The IRS has announced an extension of the due date for providing Forms 1095-B and 1095-C to individuals in Notice 2016-70.  The Forms 1095-B and 1095-C are used to report to individuals whether they possessed minimum essential coverage (MEC) for the year and, for employees of applicable large employers, whether they had an offer of MEC that provided minimum value as well as information to determine that offered coverage was affordable. 

Individuals use that information to determine if they are subject to a shared responsibility payment for failure to have MEC for some or all of the year, as well as whether the individual qualifies for a tax credit that offsets a portion of the cost of any insurance they obtained from the applicable exchange.

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The IRS has granted educational institutions an additional one-year reprieve from penalties if they fail to provide information on the amounts actually paid to the institution for the year in question on Form 1098-T and rather provide information solely on the amounts billed to the student.  No penalties will be assessed against institutions that report tuition billed rather than tuition paid on Forms 1098-T for 2017 per Announcement 2016-42.

Announcement 2016-17 originally provided a one year reprieve for 2016 Forms 1098-T from the law change enacted as part of the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015.

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The “anti-Cohan” rule found in IRC §274(d) cost the taxpayer a deduction for expenses related to use of an Aston Martin in the case of Roy v. Commissioner, TC Summary Opinion 2016-77.

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In PLR 201645017 the IRS denied tax-exempt status to a religious organization that established a coffee shop that it planned to use to spread a religious message to members of the community.  The exemption was denied because the IRS determined, under the facts of the case, that a substantial portion of the organization’s operations would be devoted to operating the coffee shop in a commercial manner.

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To most practitioners, at first glance the facts in the case of Fitzpatrick v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2016-199 would appear to doom Christina Fitzpatrick to being liable for the 100% trust fund penalty related to unpaid payroll taxes for the wine bar that was partially owned by her husband and for which she worked.

These “bad facts” included the fact that:

• Christina had signature authority over the bar’s checking account
• Christina signed payroll checks regularly
• Christina selected and arranged to hire Paychex to handle the restaurant’s payroll

However, despite that apparent level of control, the Tax Court found that Christina was not a responsible party based on other facts in the case.

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No longer possessing a valid charter can create a situation where the entity is unable to file in Tax Court to dispute an IRS finding.  That was the situation for the corporation in the case of Urgent Care Registries, Inc. v. Commissioner, TC Memo 2016-198.

The corporation in this case had filed some income and employment tax returns for 2009 through 2013 but enclosed no payments.  As well, some returns that it should have filed were never filed and the IRS prepared substitutes for returns (SFR).  The IRS assessed the taxes and penalties, and send the taxpayer a Final Notice of Intent to Levy.

The word “including” in the Internal Revenue Code creates a potential trap that taxpayers fall into from time to time.  IRC §7701(c) tells us that when we see that word in the code we need to understand that the list presented is not every item that could apply to the situation.

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The IRS released inflation adjusted amounts for a number of tax related items for 2017 in Revenue Procedure 2016-55.  This year’s information includes a number of additional entries, including §179 adjustments and revisions of the amounts for various penalties, that Congress added in the various tax bills that were passed in 2015.

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The Social Security Administration has provided on the Employment Coverage Threshold page on their website, information on the coverage threshold levels for domestic workers in 2017.  The threshold will remain at $2,000 in 2017, the same level as it was set at for 2016.

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The Social Security Administration announced in an October 19, 2016 news release that the maximum amount of earnings subject to Social Security tax in 2017 will rise to $127,200 from the maximum $118,500 that applied for 2016.

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The federal transfers (gift and estate) are computed based on lifetime transfers—thus, in order to compute the current year’s gift tax the gifts made during the year are reported along with gifts made in prior years.  In Chief Counsel Advice 201643020 the IRS was looking a situation where a taxpayer had reported the proper amount of current year’s gifts but had omitted prior years gifts from the Form 709.

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January 20, 2017 will be the date on which the new President is to be inaugurated—and in emailed advice the IRS Chief Counsel’s office noted that this date will be considered “holiday” for tax purposes.  Thus, any deadlines that fall on January 20, 2017 (a Friday) will instead be treated as actually having a deadline of the following Monday (January 21, 2017).

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In response to Hurricane Matthew the IRS in Announcement 2016-39 granted the option to qualified plans to give access to retirement funds to individuals impacted by the disaster without requiring certain the plans to go through certain verification procedures required of such plans when making loans or hardship distributions.

Employer retirement plans of various sorts (§§401(k), 403(b) and 457) must follow certain procedures in order to make distributions or loans to account holders.  Distributions can only be made upon the occurrence of certain events that the IRC allows, and then only if the plan itself allows for such a distribution. As well, distributions will generally be subject to tax except to the extent the distribution consists of already taxed amounts.

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