Abusive Tax Shelters & 419 Plans Lawsuits: IRS to Audit Sea Nine VEBA Participating Employers
Abusive Tax Shelters & 419 Plans Lawsuits: IRS to Audit Sea Nine VEBA Participating Employers...: Lance Wallach In recent months, I have received phone calls from participants in the Sea Nine VEBA and have learned that the IRS
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Lance Wallach 419, 412i, Secti
Enrolled Agents Journal March
By Ronald H. Snyder, JD, MAAA, EA & Lance Wallach, CLU, ChFC, CIMC
For years promoters of life insurance companies and agents have tried to find ways of claiming that the premiums paid by business owners were tax deductible. This allowed them to sell policies at a "discount".
The problem became especially bad a few years ago with all of the outlandish claims about how §§419A(f)(5) and 419A(f)(6) exempted employers from any tax deduction limits. Many other inaccurate statements were made as well, until the IRS finally put a stop to such assertions by issuing regulations and naming such plans as "potentially abusive tax shelters" (or "listed transactions") that needed to be disclosed and registered. This appeared to put an end to the scourge of such scurrilous promoters, as such plans began to disappear from the landscape.
And what happened to all the providers that were peddling §§419A(f)(5) and (6) life insurance plans a couple of years ago? We recently found the answer: most of them found a new life as promoters of so-called "419(e)" welfare benefit plans.
To Read More Click Link
Serving Clients Nationwide
516-938-5007
Lance Wallach Expert Witness
Like us on FacebookFollow us on TwitterView our profile on LinkedIn
ReplyDelete200K Report
Lance Wallach 419, 412i, Secti
Enrolled Agents Journal March
By Ronald H. Snyder, JD, MAAA, EA & Lance Wallach, CLU, ChFC, CIMC
For years promoters of life insurance companies and agents have tried to find ways of claiming that the premiums paid by business owners were tax deductible. This allowed them to sell policies at a "discount".
The problem became especially bad a few years ago with all of the outlandish claims about how §§419A(f)(5) and 419A(f)(6) exempted employers from any tax deduction limits. Many other inaccurate statements were made as well, until the IRS finally put a stop to such assertions by issuing regulations and naming such plans as "potentially abusive tax shelters" (or "listed transactions") that needed to be disclosed and registered. This appeared to put an end to the scourge of such scurrilous promoters, as such plans began to disappear from the landscape.
And what happened to all the providers that were peddling §§419A(f)(5) and (6) life insurance plans a couple of years ago? We recently found the answer: most of them found a new life as promoters of so-called "419(e)" welfare benefit plans.
To Read More Click Link
Serving Clients Nationwide
516-938-5007
Lance Wallach Expert Witness
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IRS audits sea nine veba, ken elliot and ramesh sarva sued.
Published on Published onFebruary 11, 2016
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Lance Wallach
Lance Wallach
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CPA Ramesh Sarva and Kenneth Elliot led Tax Fairy seekers to Section 419, which provides for VEBAs — “Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association” plans. Properly operated, VEBAs enable employers to make deductible contributions to a plan that buys insurance for employees.
A company associated with Mr. Sarva and Mr. Elliot, Sea Nine, told employers that they could use VEBAs to get around the tax law rules against deducting most life insurance premiums. Their customers deducted contributions to VEBAs and used them to buy whole-life insurance policies with high cash value accumulation on the business owners’ lives. The owners then borrowed the cash values. The purported result was a deduction, followed by tax-free access to the deducted cash via borrowing cash values.
Tax Fairy guides can always find willing customers: “…small business owners with high net worth (often doctors with small but lucrative medical practices),” according to the IRScomplaint. It has not gone well for the Tax Fairy adherents:
Sarva has successfully marketed at least 33 separate VEBAs plans to a variety of small business owners. All of these participants have been or are currently being audited by the IRS. 13 of these participant audits have been completed and have resulted in total tax adjustments of $3,500,519.
In other words, it doesn’t work. The IRS warned people off of such plans as early as 1995, and the scheme was firmly shot down by a U.S. Court of Appeals in 2002 in the Neonatology Assoc. P.A. case. In fact, Neonatology was a Sea Nine client. Undaunted, Sea Nine kept selling the idea, selling the plans through “a network of affiliated third parties” including “independent certified publica accountants (“CPA”) and financial planners.” At least they did until yesterday, when they consented to a permanent injunction yesterday against further Tax Fairy hunts.
Sea Nine had clients all over the place; the complaint lists clients in California, Florida, Alabama, and Hawaii, all with big IRS exam adjustments