Nonprofit Blog

Tax lien purchasers held properties acquired by tax deed primarily for sale in the ordinary course of their business and earned ordinary income from the sale of those properties (SI Boo, LLC v. Commissioner, T.C., No. 174-11, T.C. Memo. 2015-19, 2/4/15). 

In Chief Counsel Advice (CCA), IRS has concluded that a real estate agent who brings together buyers and sellers of real property can be a so-called “real estate professional” who is engaged in a real property brokerage trade or business as described in Code Sec. 469(c)(7)(C) of the passive activity loss (PAL) rules. However, a mortgage broker who is a broker of financial instruments isn't engaged in a real property brokerage trade or business. 

The clouds are finally starting to lift on the U.S. construction industry. Or so say economists from three large U.S. construction and building trade associations during a joint meeting this past August. We are definitely seeing an increase in cranes throughout Atlanta, which is always a positive sign.

For ambitious contractors, sureties can be difficult to please. You want to expand your bonding capacity to take on bigger, more risk-intensive jobs. But your surety, perhaps understandably, keeps tightening its underwriting standards and slowing you down.

Labor costs can make or break a project. Recently, the owner of a midsize commercial construction company learned that the right human resources (HR) management software can go a long way toward tracking and reducing these mission-critical expenses.

Construction companies have long relied on a mishmash of GAAP and industry-specific guidance for reporting revenues. Yet doing so often produced inconsistent financial statements that confused and frustrated key stakeholders such as banks and sureties. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) recently issued Accounting Standards Update (ASU) No. 2014-09, Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606). This Standard Update addresses revenue recognition under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and attempts to standardize and simplify the revenue recognition process for customer contracts across different industries and geographic locations.

Contractors are at risk in three general areas: managing the contract, invoicing customers, and purchasing items for use in the contract.

Contractors are at risk in three general areas: managing the contract, invoicing customers, and purchasing items for use in the contract. 

Contractors are at risk in three general areas of sales tax liability: managing the contract, purchasing items for use in the contract, and the invoicing of customers. In this first article in a series by Tim Howe, we focus on what firms need to know about drawing up contracts.

If you are in the market of heavy construction equipment, get ready for big changes come January 1, 2015. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is rolling out their latest set of rules in an effort to reduce greenhouse gases. The new rules revolve around how much pollution can be emitted from large diesel engines used in varying types of construction-site equipment.