iTaxBlog

You have choices.  Why choose SourceCorp as your business partner?

We believe in our Vision:

“As a company committed to trust and service, we will become the nation’s leading specialized business tax consulting firm as we maintain mutually beneficial, long-term relationships, provide value-creating resources, and act responsibly to help our clients and our team members achieve their goals.”

Our Vision means more to us than words on a page. We live the Vision — filtering our decisions through it to be sure we stay on course.

Since 1983, we’ve been committed to trust – we’re trusted by our staff and our clients.   When we make a mistake we admit it and do whatever it takes to make things right.

Many in the market are more interested in transacting short-term business.  We’re committed to developing long-term relationships.

We help our clients and CPA partners achieve their goals. These goals often include fending off competition, helping firms look great to prospective and current clients and increasing profitability by implementing successful engagements.

We take pride in hiring and developing people with exceptional character, skills and talent. These individuals grow in our culture where we place the highest emphasis on integrity, reliability, teamwork, and continuous improvement – doing the right thing no matter the cost.

In a short blog, I can’t adequately express  the pride this builds in our staff.  Our team knows that we are committed to treating our clients the way we want to be treated.

We believe in creating a positive work environment that attracts and retains staff through a combination of benefits, working conditions and company culture. We strive to create a work place that allows for a productive, efficient and fun environment.

You will begin to understand the SourceCorp difference when you get to know our staff and when you talk with our clients.  We invite you to become part of the SourceCorp difference.

The IRS recently announced that it will suspend the examination of auto dealership Code Sec. 263A issues until further guidance is published. Originally, these examinations had been suspended for the September 15, 2009 – December 31, 2010 period. Now, however, it appears that additional guidance will not be issued until sometime after the end of the year, so the suspension has been extended.

UNICAP Code Sec. 263A requires auto dealerships to include in their inventory costs all direct and indirect costs properly allocated to property that is inventory. The IRS rejects auto dealers self-developed methods of capitalizing additional Code Sec. 263A costs. Specifically, the IRS detailed in Technical Advice Memo PLR 200736026 (TAM) how auto dealers should handle costs.

• Installation by the dealer or a subcontractor of parts to new and used vehicles owned by the dealer constitute production activities.
• Repair or installation of parts on customer-owned cars should be treated as handling costs.
• Leased vehicles constitute non-retail transactions

Auto dealership Code Sec. 263A issues are classified as Tier III due to a high level of taxpayer noncompliance. To encourage voluntary compliance, in October 2009, the IRS announced the current suspension of examinations. The IRS expects that all auto dealers will be required to make an accounting method change (i.e. file Form 3115) to conform to the methodology outlined in the TAM. Due to a lack of clear guidance and onerous information gathering requirements, many auto dealers have been reluctant to revise existing UNICAP calculations.

The forthcoming IRS guidance is expected to address many of the more ambiguous issues outlined in the TAM. Prior to this announcement, SourceCorp expected to have a comprehensive solution to market by late 2010. We continue to develop the offering and revise as necessary, as soon as further guidance is published, in order to provide a turn-key solution once the audit suspension period is lifted.

Please feel free to ask questions or leave comments on this blog, or join our Cover it Live discussion on September 1, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. CT.

When a government entity owns a building or project that incorporates sustainable design, it may assign the §179D tax deduction to the primary designer of the project. However, sometimes the government entity merely provides a portion of the funding for a project, which is often the case in large joint ventures such as airports, hospitals or athletic venues. However, if tax ownership resides with a private entity, the deduction belongs to the private entity. 

According to Les Schneider, attorney with Ivins, Phillips & Barker, “…it is possible that the party which holds legal title to the building is not considered the owner of the building for tax purposes…ownership of the building must be determined in the taxable year in which the expenditures are incurred that qualify for the §179D deduction.” This rule applies even if ownership shifts in a later year, as with some public/private ventures.

This is an all or nothing proposition. Even though funding sources may be mixed between public and private entities, the deduction cannot be split between those entities. Tax ownership dictates who may receive the benefit.

Good news. Congress may now be turning their attention to the expiring tax provisions, including the R&D tax credit. While the R&D credit has support from both sides of the aisle, it has been deferred as more hot items, such as state education funding, make their way through Congress.

The entire Republican contingent on the Senate Finance Committee has called on Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the panel, to schedule an early September mark-up of legislation dealing with expiring tax provisions. (August 6 letter to Sen. Baucus regarding markup request) The letter noted that during a July 22 committee meeting Baucus agreed “to process a tax bill in committee” that would cover the expiration of individual tax rates, expired provisions such as the R&D tax credit, a compromise regarding the estate tax, and energy taxes. “In exchange, we agreed to limit our amendments to those particular topics and to refrain from offering amendments that would introduce extraneous matters like corporate tax reform,” the letter said. “It would be a mistake for the Senate to consider such an important piece of tax legislation without its having first been marked up” by the committee, the GOP members wrote. A link to the letter can be found at http://finance.senate.gov/newsroom/ranking/release/?id=a646558c-2302-440b-ad73-9480f7eb2d58.