Comment on Effective Abolition of 501(c)(15)

[Jay]

For whatever reasons, there still seem to be a few people who have not yet received the news the 501(c)(15) captive is effectively no more. While Congress did not abolish 501(c)(15) insurance companies outright, Congress instead created a $600,000 maximum limit for gross receipts of both the insurance company and other companies held by the same control group.

In other words, if the both the insurance company's income and the income of the owners exceeds $600,000 in a given year, then the 501(c)(15) limit has been busted and that exception can no longer apply. Since probably no business that would even consider a captive would have less than $600,000 in income by itself, the effect of Congress' change - which became effective as of December 31 of 2003 - is to have eliminated the provisions for anybody who actually needs it.

Some tax professionals apparently did not get the news about this change, and have been blissfully advising their clients that 501(c)(15) is alive and well, although their clients are about to wake up to a horrible tax nightmare. Worse, some of these professionals have misconstrued the Determination Letter given to them by the IRS to allow in some way an "exception" to the gross receipts test, which is absolutely not the case. To the contrary, such letters only say that the captive is exempt only so long as it complies with 501(c)(15), which is no longer practically feasible. Malpractice per se.