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Qualified Business Income Deduction: The New 20-percent Deduction for Pass-through Businesses

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, often called “the new tax bill” offers significant tax cuts for businesses. While these tax cuts for large corporations have been well-publicized, there are also deductions for small businesses. If you operate a sole proprietorship, partnership, or S Corporation, you will want to become familiar with the Qualified Business Income Deduction,  which went into effect on January 1, 2018.

What is the Qualified Business Income Deduction?

Section 199A of the Internal Revenue Code provides many taxpayers with a deduction for qualified business income from a qualified trade or business operated directly or through a pass-through entity. The deduction has two components.

  • Eligible taxpayers may be entitled to a deduction of up to 20 percent of qualified business income (QBI) from a domestic business operated as a sole proprietorship or through a partnership, S corporation, trust or estate. There are income limitations that may reduce this deduction.
  • Eligible taxpayers may also be entitled to a deduction of up to 20 percent of their combined qualified real estate investment trust (REIT) dividends and qualified publicly traded partnership (PTP) income.

How do S corporations and partnerships handle the deduction?

S corporations and partnerships are generally not taxpayers and cannot take the deduction themselves. However, all S corporations and partnerships pass income to the shareholders.  This is reported on Schedule K-1 of your tax return, where it will allow individuals to claim the deduction.

For more information on how this may impact your business, please contact us to set up an appointment.

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CFP® Education and Exam

Although many professionals may call themselves “financial planners,” CFP® professionals have completed extensive training and experience requirements and are held to rigorous ethical standards. They understand the complexities of the changing financial climate and are ethically bound to make recommendations in your best interest.

CFP® Certification is the standard of excellence for Financial Planners. Today more than ever, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professionals are an essential resource for individuals and families. From budgeting, planning for retirement and saving for education, to managing your taxes and your insurance coverage, “finances” doesn’t mean just one thing for most Americans – and “financial planning” means much more than just investing. Bringing all the pieces of your financial life together is a challenging task and vital for your financial health. Congratulations Jeremy! In addition to being a licensed Investment Advisor Representative, Jeremy successfully completed the Certified Financial Planner™ Program at the University of Portland and passed the CFP® Exam! After completing the experience requirement, Jeremy will be able to add the CFP® designation to the services that we offer to you.

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Protect Your Identity: Beware of Spear-phishing

We realize that Identity Theft is a real risk to everyone and are doing all we can to protect your data.. We are using Office 365’s Email Encryption to secure our communications with you assuming your email is able to received encrypted messages. We have increased our network security and employed more secured systems in order to reduce risk to your tax data.

On your end, please make sure that you are on the lookout for spear phishing emails. These differ from general phishing emails in that the thief has researched the target before sending the message. An email may appear to be from a colleague, a client, a cloud storage provider, tax software provider, the IRS, or a state government. Spear phishing emails are one of the most common way data thieves will try to steal your personal information.

Here are some facts about spear phishing emails to help you recognize the scam and avoid becoming a victim:

  • The objective of a spear phishing email is to pose as a trusted source and bait the recipient into opening an embedded link or an attachment.
  • The email may make an urgent plea to update an account immediately. This link may seem to go to another trusted website, but it’s actually a phishing website controlled by the thief.
  • Those who fall victim to spear phishing tactics often voluntarily disclose sensitive password information. This can also happen by clicking on a malicious URL or malicious attachment included in the spear phishing email which then installs malicious software.
  • An attachment may contain malicious software such as a keylogger. Once installed, the keylogger secretly records every keystroke typed on the computer which is then made available to the thief. With certain malicious software, thieves can lock out users from a computer, steal passwords to accounts, or even take remote control of computers. This allows thieves to steal taxpayer data.
  • Once a thief succeeds with their spear phishing scam, it allows them to create additional spear phishing scams. The criminal does this by targeting clients, colleagues and friends of the original recipient.

The IRS and its partners in the Security Summit are alerting tax professionals to spear phishing emails as part of the Tax Security 101 awareness initiative to provide the basic information that they need to better protect taxpayer data and to help prevent the filing of fraudulent tax returns. We are paying close attention to this information and will continue to keep you updated on best practices for protecting your identity.