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Tax File Memorandum : An Example Of A Tax File Memith

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Michala Smith is a single taxpayer, who was gifted a house and 10 acres in the rural area outside of Whitewater. She built a building and started a small country store/bakery on the property. She has made enough income from the store to support herself and save. Michala does not like the idea of paying taxes. She would like to know the best way to structure her sale to meet her goals, which include avoiding taxation and moving on to a different business, such as a bed and breakfast. We recommend that Michala take advantage of Section 121 when selling her home, so that can exclude $250,000 of the gain on the sale. We also recommend that she defers the gain on the sale of her business and land by exchanging it for a bed and breakfast, using …show more content…

The allocations of bases were then applied to the potential sale of the property totaling $1,200,000. This creates a sale price of $809,715 for the business and land and $453,295 for the house. This followed Publication 551 which states that you take the fair market value of the particular asset given up divided by the total fair market value at the time of purchase, then times it by the sale price. This will give you what to allocate for each asset in order to calculate your gain. If you were to sell the business, home, and land, there would be a total taxable gain of $926,000 consisting of $349,785 attributable to the house and $576,215 attributable to the business before any tax effects. Our recommendation of selling the house with an exclusion and making a non-taxable like-kind exchange for the business will greatly reduce the taxes on the transaction. If the house is sold, it will be eligible for a $250,000 exclusion on the taxes of the sale, which will result in total taxable gain of $102,785, after the depreciation recapture for the home office. The like-kind exchange for the business will involve trading the business for another business, which means you could buy a bed and breakfast without making a separate transaction and you will defer taxes. The tax payment will be deferred until the traded property is disposed of. The total

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