Articles

Two years ago the IRS issued guidelines for taxpayers who wish to buy a small slice of a large property. Their ruling covers groups that are put together by promoters, or "sponsors" and is intended to cover groups comprised of people who don't know each other. These groups are known as "Tenants-In-Common", or "T.I.C.s" and most often called "TICs" (rhymes with "sticks") in the real estate industry.

The ruling sets out the minimum requirements that must be met before the IRS will accept an application for a group's exemption from the partnership rules. Being subject to the IRS's partnership rules would be fatal for a TIC.

Since this ruling was released, the TIC industry has exploded and is easily the fastest growing segment of the real estate industry.

The IRS Recently Issued a ruling that is bound to impact Arizona real estate and 1031 exchanges. Revenue Procedure 2002-69 says that a husband and wife, who own all of the shares of a limited liability company (usually called an "LLC") in a community property state (ie: Arizona), will be able to disregard the separate nature of the LLC and report all of the income and expenses in their personal return.

Until now, the IRS has refused to rule on whether a husband and wife who own all of the shares of an LLC constitute a "single member" for purposes of the "disregarded entity" rules for filing a return. If an LLC has only one member, the disregarded entity rules state that the LLC does not have to file a tax return, but may instead report all of its income and expenses in the tax return of the sole member.

This article remains posted for it's historic context only -- some info herein is outdated.

Recently I wrote an article analyzing a private letter ruling (PLR 200251008), released at the end of last year (Using 1031 Funds to Build on Property You Already Own, Colorado Real Estate Journal, July 16, 2003). This decision allowed a taxpayer to use exchange proceeds from the sale of one property to build improvements on a piece of land that they already owned.

This ruling came as a shock to the exchange industry because it completely departed from a major 1951 tax court case (Bloomington Coca-Cola v. Commissioner) that disallowed such a scheme. Now, within a few months of the first ruling, the IRS has released a second ruling (PLR 200329021) that again allows a taxpayer to use exchange proceeds to build on their own land.

Most investors sell one property and simply replace it with another one. Occasionally, however, an investor wants to buy a number of new properties to complete their exchange. This can make the exchange complicated.

The identification rules of a 1031 exchange provide that you can identify three properties without any limitations. In other words, you could sell your Old Property for $100,000 and identify three new properties for $10,000,000 each, for a total of $30,000,000. This is OK.

If you identify more than three properties, however, the IRS rules change. In this case, the rules require that the total combined purchase price of everything on your list can not exceed twice the selling price of your Old Property. So now, continuing our example, if you identify four or more properties, the total combined purchase price of all of the properties on your list can not exceed $200,000 (i.e., $100,000 times 2).