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The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) recently issued Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2018-08, Not for Profit Entities (Topic 958): Clarifying the Scope and Accounting Guidance for Contributions Received and Contributions Made. The purpose of this ASU is to assist entities in determining whether transactions should be accounted for as contributions (nonreciprocal) or as exchange transactions (reciprocal), as well as determining whether a contribution is conditional.

Think you can take losses from a rental property? Think again! Under Internal Revenue Code Section 469, losses from a rental activity are considered passive, which can be offset only against other passive income, and cannot be used to offset income such as wages or investment income. You may not necessarily be out of luck, though, when it comes to deducting rental losses. Section 469(c)(7) allows taxpayers who qualify as real estate professionals to treat their rental activities as an active trade or business, which generally allows them to deduct those losses.

On Thursday, June 21, 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, holding that a taxpayer no longer needs to have a physical presence in a state in order to have sales tax nexus.

As most readers know, the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) last December rolled out some of the most significant tax law changes seen since Ronald Reagan was in office. It also introduced numerous questions regarding how to apply the new rules. Answers to those questions are expected primarily in the form of Treasury Regulations, which are IRS-written clarifications authorized (and often requested) by Congress. Regulations and other IRS pronouncements supplement the Internal Revenue Code (“IRC”), which houses the primary law itself.

As your institution moves closer to implementation of the Current Expected Credit Losses (CECL) model of the allowance for loan losses, one of the key elements that management should be thinking about in addition to the technical aspects like actually building the model, is the practical question: What kind of documentation will be required to support the assumptions and variables that go into the estimate of expected credit losses, and in larger institutions, also substantiate the effectiveness of internal control over the data used in the model?

A new accounting standard for revenue recognition (ASU 2014-09) became effective for SEC reporting entities this past year. It will be effective for private businesses and not-for-profit organizations in the calendar year ending December 31, 2018. Now is most definitely the time to be planning for this pronouncement, including working with your accounting and reporting professional advisor to understand nuances in the new pronouncement and its impact on your organization’s revenue recognition policies and procedures.

For a number of years, the IRS has offered a “get out of jail card” to U.S. people who previously were not compliant with U.S. filing requirements to annually report certain foreign financial assets AND previously knew of such filing obligations. That program, known as the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (“OVDP”) is about to come to an end on September 28, 2018, and anyone who has not yet reported foreign holdings should promptly investigate the benefits of this program before it is too late.