Description: Recently, the IRS eliminated one of the more amorphous tax rules that at times was a stumbling block in Triple-X securitization transactions. Unfortunately, however, the IRS left an equally amorphous consolidated return rule untouched.

Description: This article provides a short history of the correction procedures previously developed to address compliance failures and the shortcomings of those procedures under sections 101f and 7702, laying the foundation for a sea change in the correction process.

Description: This article discusses tax rates used in computing toll charges for closing agreements with respect to corrections under IRS section 7702.

Description: The IRS believes that any segregated asset account comprised of a pool of individual securities will run afoul of the investor control doctrine. This article articulates that such a conclusion would be deeply flawed based on the administrative, congressional, and judicial precedents involving the investor control doctrine.

Description: A discussion of the PLR that addresses a Wellness Rider that an affiliated group of life insurance companies proposed to offer only on a prospective basis with newly issued life insurance contracts.

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Description: Congress has acted in recent years to remove outdated provisions governing the federal income taxation of life insurance companies from the Internal Revenue Code. In particular, section 809 and section 815 were repealed and suspended, respectively, in 2004. This article chronicles the demise of these provisions and explains why Congress was right in removing them from the Code.

Description: This article is a discussion of the proposal to tax the inside build-up in life insurance policies and the consequences if it were to be adopted.

Description: To most observers, the value of a life insurance contract is the cash surrender value. However, when it comes to life insurance and the Internal Revenue Code, things are seldom as simple as they appear on the surface.

Description: This article discusses a new procedure for correcting inadvertent failures to satisfy the diversification requirements applicable to variable annuity and life insurance contracts under section 817h of the Internal Revenue Code.