The Tax Court this week reasserted its previously stated position on the treatment of the GST grandfathering provision for trusts in existence on September 25, 1985 when a party holds a general power of appointment under that trust.  The Tax Court held that the IRS final regulations that treat such a power as removing the trust transfers from the protection of the grandfathering provisions are valid, despite cases decided by the Eighth and Ninth Circuit where it was held the plain language of the grandfathering provisions meant that such powers were to be ignored for this purpose.

The Tax Court and the Second Circuit had previously held such a position to be a valid interpretation of the law.  Now it appears the Sixth Circuit, which has not yet been heard on this matter, will gets its say in the Gerson Estate case (127 TC No. 11).

The materials can be downloaded from http://edzollars.com/2006-10-28_Plain_Language.pdf .

The podcast is sponsored by Leimberg Information Services, located on the web at http://www.leimbergservices.com.

The IRS has proposed regulations that will radically change the taxation of private annuities, making Revenue Ruling 69-74 obsolete as of October 18.  We discuss the new treatment the IRS is proposing, and how it would impact such transactions.

This week we also summarize some other recent developments, including the new updated numbers for qualified plan limitations.

The materials can be downloaded at http://edzollars.com/2006-10-21_Annuity.pdf .

The podcast is sponsored by Leimberg Information Services at http://www.leimbergservices.com .

In a relatively slow tax news week, the Tax Court issued yet another published opinion dealing with the coordination of the capital loss rules of §1211 and the alternative minimum tax.  In the case of Palahnuk v. Commissioner, 127 T.C. No. 9 the Tax Court once again dashed the hopes of a taxpayer who exercised highly appreciated incentive stock options only to see their value plummet before the year had expired that would allow the taxpayer to sell the shares and get long term capital gain treatment for regular tax purposes.

The materials can be downloaded from http://edzollars.com/2006-10-14_Lets_Try_This_Again.pdf .

The podcast is sponsored by Leimberg Information Services, located at http://www.leimbergservices.com.

This podcast covers a number of recent tax developments, including dealing with the burning issue of whether a preparer must sign the client's copy of the return, a recent case involving again the question of what is alimony and the IRS's recent reprieve from the requirement that nonqualified deferred compensaton plans be in compliance with the (as of yet) not issued final regualtions by January 1, 2007.

Documents for this podcast are available at http://edzollars.com/2006-10-06_ThisandThat.pdf .

The podcast is sponsored by Leimberg Information Services, online at http://www.leimbergservices.com .