Welcome to TaxBlawg, a blog resource from Chamberlain Hrdlicka for news and analysis of current legal issues facing tax practitioners. Although blawg.com identifies nearly 1,400 active “blawgs,” including 20+ blawgs related to taxation and estate planning, the needs of tax professionals have received surprisingly little attention.
Tax practitioners have previously lacked a dedicated resource to call their own. For those intrepid souls, we offer TaxBlawg, a forum of tax talk for tax pros.
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According to the Financial Times, companies around the world are preparing for the possibility of a breakup of the euro. Given the currency devaluation that would likely occur in countries coming out of the euro, these companies are preparing for the impact that such an event would have on balance sheets (e.g., asset prices) and income statements (e.g., import costs). (For additional FT coverage of the issue, see here.)
As we noted in the TaxBlawg a while back when the euro crisis was still focused primarily on Greece, a partial or complete breakup of the eurozone would give rise to a host ...
Times are tough, and many troubled companies are facing the need to modify debts that were issued when times were better (and the companies were financially much stronger). For companies that wish to modify their debts, and for investors that hold those debts, federal tax law imposes an unfortunate limitation. An outstanding debt that undergoes a “significant modification” is treated as having been exchanged for a new instrument with the modified terms. See Treas. Reg. § 1.1001-3. As a result, holders of the debt will generally be required to recognize gain or loss on the deemed exchange of the debt and, in some instances, the issuer may be forced to recognize income as well. Thus, the question of whether a modification will result in a deemed exchange of the debt for federal income tax purposes has the potential to complicate, or even derail, potentially beneficial debt modifications.