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Description: Congress has acted in recent years to remove outdated provisions governing the federal income taxation of life insurance companies from the Internal Revenue Code. In particular, section 809 and section 815 were repealed and suspended, respectively, in 2004.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.

Description: A brief overview of the rules for corporate owned life insurance in section 101j and then summarizes the guidance contained in the IRS notice.

Description: On January 19, 2005, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service the “Service” responded to a life insurance industry request for guidance on the treatment of qualified additional benefits “QABs” under sections 7702 and 7702A of the Internal Revenue Code through the release of Revenue Ruling 2005-6 the “Ruling”.

Description: COLI products continue to be the focus of litigation by the IRS over the deductibility of policy loan interest. This COLI Update consists of two articles concerning COLI cases and their most recent court decisions. The first concerns a District Court’s ruling on insurable interest, and the second provides an analysis of the Sixth Circuit reversal of a trial court decision in a case involving economic substance.