This course is designed to survey selected "hot" topics having a direct impact on the property owner and investor. The emphasis is on problem areas where the unwary beginner and expert alike can be trapped. You will learn to identify dangers involving installment sales, imputed interest, exchanging, equity participation, condemnation, passive loss rules, and transactions with foreign investors.
Learning Objectives
- Determine what constitutes building an estate, preserving wealth and distributing assets in the context of financial fundamentals and tax planning elements.
- Recognize the importance of the installment method, select requirements set forth in 453 to determine whether the installment method may be used, and specify terminology associated with the installment method.
- Identify mortgage financing noting advantages and disadvantages and determine how to amortize mortgage costs.
- Identify the elements of the $500,000 home sale exclusion noting how to apply it, and specify safe harbor regulations associated with the home sale exclusion.
- Identify condemnations and involuntary conversions under 1033 noting their impact on the recognition of gain or loss.
- Identify basic type of income and the "buckets" of income and loss under 469 that can control what a taxpayer can deduct against other income.
- Recognize the requirements of Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act of 1980, determine a United States real property interest using 897 to determine what dispositions by foreign investors will be taxed.
- Cite reasons for establishing a REIT that generate annual income that is tax-sheltered and is apt to grow over time, specify advantages that REITs have over limited partnerships and their effect on investments and shareholders, and recognize the development of the self-liquidating REIT.
Major Topics
- Tax Economics
- Installment Sales & Time Value of Money
- Mortgage Finance
- Home Sales & Like-Kind Exchanges
- Involuntary Conversions
- Passive Loss & At-Risk Rules
- Sales by Foreign Investors
- REITS
