The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) is effective as of January 1, 2024. If a U.S. entity is not exempt, it is a reporting company and must file a “Beneficial Ownership Information” (the BOI). The same is true for a foreign entity registered to do business in a U.S. state. Given the penalties for failure to file, identifying reportable individuals and filing a reporting company’s initial BOI report is now a priority. This article from Kozusko Harris Duncan discusses some practical considerations for preparing a reporting company’s initial BOI report.

The importance of meeting U.S. tax and reporting deadlines cannot be overstated. With the IRS continuing to strengthen its efforts to enforce compliance with initiatives specifically targeting foreign information reporting, this U.S. reporting checklist by Kozusko Harris Duncan can help family advisers and trustees of foreign trusts determine what if any U.S. reporting will be due.

U.S. tax and information reporting obligations have become an increasing concern for international families and their succession planning structures. Missed or late filings can result in steep penalties, even when no tax is due. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is alerting the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to income and accounts held by U.S. citizens and green card holders (U.S. persons). To help bring delinquent individuals into compliance, the IRS offers streamlined filing compliance programs.

As families and their advisers begin to prepare for U.S. entities in their succession planning structures to comply with the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), consideration should be given to U.S. holding companies and the requirement to report a business street address. This "Supplementary Information" section of the final regulations issued by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) sheds light on the business street address requirement and comments received by FinCEN.

Following the enactment of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) explained that the CTA and FinCEN regulations "would help protect the U.S.

A non-U.S. company's classification for U.S. tax purposes is important for Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) compliance and U.S. withholding tax reasons. Advisors to families with succession planning structures that include holding, operating, and other companies should determine the U.S. tax classification for each company in the structure and resulting compliance and tax implications.

Non-U.S. families establishing succession planning structures rarely think about the U.S. generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax. Nevertheless, when a foreign trust becomes a U.S. domestic trust so that distributions can be made in a tax-efficient manner to the settlor’s U.S. grandchildren and more remote descendants, U.S. trustees or tax return preparers may raise questions about whether those distributions are subject to the GST tax. Advisers to these families should become familiar with the application of the GST tax rules in order to bring clarity to the situation.

Over the past decade, matriarchs and patriarchs of successful families have been shifting their focus from their children to a broader group of individuals, such as grandchildren, siblings, and nieces. Often, they choose to create family banks, which are typically trusts that are funded to help individuals pursue entrepreneurial opportunities, venture philanthropy, and knowledge in a structured and more-likely-to-succeed manner. Family banks can be customized to fit a family’s agenda, and the risks inherent in family banks can be thoughtfully managed.

Private trust companies are not a new phenomenon. Rather, over the past 25 years, they have increased dramatically in number, with hundreds of major, family-controlled trust institutions now operating in the United States. This article addresses why the number of private trust companies has been growing; describes a typical private trust company (PTC) organizational structure; and discusses certain legal and practical considerations that a family exploring a PTC should address.

Even though a trust may be established under the laws of a US state and have a US trust company serving as trustee (hereinafter a ‘US-based trust’), this does not mean that it is a US domestic trust for income tax purposes. If non-US persons make substantial decisions for the trust, the US-based trust will be classified as a foreign trust under US tax law. Regardless of whether the US-based trust is foreign or domestic, if it has accounts with financial institutions, it must provide certification of its status for Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) purposes.

In early April 2016 files leaked from a large Panama-based law firm (known as the ‘Panama Papers’) brought to the attention of many the ways in which offshore companies and structures can be used to obscure the identity of beneficial owners, some of whom have used such entities to avoid paying tax in their country of tax residence.

Most family offices that serve U.S. families are well aware that special planning considerations can arise when a U.S. citizen family member marries a noncitizen. Should the client’s estate plan be revised to incorporate a qualified domestic trust (QDOT) to ensure that assets passing to the surviving noncitizen spouse qualify for federal estate tax marital deduction?

Today’s PFTCs bear little resemblance to ‘private trust companies’ of the 1990s, the gestation era for the PFTC. The modern US PFTC also differs markedly from a third form of ‘private trust company’: its ‘offshore’ single family private trust company (OFTC). Limited federal taxation of foreign trusts and privacy protections as good as or better than those found in traditional offshore jurisdictions have led some commentators to call the United States the ‘new offshore’ jurisdiction for trusts.

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is in full swing. Non-US financial institutions have completed reporting of US account holders for tax year 2014 and will soon begin compiling for their 2015 FATCA reports. Just as international families and their advisers are getting used to myriad requests for FATCA Form W-8 certification forms, more than 90 other countries have indicated that they wish to address tax evasion through a global exchange of financial information by implementing the Common Reporting (CRS) which, like FATCA, will affect non-US trusts and their trustees.