Jim Marshall, Lease Accounting Standards

The new lease accounting standards will require some extra time and work for many companies as they race to satisfy the new requirements.

In these new rules, two leases (finance and operating) will be required on the balance sheets.

CFO sums it up this way:

Under the new guidance, an arrangement contains a lease only when the arrangement conveys the right to control the use of an identified asset. That’s a change from legacy guidance, under which an arrangement can contain a lease even without such a right if the customer takes substantially all of the output from the lease over the term of the arrangement.

In addition to the lack of bright lines used under legacy guidance, FASB added a new criterion that focuses on assets that have a specialized nature with no alternative use at the expiration of a lease. That’s important, as it may modify the lease’s legacy classification.

As 2018 progresses, your business will want to develop procedures for gathering and documenting the wide array of leases kept by your company. These procedures will need to be efficient, as technologically advanced as possible, and centralized in order to be sustainable and accurate.

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If you’ve formed certain habits related to how you handle meals, entertainment, transportation, and parking as it relates to your business and taxes, the time to change those habits has come.

As this report notes, tax reform law commonly referred to as H.R. 1 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 has changed the deductibility of certain meals, entertainment and transportation expenses. Before 2018, a taxpayer could deduct 50 percent of business meals and entertainment and 100 percent of meals provided through an in-house cafeteria or meals provided for the convenience of the employer (i.e., also known as a de minimis fringe benefit).

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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), signed into law this past December, affects more than just income taxes. It’s brought great changes to estate planning and, in doing so, bolstered the potential value of dynasty trusts.

Exemption Changes

Let’s start with the TCJA. It doesn’t repeal the estate tax, as had been discussed before its passage. The tax was retained in the final version of the law. For the estates of persons dying, and gifts made, after December 31, 2017, and before January 1, 2026, the gift and estate tax exemption and the generation-skipping transfer tax exemption amounts have been increased to an inflation-adjusted $10 million, or $20 million for married couples (expected to be $11.2 million and $22.4 million, respectively, for 2018).

Absent further congressional action, the exemptions will revert to their 2017 levels (adjusted for inflation) beginning January 1, 2026. The marginal tax rate for all three taxes remains at 40%.

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Last week, we issued the National Taxpayer Advocate’s annual report to Congress. As some of you probably noticed, we also issued the first-ever edition of the National Taxpayer Advocate “Purple Book.” In this week’s blog, I will explain why we developed the Purple Book and what it’s intended to accomplish.

Section 7803(c)(2)(B) of the Internal Revenue Code requires the National Taxpayer Advocate to issue an annual report to Congress that, among other things, proposes legislative recommendations to resolve systemic taxpayer problems. Read More

At TaxConnections, we are building a panel of experts that will answer your tax questions when you need. TaxConnections tax and financial experts are available to help you! In order to find the right expert to answer your inquiry, we need to shine the spotlight on our experts. We interviewed Jim Marshall, a tax and financial advisor out of Arizona.

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