Search Results for "fica"

On November 6, Maine voters will be asked to decide if a program should be established that would provide in-home and community support services to eligible seniors and those with disabilities, regardless of their income level. As a matter of policy, BNN does not take a position on political issues. But because the funding of this initiative will create an entirely new tax, we have been fielding numerous questions, and the purpose of this article is to educate readers of the tax impact.

John Marsh and I recently attended the AICPA National Conference on Banks and Savings Institutions from September 17-19. This annual conference brings together regulators, bankers and practitioners as panelists and presenters annually to cover developing issues relating to financial statements relating to banks and savings institutions.

Qualified Personal Residence Trusts (QPRT) have been a staple of sophisticated estate planning for some time. They are relatively simple to establish, they are well defined in IRS regulations, and can be structured with minimal initial tax consequences. Particularly for taxpayers living in areas with high property values, the QPRT was a popular choice to help minimize estate tax consequences.

In July 2018, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued back-to-back updates to the new lease guidance in Accounting Standards Codification Topic 842, Leases. Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2018-10 was issued in order to clarify how to apply certain aspects of Topic 842, while right on its heels, ASU 2018-11 was issued with the primary objective of providing transition relief to entities in the year of adoption. Both of these updates have the same effective date as Topic 842. (As a friendly reminder, the new lease standard becomes effective on January 1, 2019 for public business entities with calendar year-end reporting dates and January 1, 2020 for non-public business entities with calendar year-end reporting dates.)

Banks have many ways to invest their depositors’ money and one specifically is in municipal bonds and loans. The major tax advantage that results from this type of investment is that the interest may be exempt from federal taxes and even possibly for state taxes, depending on the specific state tax laws.

The passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) in December of 2017 generated some of the most significant tax law changes seen since the Tax Reform Act of 1986. While we await further guidance in the form of Treasury Regulations and many questions remain as to how to apply the new rules, we attempt here to shed light on some planning options as we look ahead to the remainder of tax year 2018.

The 10th anniversary of the Great Recession is approaching in a few months and no other industry has been impacted by the aftermath as much as the banking industry. Since 2008, we have seen bail-outs, Treasury department-assisted and mandated acquisitions of troubled institutions like Washington Mutual and Countrywide by JP Morgan/Chase and Bank of America, and the market for sub-prime, Alt-A and private label mortgage-backed securities disappeared virtually overnight. Further, out of the Dodd-Frank Act came the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which was intended to protect consumers from predatory lending but was not very well received by many in the banking sector. A lot has changed since then – the economy has recovered, financial institutions have resumed lending, the housing market has rebounded, and unemployment is nearly at an all-time low.