Archive for the ‘Residence Sale’ Category
Back to Basics Part XXIII – Form 6252 – Installment Sale Income
Filed under: Back to Basics, Residence Sale | Tags: capital gain, contract price, depreciation recapture, Form 6252, gross profit percentage, installment sale, interest, loan assumption, related party, return of basis, seller-financed mortgage, tax deferral
Leave a comment Originally published in the Cedar Street Times
September 18, 2015
Let us assume you are ready to sell a personal residence or a rental property that you have held for many years and it has increased substantially in value from the time you purchased it. If a buyer comes in with all cash or obtains a loan from a bank to buy the property from you, you will recognize the full gain in the year of sale since you get paid in full in the year of sale.
This will skyrocket your income in the year of sale and reek havoc on your taxes. Even though the gain from sale will be considered a long term capital gain, having too much in one year could subject part of the capital gain to a 20 percent rate instead of the normal 15 percent rate. It will also make your adjusted gross income much higher. This will in turn effectively increase your tax on other income since many deductions and credits phase out based on your adjusted gross income. You could also hit an additional 3.8 percent tax on investment income which you may not have been subject to without the sale. There could be a lot of negative effects.
Spreading out income over a period of years is generally a more tax efficient strategy than having one banner year. So how can you avoid this? An installment sale, given the right circumstances, is your answer.
With an installment sale, you are basically telling the seller to pay you over a period of years instead of all at once. Of course, you are generally going to want some interest from the buyer as well if it is going to take a period of years for them to pay you off. With real estate this often takes the form of a seller financed mortgage. You are basically the bank.
In this scenario, you get to spread the taxable gain out over a period of years, thus not creating a bunch of extra tax due to a banner year, and you also create a nice stream of interest income for a period of years. The flip side is that you bear the risk of having to foreclose or repossess if they do not make good on their payments. Also, should you suddenly need the money from your loan to the buyer, you may have to sell the note at a discount to someone else to get your cash out.
If you choose an installment sale, generally a portion of each payment to you will be interest income, a portion will be capital gain, and a portion will be nontaxable return of basis.
Assume you bought a second home years ago for $400,000 and you find a buyer willing to pay $1 million. If they pay all cash or get a loan from a bank to pay you on the closing date, you have $600,000 of taxable capital gain that year and $400,000 nontaxable return of basis – that is a 60 percent gross profit.
Let us assume instead they give you a $250,000 down payment at the time of sale and you loan them the remaining $750,000 with a 15-year amortized note. The payment will be about $6,000 a month with roughly half of each payment consisting of principal and half of interest in the early years. The interest will be taxed as ordinary income as received. The down payment and the principal portion of all future loan payments will be 60 percent taxable capital gain and 40 percent nontaxable return of basis until the loan is paid off.
This is a wonderful way to defer taxation of the capital gains and spread it out over a period of years.
The mechanics of reporting an installment sale play out on Form 6252. The above example is the most basic version of an installment sale, but after reviewing the Form 6252 you will see some complicating issues which could come into play depending on the circumstances – such as sales to related parties, sales of depreciable assets subject to depreciation recapture, and buyers assuming debt(s) of the sellers.
If you dig into the instructions as well as Publication 537, dedicated to this topic, you will quickly realize that installment sales can become extremely complicated, and there are a lot of special rules to follow depending on the circumstances since the deferral of tax is enticing and could otherwise be abused. Installment sales that involve like-kind exchanges, contingent sales, sales of businesses, securities, or other things through the installment method, unstated interest rates in the loan term, dispositions of an installment sale, etc. all add additional complications.
Since installment sales require a higher risk tolerance for the seller, you often see them between related parties where trust is greater. There are can be some unfriendly rules for such transactions. You should consult with a tax professional prior to entering an installment sale with a related party.
The form itself is a one page form. The beginning asks general questions about the property including several on related party issues.
Part I of the form deals with calculating the gross profit percentage and the “contract price.” Note that the contract price is not necessarily the sale price you agreed to, but can be affected if the buyer assumes or otherwise pays off any debt of the seller. This section is only completed in the year of sale.
Part II deals with sorting out the capital gains versus ordinary income, versus recapture income and applying the gross profit percentage to the payments received each year. It is prepared each year.
Part III deals with specifically with related party transactions and necessary recalculations in certain of those circumstances.
If you have questions about other schedules or forms in your tax returns, prior articles in our Back to Basics series on personal tax returns are republished on my website at www.tlongcpa.com/blog .
Travis H. Long, CPA, Inc. is located at 706-B Forest Avenue, PG, 93950 and focuses on trust, estate, individual, and business taxation. He can be reached at 831-333-1041.
Relief if You Paid Tax on a Short-Sale 2011-2013
Filed under: Foreclosures and Short-Sales, Residence Sale | Tags: 580(b), 580e, anti-deficiency, Barbara Boxer, California, cancellation of debt, Chief Counsel, debt, exclusion, Foreclosure, Franchise Tax Board, FTB, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, nonrecourse, principal residence, qualified debt, qualified principal residence indebtedness, recourse, refund, section 121, Senate bill 458, Senate bill 931, Short-Sale
Leave a comment Originally published in the Cedar Street Times
February 21, 2014
Hopefully we are nearing the end of the short-sale and foreclosure saga that has continued since 2008. My litmus test based on tax return filings is indicating that things are much closer to being back on track. Prior to 2008, it was all about 1031 exchanges. Those turned off like a faucet when the markets crashed, and then short-sales and foreclosures took center stage. I have seen those tapering off over the last couple years, and I am starting to see 1031 exchanges again. The cycles continue!
But before we leave short-sales and foreclosures in the dust, there is a possible silver-lining handed down by the IRS and FTB in the last few months. Taxpayers that generated income tax as a result of a short-sale in California on their principal residence, retroactive to January 1, 2011, may be entitled to a refund.
California Code of Civil Procedure Section 580b has been dubbed California’s “anti-deficiency laws” for years. It had a positive effect on homeowners because it basically said if you had never refinanced your home and you lost it in a short-sale or foreclosure that you could not be pursued for the balance you still owed (the deficiency), and the remaining debt would not be taxable income to you because the debt was considered nonrecourse debt.
This, however, left many people out in the cold that had refinanced. Suddenly, it was a different ball game if you had done a refinance (and who didn’t during the run of good years up through 2007!?), and the debts were then allowed by lenders to be treated as recourse debts and they could pursue your personal assets. Alternatively they could cancel the debt if it was not worth pursuing, leaving you with taxable income for the amount cancelled.
Congress stepped in (and California generally conformed) during the housing crisis and enacted favorable legislation which said you could exclude cancellation of debt income generated by your personal residence. The catch, however, was that the debt had to be “qualified debt.” In short, if you lived off the equity in your house by refinancing to pull cash out and did anything with it other than improve the property, then you were not eligible for the exclusion on that portion and would still have to pay tax.
Then, a few years ago, California passed Senate bills 931 and 458 which were codified into law as California Code of Civil Procedure Section 580e as of January 1, 2011. This resulted because some unscrupulous lenders were entering into short-sale agreements to allow sellers to go through with the sale of their property for less than the amount owed to the bank, but then still pursuing the seller for the remaining debt after the fact (often a big surprise to the seller). California’s enactment of this law was good news for homeowners because it basically said, even if you had refinanced, but had entered into a short-sale agreement with a lender, then you could not be pursued for the remaining balance owed and that lenders would basically have to cancel the debt. Of course, cancelling the debt could mean tax was owed, but that was still better than being pursued for the remaining balance!
Finally, in November 2013 a letter from the Office of the Chief Counsel at the IRS written to Senator Barbara Boxer, due to an inquiry from her, stated that the IRS would treat any debt pursuant to California’s 580e as nonrecourse debt! The Chief Counsel’s office at California’s Franchise Tax Board followed up with their own letter a month later saying they will conform to the IRS interpretation.
This means that anyone who filed a tax return in 2011 or 2012, or even this year, and reported cancellation of debt income related to the short sale of a principal residence, should consider filing an amendment for a possible refund. It is still possible to have income tax, primarily if you did not live in the house for two of the last five years prior to your short-sale. The reason is that when a home is disposed of with nonrecourse debt, the total amount of debt outstanding at the time of the short-sale becomes the sales price of the home. You then subtract your cost basis, and the difference is your gain on sale. However, if you lived in the home for two of the last five years, then you get a $250,000 gain exclusion for filing as a single status, and $500,000 gain exclusion if married filing jointly, pursuant to IRC Section 121.
You need to act on this during the next year if your short sale was in 2011 as the statute of limitations expires three years after filing.
Prior articles are republished on my website at www.tlongcpa.com/blog.
IRS Circular 230 Notice: To the extent this article concerns tax matters, it is not intended to be used and cannot be used by a taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed by law.
Travis H. Long, CPA is located at 706-B Forest Avenue, PG, 93950 and focuses on trust, estate, individual, and business taxation. He can be reached at 831-333-1041.
Sale of a Residence After Death – Part II
Filed under: Residence Sale | Tags: appraisal, basis, community property, death, decedent, fair market value, fractional ownership, irrevocable trust, joint tenancy, personal residence, revocable trust, rights of survivorship, sale, section 121, sole ownership, step-down, step-up, surviving spouse, survivor, tenancy in common, tenants in common
Comments (10) Originally published in the Cedar Street Times
April 5, 2013
Two weeks ago we discussed the sale of a personal residence after someone passes away when held as joint tenants or community property. We also discussed the concept of a cost basis step up (or down) to the current fair market value at death as it relates to joint tenancy, community property, and tenancy in common. If you missed this article you can find it on my website at www.tlongcpa.com/blog. This week we are going to discuss what happens when a sole owner or tenant in common passes away and the house or fractional interest in a house goes to their trust or estate.
Often children are tasked with figuring out what to do with mom or dad’s house after the second spouse passes. Names like executor, executrix, and trustee get thrown around and sometimes you get to know your accountant and attorney better than if you had gone on a fishing trip together! After death, the house typically become part of the estate if there was no trust in place, and if there was, then it becomes part of an irrevocable trust that has the task of winding up affairs and distributing the assets to the beneficiaries (or trusts for the beneficiaries).
If the surviving spouse held the house as a sole owner or in his or her revocable trust before death, the house receives a full step-up (or down) in basis to the current fair market value at death. If the house is distributed outright to a beneficiary (or beneficiaries) and then the beneficiary immediately sells the home, you often will have a loss due to the real estate commissions and other sales expenses (or perhaps even a market decline between date of death and the sale as we saw so often over the past five years). This loss, however, will generally be a nondeductible personal loss unless you first convert it to a rental property, and then sell it later.
If, however, it is decided the house needs to be sold while it is still in the estate or trust in order to pay debts or to distribute the proceeds to various beneficiaries, you may have a case to take a deductible loss on the sale of the property (which would offset other taxable income in the estate or trust, or perhaps flow through to the beneficiaries reducing their personal taxes). Fair warning, the IRS and the courts disagree on this issue!
The IRS has taken the position that even a trust or estate cannot take a loss unless it is a rental property or converted to a rental property and then sold. However, this conflicts with some of the instructions they provide regarding capital assets held by trusts and estates. The courts, on the other hand, have held that a trust or estate does not hold personal assets, and thus is allowed to take a loss on the sale of what used to be the decedent’s personal residence as long as no beneficiaries live in the property in the interim. There are other issues to consider here, but in the right circumstances, strategic planning could create some large tax savings.
If a tenant in common passes away, his or her ownership percentage receives a step in basis to the current fair market value and the interest flows through to the estate or trust. Similar results would occur as those just discussed for sole owners. It is less common to find someone holding a personal residence as a tenant in common, especially with unrelated people. It also comes with other, more complicated issues, since fractionalizing ownership in a house diminishes the value – basically, who wants to buy a house with other people you don’t know? In all cases after someone passes away, date-of-death appraisals are requisite, and you may need specialized appraisers for fractional interest properties.
This really just scratches the surface of the issues you can encounter, and it is always best to find a CPA and attorney team that is equipped to handle these issues appropriately.
IRS Circular 230 Notice: To the extent this article concerns tax matters, it is not intended to be used and cannot be used by a taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed by law.
Travis H. Long, CPA is located at 706-B Forest Avenue, PG, 93950 and focuses on trust, estate, individual, and business taxation. He can be reached at 831-333-1041.
Sale of a Residence After Death – Part I
Filed under: General, Residence Sale | Tags: appraisal, basis, community property, death, decedent, fair market value, joint tenancy, personal residence, rights of survivorship, sale, section 121, step-down, step-up, survivor, tenancy in common
Comments (7) Originally published in the Cedar Street Times
March 22, 2013
When a living individual sells a personal residence that results in a gain, many people are familiar with the rules which may allow an exclusion of the taxable gain of up to $250,000 ($500,000 if married filing joint) if the taxpayer lived in the property two out of the last five years as his or her primary residence. In the depressed real estate markets over the past few years, many people have also learned (sometimes to much dismay) that a loss on a personal residence is not deductible.
But what happens when a house is sold after someone passes away?
The first thing we need to do is determine the cost basis. At the date of death, the cost basis of the property changes to whatever the current fair market value (FMV) is (an appraisal is required – not a market analysis by a real estate agent). If the house is held in joint tenancy or tenancy in common, only the decedent’s share of the home gets a step up (or down) in basis to the current FMV, and the basis for the survivor’s original share does not change.
If, however, it is held as community property, the entire interest in the house gets a step in basis to the current FMV. If the property is held “with rights of survivorship” then the house passes immediately to the survivor which in turn inherits the new stepped up (or down) basis of the decedent to add to his or her own basis-in the case of joint tenancy or tenancy in common, or he or she takes the new FMV as the new basis if it was community property.
When the property is sold, the survivor reports the sales price less the new basis and selling expenses. If it was sold soon after death, the survivor often realizes a loss due to sales expenses if they got a full step-up in basis (albeit nondeductible if maintained as a personal residence). If the survivor realizes a gain, then, the survivor is eligible for the $250,000 exclusion assuming he or she meets all the normal rules. If it was a spouse that passed away, then the widow or widower would have two years from the date of death to sell the house and still be eligible for the $500,000 exclusion.
In two weeks we will discuss the more interesting scenarios that play out when the property is not held “with rights of survivorship” and the property goes to the individual’s estate or trust, such as is often the case at the death of a single individual or the death of the second spouse.
Remember, it is always best to seek competent advice as everybody’s tax situation is unique and there are more rules that could affect you than just those mentioned in this article.
Prior articles are republished on my website at www.tlongcpa.com/blog.
IRS Circular 230 Notice: To the extent this article concerns tax matters, it is not intended to be used and cannot be used by a taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed by law.
Travis H. Long, CPA is located at 706-B Forest Avenue, PG, 93950 and focuses on trust, estate, individual, and business taxation. He can be reached at 831-333-1041.
Travis H. Long, CPA, Inc. Blog 