William A. Price, Attorney at Law
The SHOP marketplace website may have been delayed, but employers can still get a tax credit. Credit amount: up to 50% of contributions toward employees’ premium costs (up to 35% for tax-exempt employers). Qualifying employers: Employ 25 or less employees with average earnings of 50% or less. How to apply: Use a health insurance agent who…
Where your corporation is organized can make a big difference in what self-dealing (sometimes litigated as “misappropriation of corporate opportunities”) is allowed. The New York Times pointed out the advantages of Nevada incorporation over Delaware for the major owner of Dish Network’s possible purchase of LightSquared, Inc., a broadband wireless company. See http://nyti.ms/1bfXsQe. The story…
Affiliate marketers, who get paid between 4 and 20% when you sell goods or services over the Internet, can be a source of lost sales, instead of pure gain. They may be offering coupons to lure the customers they refer to your site to other places that sell the same goods or services, but pay…
The US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from a New York decision allowing the state to collect sales taxes from Amazon.com and Overstock.com customers, even though the companies have no physical presence in the state. The New York court held the companies had a sufficient presence in the state because of affiliated independent…
The Internal Revenue Service has announced that it will publish draft guidance defining “candidate-related political activity” as outside of the “social benefit” activity which can qualify an organization for income tax exemption under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. See http://tinyurl.com/q2c88gc. This category of exempt organization has been used in recent election cycles to allow…
H.R. 2274, which would exempt brokers who help sell companies with up to $25 million in EBITDA (earnings before income taxation, depreciation, and amortization, a common measure of profits) or $250 million in gross sales from full FINRA broker-dealer registration requirements, was voted out of committee in the U.S. House of Representatives this week. (See…
In Landan et. al. v. Wal-Mart Real Estate Business Trust, et. al. (No. 2:12cv 926, W.D. Pa. Aug 5, 2012, see http://tinyurl.com/kzudzgh), the court ruled that Wal-Mart’s representatives’ repeated assurances that they intended to sign a lease, the extensive negotiations after a Letter of Intent (LOI) that said it’s terms were not binding, and the…
David Blass, Chief Counsel of the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets, was quoted in the New York Times today as saying that their proposed crowdfunding rules “do permit funding portals to receive commissions.” He also said that funding portals are brokers, even if they do not receive a commission, but the JOBS Act provides…
The Washington Examiner featured a story accusing Lois Lerner, the former director of the exempt organizations division of the Internal Revenue Service of the felony of unjustified disclosure of taxpayer information on “tea party” groups to the Federal Elections Commission. Matt Drudge enjoyed this enough to highlight the story in red. See http://washingtonexaminer.com/irs-lois-lerner-gave-confidential-tea-party-tax-info-to-fec-violating-law/article/2538263/comments#disqus_thread The rest…
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed rules for crowdfunding offerings and exchanges (“portals”). US based companies could raise up to $1 million per year with limited disclosures, of types defined by the new rules, and with amounts that could be sold to individual investors limited by the investor’s income. Crowdfunding portals would provide…