Active Traders Should Consider An Entity For Tax Savings

Click to read Green’s blog post in Forbes.

Forming an entity can save active investors and business traders significant taxes. Active investors can limit wash sale losses calculated between their individual taxable investment accounts and IRAs with an entity account. Business traders solidify trader tax status (TTS), unlock employee-benefit deductions, gain flexibility with a Section 475 election and revocation and limit wash-sale losses with individual and IRA accounts. For many active traders, an entity solution generates tax savings in excess of entity formation and compliance costs.

An entity return consolidates your trading activity on a pass-through tax return (partnership Form 1065 or S-Corp 1120-S), making life easier for you, your accountant and the IRS. It’s important to segregate investments from business trading when claiming TTS, and an entity is most useful in that regard. It’s simple and inexpensive to set up and operate.

Additionally, entities help traders elect Section 475 MTM (ordinary-loss treatment) later in the tax year — within 75 days of inception — if they missed the individual MTM election deadline on April 15. And it’s easier for an entity to exit TTS and revoke Section 475 MTM than it is for a sole proprietor. It’s more convenient for a new entity to adopt Section 475 MTM internally from inception, as opposed to an existing taxpayer whom must file a Form 3115 after filing an external election with the IRS.

Don’t worry, prior capital loss carryovers on the individual level are not lost; they still carry over on your individual Schedule D. The new entity can pass through capital gains if you skip the Section 475 MTM election to use up those capital loss carryovers. After using up capital loss carryovers, your entity can elect Section 475 MTM in a subsequent tax year.

Business traders often use an S-Corp trading company or an S-Corp or C-Corp management company to pay salary to the owner in connection with a retirement plan contribution, which otherwise isn’t possible in a partnership trading company (unless a trader has other sources of earned income or is a dealer member of a futures or options exchange).

Trading in an entity can help constitute a performance record for traders looking to launch an investment-management business. Finally, many types of entities are useful for asset protection and business continuity. A separate legal entity gives the presumption of business purpose, but a trader entity still must achieve TTS.

Avoid wash sales with an entity
Active investors in securities are significantly impacted by permanent and deferred wash sale losses between IRA and individual taxable accounts.

Trading in an entity helps avoid these problems. The entity is separate from your individual and IRA accounts for purposes of wash sales since the entity is a different taxpayer. An individual calculates wash sales among all their accounts. Ring fencing active trading into an entity account separates those trades from the individual wash sale loss calculations. The IRS is entitled to apply related party transaction rules (Section 267) if the entity purposely tries to avoid wash sales with the owner’s individual accounts. In that case, the entity will not avoid wash sale loss treatment.

If you don’t purposely avoid wash sales, you can break the chain on year-to-date wash sales in taxable individual accounts by switching over to an entity account mid-year or at year-end, and prevent further permanent wash-sale losses with IRAs. If the entity qualifies for TTS, it can consider a Section 475 MTM election exempting it from wash sales (on business positions, not investment positions); that also negates related party rules.

Play it safe on related party transaction rules by avoiding the repurchase of substantially identical positions in the new entity after taking a loss in the individual accounts.

Business traders: consider an entity
Many active traders ramp up into qualification for TTS. They wind up filing an individual Schedule C (Profit or Loss from Business) as a sole proprietor business trader the first year. That’s fine. They deduct trading business expenses on Schedule C and report trading gains and losses on other tax forms. They can even elect Section 475 MTM by April 15 of a given tax year to use ordinary gain or loss treatment (recommended on securities only). But a Schedule C owner may not pay himself compensation and the Schedule C does not generate self-employment income, either of which is required to deduct health insurance premiums and retirement plan contributions from gross income. (The exception is a full-fledged dealer/member of an options or futures exchange trading Section 1256 contracts on that exchange; they have SEI per Section 1402i.) The business trader needs an entity for those employee-benefit plan deductions.

Safeguard use of Section 475

Pass-through entities
We recommend pass-through entities for traders. A pass-through entity means the entity is a tax filer, but it’s not a taxpayer. The owners are the taxpayers, most often on their individual tax returns. Consider marriage, state residence and state tax rules including minimum taxes, franchise taxes and more when setting up your entity. Report all entity trading gains, losses and expenses on the entity tax return and issue a Schedule K-1 to each owner for their respective share — on which income retains its character. For example, the entity can pass through capital gains to utilize individual capital loss carryovers. Or the entity can pass through Section 475 MTM ordinary losses to comprise an individual net operating loss (NOL) carryback for immediate refund.

The best types of entities
We like the S-Corp because it pays compensation (officer’s salary) to the owner, which efficiently unlocks health insurance premium and retirement plan contribution deductions. You can form a single-member LLC or multi-member (spousal) LLC and the LLC can elect S-Corp tax treatment within 75 days of inception or by March 15 of the following tax year. (Another option is to form a corporation and it can elect S-Corp tax treatment, too.) A general partnership can also elect S-Corp status in every state except Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Tennessee.

But the S-Corp is not feasible alone in some states or cities, including California and New York City. In those places, we suggest a trading company partnership return — either a general partnership or LLC — and a management company S-Corp or C-Corp. You can convey interests in the pass-through entity to family revocable trusts or even irrevocable trusts. (See our blog post Business Traders Maximize Tax benefits with an S-Corp.)

Year-end Entity planning
There are important tax matters to execute with entities before year-end. For example, S-corps and C-corps should execute payroll before year-end. A Solo 401(k) defined contribution plan or defined benefit retirement plan must be established before year-end. (Watch our Webinar recording: Year-End Planning For Entities: Payroll, Retirement and Health Insurance.)

This is an excerpt from Green’s 2016 Trader Tax Guide.

Webinar 5/17:  Entity & Benefit Plan Tax-Advantaged Solutions 2016. We plan to offer a recording afterwards.