By: Leigh Osofsky
Professor of Law, UNC School of Law
As the holiday season approaches, tax practitioners and commentators are waiting for the arrival of a much-anticipated event: the finalization of the § 199A regulations. The Treasury Department has indicated that it is trying to finalize the regulations before the end of the year or shortly thereafter. Treasury has moved expeditiously with this monumental regulatory project for good reason: with the New Year comes the first tax filing season that will require application of § 199A (though those filing estimated returns may have already tried to apply the section). While the proposed regulations indicate that taxpayers may rely on the proposed regulations until the date that the final regulations are published in the Federal Register, it is nonetheless beneficial to have a bit more certainty regarding the operation of the provision as soon as possible going into filing season.
So, what can we expect of the final regulations? Much of what we saw in the proposed regulations – the basic regulatory approach – will likely stay the same. As Shuyi Oei and I catalogued in a recent article, Beyond Notice-and-Comment: The Making of the § 199A Regulations, Treasury put significant work into formulating the proposed regulations. Treasury engaged in extensive dialogue with interested constituencies prior to the release of the proposed regulations in addition to going through OIRA review. The proposed regulations offer a lengthy and detailed presentation of why Treasury chose particular approaches such as, for instance, a narrow reading of the critical “reputation or skill” clause from the statute. These types of fundamental decisions from the proposed regulations are thus unlikely to radically change.
This is not to say there will be no changes at all in the final regulations. Treasury has signaled it may make some changes to parts of the aggregation rules. And S Corp banks lobbied extensively both as part of the notice-and-comment period and outside of it to increase the de minimis threshold for the specified service trade or business (“SSTB”) characterization. If their lobbying effort is successful, the threshold will go up in the final regulations and allow more S Corp banks and similarly situated businesses to avoid classification in the undesirable SSTB category. This would be a real win for such banks, especially given that the statute itself does not explicitly provide for a de minimis exclusion from the SSTB category. Many other taxpayers pleaded for greater clarity, and, in particular, clearer exclusion from SSTB categorization, including in a slew of requests made as part of the notice-and-comment process. Shuyi Oei and I documented much of this dynamic in our recent work. However, Treasury is unlikely to grant the certainty requested by all, as the taxpayers making the requests are surely aware.
So, who will get a present in finalization and who will get a lump of coal? We will all find out soon enough. But my money is on few major changes and a lot of little ones around the edges.
The Surly Subgroup 