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What Trump means for the future of heat pump and EV incentives

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If you’re thinking of buying an electric car or an energy-saving heat pump eligible for federal tax credits and rebates, now might be the time. 

President-Elect Donald Trump has labeled the Inflation Reduction Act the “green new scam.” He’s pledged to rescind funding for the Biden administration’s signature 2022 climate law, which includes more than $8.5 billion in incentives for individuals and families to decarbonize their lives. 

“Clawing back funds already dispersed would be difficult, but that doesn’t mean the Trump administration won’t try,” said Romany Webb, deputy director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “From a strictly legal perspective, there may be more avenues for the administration to withhold funds that haven’t been awarded yet.”

President-Elect Donald Trump, pictured with campaign co-managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles
President-Elect Donald Trump, pictured with campaign co-managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, has expressed hostility to the Biden administration’s climate law, but parts of it are proving politically popular.

Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg

But “failing to move forward with announced awards may be politically unpopular,” she added.

The IRA’s benefits are manifold. The law offers up to $14,000 for low- and moderate-income households to install heat pumps, induction stoves and other high-efficiency electric appliances. Wealthier families can receive a $2,000 federal tax credit for replacing a fossil-fuel furnace or water heater with a heat pump. Some electric vehicles qualify for a $7,500 tax credit issued at the time of purchase, and a 30% tax credit is available for homeowners to install solar panels and battery storage systems.

Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said on Thursday’s Zero podcast that he doubts that the new Trump administration and Congressional Republicans will seek the wholesale repeal of the IRA, given the billions of dollars in benefits it funnels to their constituents. 

IRA funding is distributed through the states through US Department of Energy-approved rebate programs. The federal government has paid out $1.4 billion to nine states and the District of Columbia that have begun to offer up to $8,000 for a heat pumps and $1,750 for a heat pump water heaters. They also provide $840 cash back for induction stoves and heat pump clothes dryers and $4,000 for electrical system upgrades.

Another 10 states have received $1.2 billion but have yet to start issuing rebates. Nine more states are awaiting federal review of their applications, which usually takes about 60 to 90 days. The rest of the states are still preparing their applications except for South Dakota, which isn’t participating in the program. Florida initially declined $175 million in funding but now has submitted an application.

Short of repealing the IRA, though, taking those lucrative incentives away from taxpayers would prove legally difficult and politically problematic, according to David Friedman, senior policy director for Rewiring America, a nonprofit that advocates for community electrification. 

“The law is pretty clear that once this money is authorized, this money is required to be spent,” said Friedman, a former acting assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy at the Energy Department. “Politically, it would just be a terrible move to roll these things back as every state and territory but one have applied for these rebates.” 

The $7,500 EV tax credit is more vulnerable as it may be subject to a law that allows Congress to review and reverse recently enacted regulations, according to a September paper by Webb and her colleagues. 

“If we end up with a Republican-controlled Congress, there may be attempts to repeal or revise the IRA tax credits themselves,” Webb said. 

That too could prove politically perilous. The 30% tax credit for residential solar installations, for instance, dates to 2006 and was set to expire in 2023 before the IRA extended it until 2032. Homeowners claimed $6 billion in tax credits for solar installations and battery storage last year. 

Friedman said now is always a good time for families to take advantage of the IRA and go electric. “Regardless of what’s going to happen in the future, you should do it today because it’s a great deal.”

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Tax Fraud Blotter: Sick excuses

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By any other name; poor Service; a saga continues; and other highlights of recent tax cases.

Rockford, Illinois: Tax preparer Gretchen Alvarez, 49, has pleaded guilty to preparing and filing false income tax returns.

She operated the tax prep business Sick Credit Repair Tax and Legal Services and represented herself as an income tax preparer. Alvarez did not have a PTIN and admitted that in 2019 and 2020 she misrepresented taxpayers’ eligibility for education credits and deducted fictitious business expenses from their taxable income to reduce tax liabilities and inflate refunds.

The tax loss totaled $356,881.

Sentencing is Sept. 17. Alvarez faces a maximum of three years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.

Bangor, Maine: Paul Archer, a Florida resident formerly of Hampden and Orrington, Maine, has pleaded guilty to attempting to evade federal taxes and engaging in fraudulent transfers and concealment in a bankruptcy proceeding.

He operated an online marketing business for software installation, earning several million dollars from 2013 through 2015. After an IRS audit in 2016 assessed a federal tax debt totaling some $1 million, Archer concealed and transferred assets through two LLCs he controlled and began using third-party bank accounts to evade paying the tax debt. From April 2018 through November 2019, he transferred and concealed assets and income by using a series of bank accounts held in the names of Max Tune Up LLC; Stealth Kit LLC; his father; and his spouse. 

In March 2019, Archer filed for Chapter 7. In his paperwork and court statements, he falsely claimed less than $50,000 in assets; a single checking account; no other assets or property interests; no recent asset transfers; and no connections to any businesses or memberships in any LLCs. 

He faces up to five years in prison and a fine up to $250,000 on each of the two charges to which he pleaded guilty. Any sentence will be followed by up to three years of supervised release.

Fort Wayne, Indiana: Rakita Davis, 45, a former IRS employee, has been sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay $55,213.61 in restitution to the Small Business Administration after pleading guilty to wire fraud associated with pandemic relief.

Davis falsely claimed gross income for a business that did not exist when she applied for two Paycheck Protection Program loans in 2021. Employed by the IRS when she applied for the loans, Davis lied that she was the sole proprietor of a catering business when no such business existed. She received PPP funds that she spent on such personal items as jewelry, airfare, luxury car rentals and vacations.

Charleston, West Virginia: Business owner Luther A. Hanson has been sentenced to three years of probation and fined $5,000 for willful failure to pay over taxes.

From at least 2015 to September 2020, Hanson, who previously pleaded guilty, did not withhold or pay over some $149,905.38 in employment taxes to the IRS for two employees of his accounting businesses. Hanson owns and operates The Estate Planning Group Inc. and L.A. Hanson Accounting Services; the two employees provided accounting services for both.

Hanson admitted that prior to June 30, 2015, he and the two employees agreed that he would begin treating them as independent contractors. He also admitted that he knew this arrangement would relieve him of paying the employer portion of the employment taxes and of the employees’ withholdings. Neither employee changed their job duties.

He admitted that he knew that neither was an independent contractor while he paid each by check throughout their employment. Hanson further admitted that he did not pay the trust fund taxes to the IRS nor the employer’s share of employment taxes for the two employees each quarter during the arrangement.

The court previously determined that Hanson owed $146,771.37 to the U.S. after his scheme; Hanson paid that amount before sentencing. One of the employees paid a portion of the taxes owed, resulting in the adjusted figure of restitution Hanson owed.

Hands-in-jail-Blotter

Oakland, New Jersey: Business owner Walter Hass, of Hewitt, New Jersey, has been sentenced to four years in prison for his role in a $3.5 million payroll tax scheme.

Hass owned and operated a shipping and logistics company and since 2014 has operated the company under three different names. He failed to collect, account for and pay over payroll taxes to the IRS on behalf of each of these companies from 2014 to 2022, a total of at least $3.5 million.

Hass used company money to fund his personal lifestyle, including the purchase of luxury vehicles, high-end watches and jewelry, designer clothing, tickets to sporting events, home renovations, vacations, water sports vehicles and extravagant meals.

After signing his guilty plea in October 2023, he embarked on a campaign to avoid responsibility for his conduct. He lied to the court, to the U.S. Probation Office and to the government about a purported cancer diagnosis to delay the entry of his guilty plea and his sentencing. Hass fabricated three letters from physicians asserting that he had medical conditions, including kidney cancer, that prevented him from attending court proceedings. Hass did not have cancer and attempted to travel throughout the country and around the world during this time. 

Hass was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $3,527,645 in restitution.

Atlanta: Attorney Vi Bui has been sentenced to 16 months in prison for obstructing the IRS in connection with his participation in the promotion of abusive syndicated conservation easement tax shelters.

Bui, who previously pleaded guilty, was a partner at the firm Sinnott & Co. and beginning at least in 2012 and continuing through at least May 2020 participated in a scheme to defraud the IRS by organizing, marketing, implementing and selling illegal syndicated conservation easement tax shelters created and organized by co-conspirators Jack Fisher, James Sinnott and others. (Fisher and Sinnott were convicted and sentenced to prison in January 2024.)

The scheme entailed creating partnerships that bought land and land-owning companies and donated easements over that land or the land itself. Appraisers generated fraudulent and inflated appraisals of the easements, and the partnerships then claimed a charitable contribution deduction based on the inflated value. Bui knew that to make it appear that the participants had timely purchased their units in the shelters, Fisher, Sinnott and others backdated and instructed others to backdate documents, including subscription agreements and checks.

Bui anticipated that the transactions would be audited. He and others created and disseminated lengthy documents disguising the true nature of the transaction, instituted sham “votes” for what to do with the land that the partnership owned despite knowing that outcome was predetermined, and falsified paperwork such as appraisals and subscription agreements. Bui earned substantial income for his role in the scheme.

He also used the fraudulent shelters to evade his own taxes, filing personal returns from 2013 through 2018 that claimed false deductions from the shelters.

He was also ordered to serve a year of supervised release and to pay $8,250,244 in total restitution to the IRS.

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ISSB standards adopted more widely across globe

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The International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation has posted profiles of 17 of the 36 jurisdictions around the world that have either adopted or used International Sustainability Standards Board disclosures or are in the process of finalizing steps to introduce the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards in their regulatory frameworks.

The jurisdictional profiles include information about each jurisdiction’s stated target for alignment with ISSB standards and the current status of its sustainability-related disclosure requirements. 

“Why is the IFRS Foundation publishing these jurisdictional profiles, which set out by country or jurisdiction their approach to sustainability reporting. It’s really because we see this as part of our commitment to provide transparency to the market,” said ISSB vice chair Sue Lloyd during a press briefing. “It’s all very well talking about the use of our standards, but we know that different jurisdictions have made different decisions. They’re adopting the standards at a different pace, and by providing these profiles, we want to provide clarity, particularly for investors who are going to be relying on understanding the comparability of information between jurisdictions, to alert them to the similarities and differences in approach and to describe the extent to which we are achieving the global comparability that we have been working toward with the ISSB standards.”

She noted that the ISSB’s sister board, the International Accounting Standards Board, has also been publishing profiles on how different countries are complying with IFRS. In this case, it’s about sustainability reporting.

The profiles are accompanied by 16 snapshots that provide a high-level overview of other jurisdictions’ regulatory approaches that are still subject to finalization. Of the 17 jurisdictions profiled, 14 have set a target of “fully adopting” ISSB standards, two have set a target of ‘adopting the climate requirements’ of ISSB standards, and one targets “partially incorporating” ISSB Standards. The profiled jurisdictions cover Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Hong Kong, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Chinese Taipei, Tanzania, Türkiye and Zambia.  

Accounting Today asked Lloyd about the United States, where the Securities and Exchange Commission’s climate reporting rule is on hold amid a spate of lawsuits and Trump administration policy on environmental issues.

“What we are seeing continue to be the case in the U.S. is very strong investor interest in sustainability information, including from the use of the ISSB standards,” Lloyd said. “We also have interest from companies who can choose to provide the information using our standards. Of course, many companies in the U.S. in the past have chosen to use the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board standards voluntarily, so that sort of voluntary adoption momentum is something we still see from the company and the investor side.”

“I think it’s also important to remember that the SEC just recently reconfirmed that if information on things like climate is material, there’s already a requirement to provide material information in accordance with existing requirements in place,” she continued. “And the last thing I’d note on the U.S. front is that while the SEC has indeed moved away from their proposed rule, we do see action at a state level, including, for example, in California, where the CARB [California Air Resources Board] is looking at climate disclosures, including the potential to allow the use of the ISSB standards to meet those requirements, so we see progress, but in different ways perhaps.”

The ISSB inherited the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board standards as part of a consolidation in 2022. Besides California, a number of U.S. states are considering requiring climate-related reporting, including New York. Both the California law and a bill in New York address disclosure of climate risks and directly refer to ISSB standards. Other states, including Illinois, New Jersey and Colorado, are also considering climate reporting, and some reporting is also required under a Minnesota law. 

Of the 16 jurisdictional snapshots published by the IFRS Foundation, 12 propose or have published standards (or requirements) that are fully aligned with ISSB standards (such as Canada) or are designed to deliver outcomes functionally aligned with those resulting from the application of ISSB standards (such as Japan). Three propose standards (or requirements) that incorporate a significant portion of disclosures required by ISSB standards, and one is considering allowing the use of ISSB standards. For these jurisdictions, their target approach to adoption is yet to be finalized. Once jurisdictions have finalized their decisions on adoption or other use of ISSB standards, the IFRS Foundation plans to publish a profile for these jurisdictions.   

“The ISSB standards are bringing clarity to investors on the risks and opportunities lying in value chains across time horizons in a rapidly changing world,” said ISSB chair Emmanuel Faber in a statement Thursday. “A year ago, we committed to publishing detailed jurisdictional profiles describing adoption of our standards to complement our Inaugural Jurisdictional Guide. The profiles provide a detailed current state-of-play to investors, banks, and insurers who continue to struggle with the lack of appropriate, comparable and reliable information on these critical factors affecting business prospects. We have seen new jurisdictions joining the initial cohort of ISSB adopters every month, with a total of 36 today.” 

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IRS extends deadline on crypto broker reporting and withholding

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The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service are giving cryptocurrency brokers additional time to comply with requirements to report on digital asset sales and withhold taxes.

In Notice 2025-33, they extended and modified the transition relief provided last year in Notice 2024-56 for brokers who are required to file Form 1099-DA, Digital Asset Proceeds From Broker Transactions to report certain digital asset sale and exchange transactions by customers.

In 2024, Treasury and IRS announced final regulations requiring brokers to report digital asset sale and exchange transactions on Form 1099-DA, furnish payee statements, and backup withhold on certain transactions starting Jan. 1, 2025. The IRS also announced in Notice 2024-56 transition relief from penalties related to information reporting and backup withholding tax liability required by these final regulations for transactions effected during 2025. Notice 2024-56 also provided limited transition relief from backup withholding tax liability for transactions effected in 2026.

The IRS said it has received and carefully considered comments from the public about the transition relief provided in Notice 2024-56 indicating that brokers needed more time to comply with the reporting requirements; today’s notice addresses those comments.

In the new Notice 2025-33, the Treasury and the IRS extended the transition relief from backup withholding tax liability and associated penalties for any broker that fails to withhold and pay the backup withholding tax for any digital asset sale or exchange transaction effected during calendar year 2026.

The Trump administration has been notably more supportive of the crypto industry since taking office, relaxing guidance at the Securities and Exchange Commission as well.

The notice also extends the limited transition relief from backup withholding tax liability for an extra year. That means brokers won’t be required to backup withhold for any digital asset sale or exchange transactions effected in 2027 for a customer (payee), if the broker submits that payee’s name and tax identification number to the IRS’s TIN Matching Program and receives a response that the name and TIN combination matches IRS records. They’re also granting relief to brokers that fail to withhold and pay the full backup withholding tax due, if the failure is due to a decrease in the value of withheld digital assets in a sale of digital assets in return for different digital assets in 2027, and the broker immediately liquidates the withheld digital assets for cash.

This notice also includes more transition relief for brokers for sales of digital assets effected during calendar year 2027 for certain customers that haven’t been previously classified by the broker as U.S. persons. 

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