IRS Provides Guidance On 20% Pass-Through Deduction, But Questions Remain
by Tony Nitti, Contributor, Forbes
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — signed into law on December 22, 2017 — gave birth to a brand new provision: Section 199A, which permits owners of sole proprietorships, S corporations, or partnerships to deduct up to 20% of the income earned by the business. While the provision has the potential to bestow a tremendous benefit upon owners of these pass-through businesses, since its enactment, no one has been able to, well… figure out how the whole thing works. Quite truthfully, the statutory language of Section 199A created more questions than answers, with those queries ranging from the seemingly simple — what do we do about a fiscal year business that crosses over January 1, 2018? — to the much more complex — what exactly is a “specified service business” for which a deduction is generally prohibited?
I’ve spent more than my fair share of time writing and teaching about Section 199A since it’s enactment, and have grown weary of repeating the familiar refrain of WE DON’T KNOW YET each time someone asked a perfectly reasonable question. But that has been the reality.
Until now. Yesterday, the IRS issued 184 pages of highly-anticipated regulations that provide much-needed clarity on many — but not all — of the issues raised by the statute. Of course, as we’ll see below, some of that clarity was not of the taxpayer-friendly variety, but that’s how things go in the tax world. Let’s take a look at the good and bad of the proposed regulations, but first, let’s start with the basic structure of Section 199A.
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