Source: https://www.cpethink.com/course/essential-legal-concepts-with-tax-analysis
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 00:19:21+00:00

Document:
While accounting and the practice of law are separate professions, the accountant must be conversant with essential legal concepts. Modern accounting practice requires familiarity with corporate legal structure, business entities, partnership operations, contracts, property rights, employment law, divorce, consumer protection, will & trusts, and even bankruptcy law. This course explores these specific areas with an emphasis on business and accounting issues. This informal and clear guide to the basic concepts of business law provides accountants with an excellent review of legal concepts that arise in any tax professional’s practice. The attendees will gain the ability to recognize and discuss general legal concepts with both client and their counsel.
Knowledge is power and nowhere is that truer than in the field law. To gain such a working knowledge of law, readily understandable explanations are given to essential and related business law subjects. The accountant is guided through the complex maze of literally hundreds of legal principles from acceptance to zoning.
c. Determining asset protection using the primary concepts of insurance, asset placement, and statutory protections.
3. Specify the fraudulent transfer laws and badges of fraud, define statutes of limitation, criminal penalties, and permissible asset transfers.
4. Identify the degree and necessity of asset protection using net worth and asset values under a balance sheet and the various ways that insurance and buy-sell agreements can offer asset protection.
1. Determine “alimony” and “separate maintenance payments” under §§71 and 215.
2. Specify the types of §71 “divorce or separation instruments” and determine how having an invalid decree, an amended instrument, or a premarital agreement impacts such an instrument.
h. Determining marital relationship and the similarities and differences in the treatment of child support under current and previous law.
4. Identify the deduction of pre-2019 alimony paid and the reporting of alimony received on the proper forms with required information.
5. Specify the pre-2019 alimony recapture rule for various marital agreements and its impact on the tax treatment of past payments.
6. Recognize the use of alimony trusts to realize tax advantage and security, determine the use of annuity contracts, and specify the proper tax treatment of alimony paid by an estate to a former spouse of a decedent.
7. Recall the tax treatment of child support, identify two circumstances where a payment will be fixed as child support, and specify six events that determine whether a contingency is clearly child-related and how to rebut this presumption of child support.
b. Determining what constitutes “qualified medical child support orders” recognizing differences with other similar orders and identifying the procedures, requirements, and jurisdiction of QMCSOs.
2. Specify the rules for automatic stay and levy along with their impact on “freezing” creditor activity, tax assessment, and collection.
3. Identify the differences between preferential and nonpreferential payments together with the priority of creditor claims.
1. Identify the formats that courts typically follow if a couple does not have a premarital agreement and post-nuptial and premarital agreements including how they relate to divorce settlements and divisions.
2. Cite the position of U.S. v. Davis on interspousal transfers and the changes made by §1041 and, specify the requirements of §1041 and the scope of its application.
3. Identify factors that determine when a property transfer is incident to divorce and how to meet these factors or avoid §1041 altogether when desired and recognize the application of §1041 to transfers in trust under §1041(e) and to third-party transfers on behalf of a spouse or former spouse.
4. Determine deferred tax liability and property basis for the transferor spouse and transferee spouse under §1041 after a property settlement.
5. Recognize the application of §1041 to property transfers where the transferee assumes liabilities encumbering the property, and identify with appropriate records the holding period for an asset transferred between spouses or former spouses incident to divorce.
6. Identify the dangers of purchasing a former spouse's interest in property particularly a marital residence including its tendency to create deferred tax liability, specify the effects of purchasing an interest in personal or real property used in a business or held for investment, recognize potential recapture and identify the use of an exchange to dispose of low-basis property received in a §1041 transfer.
7. Recognize sale, redemption, recapitalization, liquidation and third-party transfers as methods of dividing a business in a marital settlement citing unique provisions under §302, §368, §736 and §754.
e. Locating military pensions and civil service pensions that may be available to a former spouse.
1. Specify common-law rules used to determine employee status for FICA and federal income tax withholding, determine FICA and FUTA taxes including their reporting, and identify unreasonable compensation issues.
c. Locating clients’ retirement benefits following a multi-step process.
3. Identify Social Security taxes, their rates and covered earnings to determine actual amounts taken from gross pay.
4. Determine Medicare Part A and Medicare Part B differences and what is needed to qualify, and identify the eligibility requirements of Social Security disability and survivors’ benefits.
2. Cite the S corporation requirements and tax advantages and disadvantages particularly whose associated with incorporating a farm.
3. Specify the title holding benefits of trusts, co-tenancy, partnerships, and limited liability companies and the tax characteristics of each, identify the types of retirement plans used to provide lifetime benefits to a business owner and to employees, determine how title can be held on behalf of minors and the tax treatment of custodianships, and specify the tax treatment of a probate estate.
1. Identify characteristics of homeowner's, automobile, and disability insurance and what asset protection they may offer.
2. Specify persons in which rights are placed by life insurance and reasons to purchase life insurance and the benefits, uses, and types of life insurance, identify variables that influence when life insurance is taxable for federal estate tax purposes, and cite reasons for establishing an irrevocable life insurance trust in order to achieve several estate tax planning advantages.
3. Determine what constitutes an annuity and the types and characteristics of annuities along with their tax advantages and disadvantages.
4. Identify entity purchase and cross-purchase agreements specifying tax and legal advantages and pitfalls.
1. Identify capital gains rates with applicable assets using the "basket" approach.
2. Cite the elements of the §121 home sale exclusion and the application and safe harbor regulations associated with the exclusion.
b. Determining related party and contingent payment rules, §483 imputed interest and §§1271 through 1274 original issue discount.
d. Recognizing a delayed exchange using the identification requirements, specify safe harbors to avoid actual or constructive receipt and identifying the “look thru” treatment of partnership interests according to the latest amendments to §1031.
5. Determine gain or loss on foreclosure or repossession identifying reporting and filing requirements and the hidden income tax danger of directly or indirectly acquiring one's own debt at a discount.
6. Recognize the differences between personal property and real property repossessions, and identify when a bad debt deduction may be taken if the seller repossesses real property.
d. Citing the related party rule under §1033.
1. Recognize the importance of effectively designing a retirement plan following a multi-step program.
2. Identify qualified corporate plans, SIMPLE plans, self-employed plans, IRAs, tax-deferred annuities, and SEP plans, how to build up investment funds, variables in a current investment plan, and participant loan regulations under §4975.
3. Determine the differences between nonstatutory and statutory fringe benefits, identify no-additional-cost services, qualified employee discounts, working condition fringes and de minimis fringes specifying which property or services qualify under each benefit, and §79 group term life insurance.
4. Cite the §129 requirements and limits, identify a §125 “cafeteria plan,” recognize the §119 meals and lodging exclusion, determine the mechanics of §105 medical reimbursement plans, and cite the requirements and limits §127 programs.
5. Determine valuation methods for employer-provided automobiles, recognize interest-free and below-market loans, cite the requirements and limitations on a number of other fringe benefits under §§217, 132, 67 212, 132(h)(5) and 280A, identify the limited S corporation fringe benefits, and specify ERISA compliance requirements.
1. Identify types of tort and the remedies tort law provides.
2. Recognize the personal injury exclusion to ensure proper reporting of damages received because of injury, and determine how to report punitive damages, interest on injury awards and legal fees as determined according to case law.
1. Specify types of wills and the functions a will can perform, identify types of bequests, determine the duties of executors and guardians, and recall ways to hold title and their tax ramifications.
1. Identify the relationship of parties in a trust, reasons to establish a trust, and types of trusts along with their estate planning function.

References: §71
 v. 
 §1041
 §1041
 §1041
 §1041
 §1041
 §1041
 §1041
 §1041
 §302
 §368
 §736
 §754
 §121
 §483
 §1031
 §1033
 §4975
 §79
 §129
 §125
 §119
 §105
 §127