Rural Practice Digest - Volume 1, Issue 12

Corporate-Provided Meals and Lodging

Volume 1, Issue 12, of the Rural Practice Digest is now available for subscribers. In this issue, the feature article is a lengthy one addressing the tax issues associated with corporate-provided meals and lodging. This is an audit issue for the IRS so it’s important to get it right for farm and ranch clients. I go through the various rules and traps and how to structure arrangements to avoid problems. The article is fully annotated for your research reference. I have had several inquiries in recent months concerning the issue and that is what spawned the article.

The annotations this month include the following:

• The Tax Court has decided the Soroban Capital Partners case on the merits. Application of the “functional analysis” test resulted in the limited partners having s.e. tax liability on their distributions.

• An explanation of the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act

• Numerous summaries of tax cases, including issues involving method of accounting; filing deadlines; NOL carrybacks; gift valuation and the charitable deduction; tax debt and passport revocation; and micro-captive transactions.

• The application of the “public trust” doctrine that resulted in persons gaining access to private ranch land in New Mexico. The case could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

• A decision by an Iowa federal district court judge that said a farmer lacked standing to challenge the Swampbuster regulations for failure to exhaust administrative remedies - and then went on to opine on the constitutional claims involved (before the 8th Circuit rules on a case challenging the Swampbuster regs. in a pending case).

I trust that you find this issue beneficial to your practice and/or your farming/ranching operation.