Virginia Supreme Court clarifies BPOL allocations for Interstate Businesses

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Suppose you are a computer software consulting business with offices in Arlington, Virginia and Prince Georges County, Maryland. You have employees who move back and forth between the offices consulting with clients and making calls on clients. Both Maryland and Virginia have income taxes. How do you allocate the income for purposes of the Arlington County, Virginia Business Professional Occupational License Tax. The Supreme Court adopted a three part test to use to determine how you allocate that burden In Nielsen Company v. Arlington County last month.
First, you must allocate the tax based upon payroll percentages in each jurisdiction. Then you are permitted a deduction for income subject to income taxes in another state. It is this deduction that the Court is concerned with.

The Court went on to say:

“That is, “attributable” does not mandate or prohibit any particular
methodology to determine which receipts captured in the pool of
taxable gross receipts are subject to deduction.”

The means that your company can allocate sales receipts in any acceptable manner.

There is a safe harbor under Section 58.1-3732(B)(2) which the Court rules is to be interpreted in the following manner:

“The Tax Commissioner held that the following analysis
determines whether the Code § 58.1-3732(B)(2) deduction may be
taken by a taxpayer, and, if so, how to determine what receipts
are backed out from the pool of taxable gross receipts:
1. Ascertain whether any employees at the Virginia
definite place of business participated in interstate
transactions by, for example, shipping goods to
customers in other states, participating with
employees in other offices in transactions, etc. If
there has been no participation in interstate
transactions, then there is no deduction. If there
has been participation, then;
2. Ascertain whether any of the interstate
participation can be tied to specific receipts. If
so, then those receipts are deducted; however, if
payroll apportionment had to be used to assign
receipts to the definite place of business, then it is
very unlikely that any of those apportioned receipts
can be specifically []linked to interstate
transactions. If not, or if only some of the
participation can be tied to specific receipts, then;
3. The payroll factor used for the Virginia definite
place of business would be applied to the gross
receipts assigned to definite places of business in
states in which the taxpayer filed an income tax
return. Note that payroll apportionment would
probably be needed to assign receipts to definite
places of business in other states.”

So, if for example the employees in the Virginia office don’t deal with any interstate business there is not additional deduction. If however, the Virginia employees handled Maryland sales, then you can trace the specific receipt. If that doesn’t work, then you can allocate those according to payroll percentages for the second deduction.

Remember the business can still allocate receipts according to any reasonable formula for allocating receipts, there is just no safe harbor if challenged as unreasonable.

Capital Gain or Loss on Gifted Property

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When you gift investment or business property to someone and that person sells that property they owe tax on the gain. The basis in the property for gain purposes is what the basis was in the hands of the donor (the person making the gift). So, if the donor had a basis of $100 and the donee (recipient of the gift) sold the property for $110, there would be a $10 gain.

What is the basis for someone who receives a gift and sells it for a loss. In that circumstance the basis is the LOWER of the basis in the hands of the donor or fair market value at the time of the gift. So let’s say that Fred holds a mortgage note on Blackacre from Mona for $100,000. The mortgage is under-water and there is no way that Mona will ever be able to repay the loan. Fred gifts the note to his son, Bam. Bam immediately forecloses and the property sells for $50,000. Does Bam get a capital loss of $50,000 or a capital loss of zero. That goes to what was the market value of the note on the date of the gift. It would appear that it would no more than $50,000. However, if Bam could have gotten an appraiser or another lender to state that the fair market value of the note was an amount larger than $50,000, then Bam could perhaps take the loss equal to the appraised amount. This is found in Reg. 1015-1 of the IRS regulations.

Upstream Gifting

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Let’s say Sid hit it big with your new product, Spacebook and he went from a middle aged computer geek to a billionaire overnight and lives in California. His aging parents are not in great health. His basis in his dot.com stock is about $10,000. His unrealized gain on that stock is $2,999,990,000. He wants to know how to reduce taxes and liquidate some of his stock in the next ten years. Perhaps he should gift $10,000,000 worth of stock to his parents. When the last parent dies, the stock is stepped up to the date of death value. Thus, the $10,000,000 in stock would now have zero capital gains. But Sid is nervous that his parents might not hold onto the stock. So, he said can I create a trust for them. The answer is yes. There are a number of trust vehicles that will work, so long as the last living parent has when is known as a general power of appointment to appoint the assets to his or her estate or creditors. There are trusts known as intentionally defective grantor trusts in which Sid gets taxed on the income while giving his parents the use of that income. The net result to Sid is tax savings of $3,300,000. You can buy a lot of other things for $3,300,000 and he is able to give his parents an income from that stock for the rest of their lives.

Tax Season is over and now for another tale.

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There is a very big project going on in which the IRS, State Tax Departments, State Attorney’s General and the Justice Department are engaged. Medicaid fraud cases involving home health agencies. It usually starts with a home health agency owned by non-citizens. If the agency is located in a state with income taxes, the state then commences a net worth tax audit on the business owner. Usually, as with any American, there are problems with the return. Then commences a criminal tax filing alleging tax fraud and because the company is owned by a new or non-citizen with ties overseas, they ask for no bond and make statements about the medicaid fraud investigation that they are pursuing. Many times they will get the tax preparers involved as well with offers of immunity. At that point, the Government can force open the books of the home health provider. The other trick is to have the IRS pursue an indictment for failure to collect and pay over employment taxes. Usually this is a civil issue, but for these cases they use the criminal means to again force open the books of the company. While there is a ton of fraud in the home health industry, this particular program seems to be similar to the old mafia investigations where corruption could not be proved, so tax laws are used instead. So, to home health agencies out there a couple of words of warning. (1) Pay your withholding taxes, even if you don’t pay yourself, your rent or any other bill; (2) Make sure your personal tax returns are unassailable. Don’t simply trust your preparer. Review the returns carefully to ensure that all items of income and expense are properly taken. Remember you sign those returns under penalties of perjury. (3) If the FBI, IRS, or a state tax agent starts an audit engage a seasoned tax professional to get involved at the earliest possible time. This could mean the difference between an indictment and a civil penalty,. If you have returns out there that have problems and YOU HAVE NOT YET BEEN CONTACTED BY AUTHORITIES, consider voluntarily amending them and paying the taxes, interest and penalties now. (or at least starting a voluntary payment arrangement with the tax authority). If you are an immigrant and have family members overseas that you support, try to keep a log of what you send overseas and to whom. That way, when the Government comes calling you have a record of where the money went. Lastly, remember that if your gifts to any one person (anywhere in the world) exceed $13,500 you need to file a Federal Gift tax return. With these tips you might avoid a long spell in jail.