Federal Budget

The Budget is Here![i]

Earlier this week the White House released its Fiscal Year 2025 Budget.[ii] Of course, the federal government has not yet adopted a budget for the Fiscal Year 2024 even as we approach that year’s halfway mark. But I digress.

The release of the budget comes four days after the State of the Union and only one day after the Oscar ceremonies.[iii] It seems appropriate that these three events should follow one another in relatively close succession considering each provides an opportunity for varying degrees of staging, theatrics, arrogance, and storytelling.[iv]Continue Reading Estate, Gift, GST & Related Income Tax Proposals – What is the White House Doing?

Independence

Earlier this week, the United States celebrated the 247th anniversary of its declaration of independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain,[i] though the latter did not formally recognize the independence of its thirteen former colonies until the Revolutionary War ended, seven years later, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783.Continue Reading Thomas Paine and Today’s Tax Debates

Annual Ritual

The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 established the requirement that the President submit a budget to Congress for the upcoming fiscal year.[i] Among other things, the proposed federal budget affords the President an opportunity to identify priorities for the next fiscal year, to quantify how much the Administration expects it will cost the government to attain the President’s goals, and to explain how and from what sources the funds needed to cover these expenses will be raised.Continue Reading The President’s 2024 Federal Budget: “Reforming” the Taxation of High-Income Taxpayers

The 2023 Budget

Last week, the New York Legislature passed the State’s 2022-2023 Budget. The $220 billion Budget reflects an $8 billion increase over last year’s budget (a more than 3 percent jump). It is also $4 billion more than what the Governor had initially proposed. In fact, it is the largest spending bill ever to have been enacted by Albany.

I suppose the explanation is obvious: bolstered by still unspent Federal stimulus money[i] and better than expected tax revenues, the Governor and the Legislature decided to be especially generous to their constituents during this election year.[ii]
Continue Reading The Deduction of Cannabis Business Expenses Following New York’s 2023 Budget

Counting the Days?

We are 302 days away from the national mid-term elections, to be held November 8, 2022, yet the first full week of the new year has already highlighted some of the economic issues with which the Administration will have to grapple over the next few months if it hopes to have any chance of enacting at least a portion of its social spending measures and the tax increases by which it plans to finance them.
Continue Reading Gifting Business Interests Before Selling the Business? Think Valuation

Timing

I had planned to post this piece during the third week of December, a day or so after the exchange between Senator Manchin and the White House sealed the fate of the Build Back Better plan, at least in its current iteration; by then, however, what had already proven to be one of the most challenging year-ends I’d ever experienced turned downright frenetic.[i]
Continue Reading New York’s Pass-Through Entity Tax, F Reorgs, and the Sale of An Electing S Corp

 Down to the Wire?

“I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.” – Pres. Ronald Regan

That line probably describes the exasperation with which many Americans are observing the behavior of their representatives in Congress these last few weeks.

At this point, a number of folks are wondering whether the eviscerated version of the legislation proposed by the Administration in April of this year, and passed by the House last month[i], will be enacted into law before the end of this year, early next year, or not at all.
Continue Reading The Tax-Deferred Rollover – Some Considerations

Haste Makes Waste?

How many of you are suffering from Build Back Better Fatigue? Seriously, it’s a thing.[i]

Sure, the House passed its version of the President’s tax and spending bill on November 19[ii], and the Senate took up the bill after its Thanksgiving recess, with Senate Majority Leader Schumer setting a Christmas deadline for its passage. During this past week, however, certain key Democrats have expressed doubts over Senator Schumer’s timeline. On December 1, the Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, Richard Neal, said he was skeptical about Congress being able to meet that deadline. The very next day, Senator Manchin intimated that the bill may not be approved this year.[iii]
Continue Reading Selling Your S Corporation’s Business? What If It’s Not an S Corporation?

Same old in D.C.

On Monday, November 15, the President will sign into law the approximately $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that was finally passed by Congress when the House approved the Senate’s version of the legislation on November 5. According to various reports, an estimated $6 billion of this monumental sum will find its way into Senator Manchin’s West Virginia:

“[Manchin] said $3 billion will go to federal highway programs in the state; nearly $200 million will go to complete Corridor H of the Appalachian Development Highway System, which is known within the state as the Robert C. Byrd Highway System; $190 million for statewide transit; $43 million for state airports and $700 million to rehabilitate abandon [sic] mine lands.”[i]

Continue Reading Gift Transfers: Not on the Congressional Agenda, But Still in the Crosshairs of the IRS

It Seemed Like a Good Idea

In July of this year, one of my partners, who chairs the board of a local grantmaking public charity,[i] asked if I would present at a CLE program to be sponsored by the charity on October 28 (last Thursday). When I asked if she had a particular topic in mind, she suggested I update the group on the tax features of the President’s $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan.
Continue Reading The 2022 Federal Budget, Including Tax Changes – Are We There Yet?