For many pharmaceutical companies, drug discovery and development involves a complex interaction between the development process, manufacturing process and quality assurance.
Frances Kim
Recent Posts
The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) is an additional income tax system created to prevent high-income individuals, corporations, trusts and estates from avoiding tax payments altogether.
Most startup businesses are unlikely to have any federal income tax liability in the early years, making research and development (R&D) tax credits less valuable to them under the traditional approach.
However, with the recent tax provision changes to the R&D credit in December 2015, a qualifying small business taxpayer may now use federal R&D tax credits against their federal payroll tax liability.
At the end of 2015, President Obama signed the PATH Act, which includes many significant tax provisions that have been extended through 2016 and beyond. Per Section 121(a), the federal R&D tax credit program has been permanently extended, retroactive to January 1, 2015. In addition, unfortunately many biopharmaceutical companies aren’t claiming R&D tax credits, even though their company is involved in qualifying research and development activities.
Cost segregation is a key project for identifying your opportunities to capture green building tax incentives. A cost segregation study breaks down costs and documents the information you need to claim green building benefits.
Typically, green building tax incentives are complementary projects to cost segregation, where the analysis is primarily focused on accelerated depreciation for fixed asset tax deductions.
The recently passed PATH Act includes a two-year extension of the Energy-Efficient Commercial Building Deduction, also known as section 179D of the tax code. This is largely due to growing awareness that the 179D deduction is a vital benefit for businesses.
“By extending 179D tax deduction, Congress has done architects, engineers and contractors a major favor as we have seen firsthand how this incentive has helped companies expand both their workforce and the scope of their services,” said Dean Zerbe, alliantgroup national managing director and former senior counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, in a recent article published by Proud Green Building.
On the whole, green building incentives are becoming an increasingly important tax savings strategy for businesses. In direct proportion to the growing efforts to reduce energy consumption, clients of your CPA firm that own commercial or industrial property are going to ask for more insight and guidance on green building incentives.
The WOTC can be a lucrative incentives program for many businesses that hire employees who typically face barriers to employment such as ex-felons or welfare recipients. This has prevented many companies from pursuing the WOTC because they are under the impression that they don’t hire employees falling under any of the WOTC target groups. With the latest update to the WOTC, the program now has universal appeal.
At the end of 2015, the extender deal was reached. With it, powerful business incentives like the research and development (R&D) tax credit were made permanent, meaning those involved in research and development activities no longer have to wait with bated breath like they did during the usual backslide of this tax law.
Along with the declaration of the R&D tax credit’s permanence came other provisions that extend the scope of what qualifies as an R&D business activity.
The landscape of cost segregation and depreciating fixed assets is vast, complex and constantly changing, due to governmental regulations. Cost segregation studies (and the subsequent work involved) require expertise in both tax guidance, construction and facilities engineering – this isn’t something you should expect your CPAs or clients to grasp without some level of guidance.
And yet, the “new normal” for CPA firms today is centered squarely within a client centric environment with the challenge of fulfilling traditional core accounting services, while also providing knowledge, information and services to capture every allowable tax benefit.
The Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) was part of the tax provisions Congress passed into law on December 18 as part of the PATH Act. The WOTC, in particular, has been extended through 2019.
This latest news may have prompted many of your clients to inquire if their business activities qualify for the WOTC and, if so, how they may proceed to capture these substantial employment incentives.
