IRS has Hedge Funds in its Crosshairs

The earths axis seemed to have tilted way off course last year. The global capital and credit markets crashed. Venerated banking institutions moved dangerously close to insolvency forcing mergers with better capitalized banks. The bulge bracket investment banking institutions disappeared. Some were acquired by traditional banks, others converted to a bank holding company structure; while others declared bankruptcy. In response the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and SEC initiated unprecedented concerted interventionist actions. The passage of EESA legislation and the implementation of the $750bn TARP program are the first in many expected moves by the government to maintain the solvency of the banking system as a national economic security issue. In addition to these initiatives the government has also passed a massive $750bn economic stimulus bill to kick start the economy. All told over $1.5 trillion dollars has recently been appropriated by the federal government to address the economic crisis. This massive capital infusion has ratcheted up the federal budget deficit. It will be incumbent on the Treasury Department and the IRS to make a concerted effort to uncover new sources of revenue to finance these massive spending programs.

Hedge funds, private equity firms, CTA’s and other corporations that utilize elaborate corporate structures, engage in sophisticated transactions and recognize uncommon forms of revenue, losses and tax credits will increasingly fall under the considered focus of the IRS. Times have changed and so has the posture and practice of the IRS. The agency is transitioning its organizational posture by moving away from a benign customer service resource and assuming the form of an activist body that is intent on assuring compliance and enforcement of US tax laws. In particular it is building up its expertise and resource to more effectively address the audit challenges the complexity and sophistication hedge funds present.

The IRS has developed its industry issue competencies. It has developed a focused organizational structure that assigns issue ownership to specific executives and issue management teams. This vertical expertise is further enhanced with issue specialists to deepen the agencies competency capital and industry issue coordinators that lends administrative and agency management efficiency by ranking and coordinating responses to specific industry issues. Clearly the IRS is building up its portfolio of skills and industry expertise to address the sophisticated agility of hedge fund industry tax professionals.

To better focus the resources of the agency the IRS has developed a Three Tiered Industry Issue Focus. Tier I issues are deemed most worthy of in depth examinations and any fund management company with exposure in these areas need to exercise more diligence in its preparation and response. Tier I issues are ranked by the IRS as being of high strategic importance when opening an examination of hedge funds and other sophisticated corporate structures. This is followed by Tier II and Tier III focus areas that include significant examination issues but are ranked according to the agencies strategic significance of the market vertical. Clearly the IRS is investing significant organizational and human capital to address an industry that will no longer fly beneath the agencies radar. This institutional investment will be called upon to generate a considerable return on the investment in the hopes that the discovery of lucrative tax revenue streams will help to pay down the massive spending deficits of the federal government.

This development has clearly raised the tax compliance and regulatory risk factors for hedge funds and other fund managers. Significant tax liabilities, penalties and expenses can be incurred if this risk factor is not met with well a well considered risk management program. In response to this industry threat, Sum2 has developed an IRS Audit Risk program that allows a hedge fund CFO to quickly ascertain its IRS risk exposures within the Three Industry Focus Tiers.

The IRS Audit Risk program provides a threat scoring methodology to ascertain level of risk within each Tier item and aggregates overall Tier exposures. The product also uses a scoring methodology to determine your level of preparedness to meet the audit risk, mitigation actions required and potential exposures of the risk. The IRS Audit Risk calculates expenses associated with mitigation initiatives and assigns mitigation responsibility to staff members or service providers. The IRS Audit Risk links to issue specific IRS resources and documentation that will help you determine if the issue is a audit risk factor for your firm and the resources you will need to addresses it.

The IRS Audit Risk for Hedge Funds product is a vertical application of Sum2’s Profit|Optimizer product series. The Profit|Optimizer is a C Level risk management tool that assists managers to uncover and mitigate business threats and spot opportunities to maintain profitability and sustainable growth.

The IRS Audit risk for Hedge Funds product is available for down load on Amazon.com.

The product can be purchased here: Sum2 e-commerce

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Risk: tax liability, penalties, reputation