Description: Current tax issues affecting the insurance industry, including the Inflation Reduction Act (Budget Reconciliation Bill)'s tax provisions, including the corporate minimum book income tax and share repurchase (or stock buyback) excise tax; the tax treatment of non coordinated benefits (also known as fixed indemnity benefits); and an update on the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project

Description: In March 2010, Congress codified the judicial economic substance doctrine in an effort to raise revenue as part of the health care reform legislation.1 The law provides for strict liability penalties of 20 percent for understated taxes and refund claims that result from transactions that lack economic substance. In July 2011, the commissioner of the Large Businessand International Division LB&I of the IRS evidently recognized this state of uncertainty and issued very helpful guidance to all LB&I examiners to fill the void on guidance for economic substance..

Description: Discusses five subjects, including proposed IASB discussion paper, split-dollar life insurance, penalties for paid tax preparers, statutory reserves for insurers, and NAIC securitization initiatives.

Description: Discussion of recent developments in the taxation of noncoordinated benefits such as fixed indemnity, hospital indemnity, and specified disease insurance policies. Developments include a recent Chief Counsel Advice Memorandum and proposed triagency rulemaking that would impact non coordinated benefits.

Description: Read the June 2019 issue of Taxing Times, published by the Taxation Section. Newsletters provide practical information for the working actuary, articles on trends that impact sections and news about section activities.

Description: Dialogue between Peter Winslow, a tax attorney, and Edward Robbins and Christian DesRochers, tax actuaries, on selected tax issues related to proposals to change statutory reserving from a formula-based methodology to a principles-based approach.

Description: A discussion of the effective dates and statutory reserves cap for variable annuities under Actuarial Guideline 43.

Description: This article describes the transfer pricing rules applicable to life reinsurance transactions generally, and then outlines a methodology for testing life reinsurance transactions to demonstrate compliance with transfer pricing standards applied by tax authorities.

Description: On June 30, 2015, the U.S. Tax Court reaffirmed the viability of the Investor Control Doctrine in Webber v. Commissioner. The case serves as a valuable example of what not to do with regard to the investment of assets supporting a variable life insurance contract purchased through a private placement transaction. In the end, however, the Webber court leaves a lot of questions unanswered—most significantly, the elusive answer to how to define investor control. This article examines the Investor Control Doctrine, as explained and applied by the U.S. Tax Court in Webber, and considers some of the open questions that remain after June 30, 2015.

Description: Clarification of the tax treatment of non-qualified deferred annuities that are “partially annuitized” is discussed in detail in this article.