Cherry Bekaert: The Tax Beat
Financial Statement Reporting & Disclosure Changes in 2025
Navigating the complex terrain of financial statement reporting and income tax disclosures is a major challenge for companies as they face heightened regulatory scrutiny and evolving standards. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) continues to introduce significant updates, including ASU 2023-09, which requires greater transparency and more detailed reporting of tax provisions. These changes reshape how companies present their tax positions within financial statements, emphasizing ...
Disaster Losses & Casualty Gains for 2024 Taxes: IRS Guidelines
In 2024, a year marked by numerous natural disasters, the IRS has stepped up to provide taxpayers with crucial relief measures. More than 60 disaster relief notices have been issued, offering postponement of tax return filing and tax payment due dates for individuals and businesses across various U.S. counties. This relief is vital as individuals and businesses begin the challenging recovery process, which often involves navigating insurance claims and understanding loss deductions for the fi...
Employee Retention Credit (ERC): New IRS Updates & Guidance
The employee retention credit (ERC) remains a hot topic as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has opened a new window for its voluntary disclosure program, allowing employers to withdraw their claims. While the IRS is processing and paying out refunds for the ERC, it has also introduced new conditions that seem to disqualify certain wages from eligibility. In response, some eligible employers are beginning to take legal action to compel the IRS to address their pending refund claims. In this ...
Maximize Tax Savings with Section 179D and Cost Segregation
The Section 179D Energy Efficient Commercial Building Deduction (Section 179D) and cost segregation studies can help commercial building owners save significantly on taxes. Section 179D provides a tax deduction for new construction and renovations to the HVAC, interior lighting and building envelope, while cost segregation studies help identify assets with shorter depreciable lives. When paired together, they create the best opportunity for building owners to maximize tax savings and increase...
IRC Section 1202: A Powerful Tool for Tax Savings and Attracting Investors
For fast-growing companies, becoming a C corporation for income tax purposes can offer significant tax savings for their shareholders. Section 1202 of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) is a powerful tool for attracting investors with funds to fuel a company's growth. To qualify for these tax benefits, both the company and shareholder must meet specific requirements, and non-compliance can result in missed opportunities for savings. It is crucial for businesses to have a comprehensive unde...
Impact for Small Businesses: MTC’s New Interpretation of PL 86-272
Public Law 86-272 (PL 86-272) offers limited protection to out-of-state companies that solely solicit sales for tangible personal property within a state. Small and medium-sized businesses in the manufacturing, distribution and retail sectors have heavily relied upon this state protection since it was enacted in 1959 to decrease overall tax liability. In 2021, the Multistate Tax Commission (MTC) released a controversial reinterpretation of what activities may be considered more than mer...
Navigating IRS Audits on Personal Usage of Corporate Aircraft
Private aircraft ownership can be a great asset for companies, providing convenience, flexibility and efficiency for business travel. However, ownership also comes with significant costs, including purchase, maintenance, fuel and insurance. In addition to these expenses, companies that own private aircraft must also comply with various tax regulations, including properly reporting any personal use of the aircraft by company owners and executives, as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has rece...
Tax Beat – Inbound US Tax Services
When expanding operations into the U.S. market, business owners must learn about the federal, state and local tax systems they will encounter. Sales tax in the U.S. is quite different from a value-added tax (VAT) or a goods and services tax (GST) assessed by many other countries. Companies selling goods and some services must comply with a sales tax system that can vary across thousands of taxing jurisdictions. The U.S. federal tax system can also be challenging for companies new to this coun...
Tax Beat – ASU 2023-09
On December 14, 2023, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) expanded income tax disclosure requirements for public and private companies. The expanded disclosure requirements are detailed in Accounting Standards Update No. 2023-09 (ASU 2023-09) and increase transparency of a filer’s global taxes. This will require filers to provide more details and be more descriptive in their financial statement income tax disclosures, which should enable business leaders and investors to make more...
IRS ERC Voluntary Disclosures Program
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has taken several steps to tackle the millions of invalid Employee Retention Credit (ERC) claims. First, they temporarily halted all ERC claims until the beginning of 2024. Two new programs were introduced by the IRS to aid employers who may have filed ERC claims they didn’t qualify for without realizing it. The IRS announced the Voluntary Disclosure Program (VDP) on December 21, 2023, to aid employers who filed invalid ERC claims. The IRS created the VDP t...
New Markets Tax Credits and Innovate Fund Award
The New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program has been issuing tax credits for more than two decades as a driving force for investors to aid low-income communities across the United States. In September 2023, Cherry Bekaert’s The Innovate Fund, a Community Development Entity (CDE), received a $50 million allocation in NMTC. With this money, The Innovate Fund will continue to support and enhance community development projects in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia low-income comm...
Estate & Trust Tax Planning Update
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was enacted in 2017, and part of this bill amended the lifetime exclusion amount for estate and gift tax planning. Over the last 6 years, the lifetime exclusion has ballooned from $10 million to over $13 million in 2024. Together, a married couple could leave $26 million of asset value to their family or other beneficiaries, free of federal estate tax. However, at the end of 2025, this increased lifetime exclusion will sunset and revert to a lower amount. What...
Energy Tax Credits Update
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) bolstered existing clean energy tax credits and incentives and added new ones. Looking forward to 2024, it is important to stay up to date with the qualifications for these various tax credits and incentives and the growing marketplace for transferring credits between buyers and sellers. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regularly releases notices and proposed regulations to provide guidance to help taxpayers benefit from these clean energy credits. ...
Employee Retention Credit Updates
The Employee Retention Credit (ERC) was created to reward companies that continued paying employees when operations were negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a proven program that helps companies recover from the negative impacts of the pandemic on their business, even when ERC refund claims are filed today. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released new guidance for how employers may or may not have been impacted by supply chain disruptions during the pandemic. W...
Section 174 IRS Guidance Finally Arrives
On September 8, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released Notice 2023-63, providing much anticipated guidance on the application of Section 174. The Notice addresses key issues for handling specified research or experimental (SRE) expenditures that are capitalized and amortized in accordance with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) changes to Section 174. Taxpayers can apply the rules of Notice 2023-63 to tax years ending after September 8, 2023, or apply these rules to an earlier tax ye...
Not-For-Profit Update
When thinking about not-for-profit or tax-exempt organizations, abiding by strict tax rules is probably not top of mind. However, it is important for members of the board of directors and organization leaders to stay informed about tax laws, regulations, and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reporting guidelines for not-for-profit organizations. Form 990 is the annual information return for most tax-exempt entities. The IRS uses Form 990 to collect information about the annual financial activity...
Short Sales, Cancellation of Debt and Foreclosures
Often, after much negotiation, debt may be reduced on various projects to realign debtor and equity holders' interests in properties. Property owners restructuring debt should be wary of tax consequences that could occur. Debt cancellation, foreclosures and short sales can often increase tax liability for cancellation of debt income. On this episode of the Tax Beat Podcast, Brooks Nelson, Partner and Strategic Tax Leader, and Sarah McGregor, Tax Director, discuss the tax cost and potential op...
The Wayfair Journey - Five Years Later
Wayfair v. South Dakota was a landmark case that clarified how sales tax is determined and collected. Brought about by a group of online retailers that challenged a South Dakota law, the case has had major impacts on how state and local jurisdictions throughout the U.S. establish physical presence or nexus. Since the initial ruling of the Supreme Court case, states have begun to set up their own sales tax laws. On this episode of the Tax Beat Podcast, Brooks Nelson, Partner and Strategic Tax...
Energy Savings Revolution – Section 179D for Commercial Buildings
Section 179D Energy Efficient Commercial Buildings Deduction (Section 179D) was significantly enhanced through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), offering commercial building owners and designers, like architects and engineers, potential lucrative tax credits. The tax credit rewards qualifying energy-efficient commercial buildings to encourage clean energy and offset the costs of the improvements. Energy Tax Credits & Incentives team members, Bill Harbeson, Manager, and Andre Kohn, Senio...
Farhy v. Commissioner and International Information Reporting Penalties
U.S. taxpayers that own or control certain foreign corporations, foreign partnerships or foreign trusts are required to disclose the activities, usually with forms attached to a tax return. If not reported timely or properly on the designated forms, these U.S. taxpayers may be subject to significant penalties. A recent Tax Court Ruling for Farhy v. Commissioner brought to light how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) applies these penalties. The main issue argued whether the law actually grant...
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