I can't imagine a good outcome where someone plainly doesn't qualify for the safe harbor but purports to qualify under some lesser standard that seems to mesh with Section 162 standard.
This is kind of a weird situation though, right? The new guidance on the safe harbor provision seem to contradict the previous guidance and set an unusually high bar for qualification.
Usually a safe harbor provision is an easy-to-hit minimum designed to avoid burdensome reporting activities, like the quarterly underpayment safe harbor where they won't ding you as long as you pay as much as you did last year, regardless of what you owe this year. That's just easier for everyone. This particular safe harbor provision seems to be deliberately extra burdensome instead, which still kind of makes sense. It's like they're saying "well you're definitely safe if you do ALL of this stuff" but maybe that means there are other ways to still be safe that are not quite so hard to achieve?
Or, maybe this is just a retroactive downgrade of the TCJA to raise revenues by denying this particular corporate tax break to small time real estate investors, while preserving it for big firms that make political donations.
P.S Sol? Good to be in a message thread discussing stuff with you again. :-)
I've been spending too much time in the politics threads, bickering about immigration and obstruction and collusion, and less time in threads about the financial side of retirement. Now that I'm retired, the financial side mostly takes care of itself.