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Update on March 4: Potential solution for 50/50 HW partnership returns. In general, we recommend 50/50 as that is how married couples generally share property. Pay administration fees during the year and if you need more cash flow, the husband and wife can reinvest capital to finance ongoing fee payments. Consult with us about your administration fee agreements and payment schedules.
Update on Feb. 21: With a two-spouse partnership return, you can maximize AGI deductions (health insurance and retirement plans) with the active-trader spouse owning just 1% (or a minority) of capital, rather than 99% (or a majority) of capital. However, that may not be feasible or wise considering joint property issues. In these cases, it’s better to consider an S-Corp election, or add a C-Corp, so the partnership can remain 50/50. Active traders owning 99% (or a majority) should consider changes soon. 2014 S-Corp elections are due by March 15, 2014. Consult with us about these changes.
In Green’s 2014 Trader Tax Guide, see Chapter 7 Entities & Chapter 8 Retirement Plans for our updated strategies on entities and retirement plans.
Business traders reporting an administration fee on an individual tax return Schedule C paid from their trading business partnership in order to unlock AGI deductions for health insurance and retirement plan contributions need to consider some changes as a result of new IRS guidance. The IRS released draft instructions to Form 8960 (Net Investment Income Tax) in January 2014. The instructions state that trading business expenses should be deducted against self-employment income (SEI), and any excess amount generating negative SEI may be deducted against Net Investment Income (NII). These draft instructions are based on the IRS’s final NII regulations released in December 2013.
Business traders using an S-Corp or C-Corp with payroll rather than a partnership administration fee are mostly unaffected by this new IRS guidance. But partnerships need to consider these suggested solutions. We’re adopting this new guidance for 2013 tax returns and subsequent years.
The partnership fee/AGI-deduction strategy can still work on some partnership tax returns.
Prior to 2013, the simplest entity for a husband and wife was a general partnership filing a partnership tax return. To unlock AGI deductions for health insurance and retirement plans, the partnership paid an administration fee to the trading owner’s individual Schedule C, creating the earned income needed for the AGI deductions. But the trading business expenses passed through from the partnership — including the fee payment — were not included in SEI. With new IRS guidance requiring an SEI deduction for partnership expenses, it’s harder to achieve the SEI that is necessary for purposes of maximizing these AGI deductions.
Consider this example of a husband and wife 50/50 general partnership or LLC filing a partnership tax return for 2013. The partnership has trading business expenses of $20,000 before paying an administration fee to the husband, who is the active trader (assume the wife is non-active). Before the new IRS guidance, the partnership could pay an administration fee of $30,000 to the husband to cover AGI deductions for health insurance (close to $12,000) and Individual 401(k) elective deferral ($17,500). Now, the partnership needs to gross up the fee to cover the husband’s 50% share of partnership Schedule E SEI deductions. Therefore, the partnership needs to pay a fee of $80,000 to have a net SEI of $30,000. Fifty percent of the trading partnership’s loss (equal to $50,000 in this example) from trading business expenses ($100,000) is allocated to the husband. (The $100,000 is comprised of the $20,000 expenses and $80,000 fee.) The wife’s 50% allocation with negative SEI has no effect, as SEI and SE tax is calculated separately.
This change is not as simple as it may sound. The partnership needs to generate more income to justify a higher fee — an increase of $50,000 — and it needs the cash flow to execute it. If the husband owned a lower percentage of the partnership, the fee increase can be lower. But, in many HWGP entities, the non-active owner holds 1% of profit and loss, and that is a problem for this potential solution. They should consider changing to 50/50 or even 20/80.
If you want net SEI of $30,000, calculate the fee payment as follows. Trading expenses x allocation percentage = a negative SEI. You want to add an amount to get to $30,000 positive SEI and divide it by the other spouse’s allocation percentage to get the administration fee amount. For example, with 20/80, the negative SEI is: $20,000 x 20% = ($4,000). To get to the target $30,000 SEI, pay $34,000. Next, gross up $34,000 by dividing it by 80% which equals the administration fee of $42,500 (and is only $12,500 more than the $30,000 target). Total expenses are $62,500 ($20,000 expenses + $42,500 fee). Total expenses x the 20% allocation = a negative SEI of ($12,500) + the administration fee of $42,500 = target SEI of $30,000.
If the partnership approach doesn’t work for you, arrange salary not administration fees
The key issue for claiming health insurance and retirement plan deductions is to arrange these employee benefits in connection with a salary. The IRS does not allow partnership tax returns to pay a salary (payroll) to owners; it requires guaranteed payments or administration fees. The solution is to convert an LLC or a general partnership to an S-Corp, or add a C-Corp as a 1% partner, because an S-Corp or C-Corp pay salary to owner/employees.
An existing general partnership or multi-member LLC filing a partnership return can elect to be taxed as an S-Corp for 2014, by filing a federal Form 2553 S-Corp election by March 15, 2014. Some states rely on the federal form and other states have their own election form. Very few states don’t conform to federal “check the box regulations” allowing general partnerships or LLCs to elect S-Corp tax treatment. Consult with us about whether an S-Corp election is beneficial for you, and allowed in your state.
These solutions are less disruptive and lower in cost than opening, and closing entities. You can keep your existing trading business, including its trading accounts and bank accounts, in place.
S-Corp tax treatment is inappropriate for a hedge fund or trading company with special allocations like “carried-interest” to owners as that is considered a second class of equity and is not allowed. These types of partnerships should consider adding a C-Corp as a 1% owner.
A general partnership or multi-member LLC filing a partnership tax return can add a new C-Corp as a 1% owner of the partnership. There are few changes for the partnership: It keeps filing a partnership tax return and pays the C-Corp an administration fee and 1% or more allocation of profits. The C-Corp then has sufficient income to pay the owner a salary to unlock C-Corp-level employee benefits for health insurance and retirement plan contributions.
C-Corp owners have added benefits that are not available with partnership and S-Corp returns. The owner can have a medical reimbursement plan, which increasingly is an attractive idea considering higher deductibles and out-of-network health costs under ObamaCare plans. You can also shift individual income to lower C-Corp tax rates or operate the C-Corp close to break even if state corporate taxation is a concern.
Retirement plan changes
The other change you need to make is converting an individual-level retirement plan to the entity level. Salary-based retirement plans require entity-level retirement plans. This is fairly easy to accomplish, however some brokers may be confused about a general partnership electing S-Corp treatment, so consult with us.
For 2013, if you used a partnership and you reclassified distributions to administration fees, you may want to reclassify them back to distributions so you don’t need to file a 2013 Form 1099-Misc. by the end of February. But if you do file the 1099-Misc., it may not unlock many AGI deductions per the new guidance: The fee payments included in the partnership loss offset the fee income for both gross income and self-employment income purposes. It depends on the fee recipients share of the partnership loss.
If there is insufficient 2013 net self-employment income, you can’t fund retirement plans, so make sure there is no excess retirement plan funding for 2013 subject to IRS penalties. If you already excess funded a plan for 2013, withdraw those excessive funds as soon as possible to avoid penalties.
There’s time to fix 2014, but no time to fully fix 2013
Traders using partnerships can rearrange their tax affairs to get all the tax breaks for 2014 and subsequent years, but 2013 is a transition year so they get left holding the bag on fewer tax breaks such as no or limited AGI deductions based on their trading businesses. They do keep their business expense treatment, Section 475 and other trader tax benefits.
Unfortunately, you can’t reclassify administration fees to payroll, as payroll is a formal contemporaneous filing. It’s not a big deal to handle payroll with an outside firm like paychex.com.
Good news/bad news
This seems like positive news for business traders and other taxpayers, since SEI deductions are more valuable than NII deductions. SE taxes include FICA and Medicare tax, whereas Net Investment Tax (NIT) only includes the 3.8% Medicare tax. Deducting trading business expenses against self-employment income first is generally a good thing and we are not against this new guidance.
Sole proprietor traders with other earned income activities will generally be happy with this new IRS guidance. They can now deduct their trading business expenses from SEI and pay less SE tax. But they also have less earned income for retirement plan calculations.
The bad news is the new guidance causes issues for business traders using AGI-deduction strategies for health insurance and retirement plan contributions arranged through trading business partnership tax returns. Those strategies were constructed based on trading business expenses not being deductible against SEI. With the new IRS guidance, the partnership loss on Schedule E — increased by the administration fee payment — is also deductible against SEI, so the administration fee on Schedule C cannot generate positive SEI needed for the AGI deduction for a 99/1 HWGP.
Our prior position excluding trading business expenses from SEI
To date, we’ve taken the position that trading business expenses — like related trading business gains and losses — should be excluded from SEI.
While Section 1402 (SE tax rules) first state that Section 162 “trade or business” expenses for individuals and partnerships are deductible against SEI, they go on to exclude trading capital gains. IRS publications, trader tax court cases and Website statements all clearly state that business trading gains and losses are excluded from SEI. Unfortunately, we don’t see trading business expenses discussed specifically anywhere. Leading tax publishers have also said this matter was unclear in the law.
We’ve taken a conservative position: Since trading gains and losses are excluded from SEI, so should their related trading business expenses. When tax law is unclear, it’s often appropriate to turn to general tax concepts and theory, which includes a matching concept. If the income is non-taxable, generally the expenses to generate that income are also non-deductible. That’s how it works with tax-exempt income — the investment fees and margin interest to generate that income are non-deductible.
To clarify this matter, we asked an IRS official involved with the new NII regulations about these questions. The IRS person unofficially said the IRS thinks trading business expenses offset SEI first, and then NII. He pointed to example 4 in “Reg §1.1411-9. Exception for self-employment income,” which was released in December. We conclude it’s prudent to adopt this new guidance on 2013 tax filings. We believe our tax filings for 2012 and prior years are correct based on existing tax law at that time.