Tagged: Federal Budget

Federal Tax Reform and the Potential Repeal of the Cash Method of Accounting

In the wake of the introduction by President Trump of his Tax Reform proposal on April 26, 2017, Congress, especially the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means, will be considering various methods to fund tax rate reductions. The White House formally delivered the President’s proposed budget to Congress on May 23, 2017. One proposal likely to be under consideration is the repeal of the cash method of tax accounting for service businesses, though many experts dispute whether many of the budget’s finer details will ever pass both houses of Congress. Under current law, the cash method of accounting cannot be used for income tax purposes by (i) businesses that sell goods and therefore must keep inventories, and (ii) C corporations with average annual gross receipts of $5,000,000 or more. A taxpayer-favorable exception from the C corporation rule is available for qualified personal service corporations, consisting of personal service corporations (PSCs) in the fields of health, law, engineering, architecture, accounting, actuarial science, performing arts, or consulting, when at least 95% of the stock of such PSCs is owned directly or indirectly by employees performing services in one of such fields. To oversimplify things, this means that law firms pay federal tax based on actual cash receipts, not based upon billings or upon what...

21st Century Cures Act Lands in Federal Budget Blueprint

President Trump’s proposed FY 2018 Budget (a/k/a the “skinny budget”) presented a departure from his predecessor’s proposed annual budgets – namely a $54 billion increase in defense and military spending paired with corresponding cuts to virtually every other federal department. But one area President Trump did not cut was the implementation of the 21st Century Cures Act (the “Cures Act”), which also happens to be one of the last bills signed into law by then-President Obama. The FY 2018 budget blueprint proposes to appropriate $1.1 billion towards the Cures Act’s implementation in the upcoming fiscal year. The Cures Act strives to expedite the discovery, development, and delivery of new treatments and cures. Those in the medical, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical industry should look to the Cures Act as the potential game-changer that the bipartisan sponsors of the law hoped it would be. Not only does the Cures Act provide the National Institute of Health with significant new funds to speed up research into diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s, but it also attempts to speed up the process by which new treatments are reviewed and approved by the FDA. The Cures Act also focuses on changes to the treatment of mental health and substance abuse. The reforms included in the Cures Act create a new Assistant Secretary for...