David August and Megan L. Brackney will review the u…
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Last Summer, in Notice 2015-54, 2015-34 I.R.B. 210, the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service announced their intention to issue regulations under Section 721(c) to ensure that, when a U.S. person transfers certain types of property to a partnership that has foreign partners related to the transferor, income or gain attributable to the property will be taken into account by the transferor either immediately or periodically. The Treasury Department and the Service further announced their inte…
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Summons Enforcement Action Against Facebook Filed In Federal District Court The government recently filed a summons enforcement proceeding on July 6, 2016, in The United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Facebook Inc., 16-cv-o3777.[1] The enforcement action taken by the government became necessary since the taxpayer recently refused to turn over summoned tax and business records related to Facebook’s transfer of its global rights of many of its intangible as…
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