The wildfires in Los Angeles County have wreaked devastation in the area, with thousands of homes and other structures, vehicles, and more destroyed by the worst wildfire in L.A. history. In response, on January 8, 2025, President Biden approved a Major Disaster declaration for California, allowing impacted communities and survivors to immediately access funds and resources to jumpstart their recovery. As it stands, impacted individuals are in need of funds, housing, food, clothing, medical care,…
News headlines reinforce what every business knows â that there are business reasons for providing security to C-suite executives. Those executives are seen as the face of the company and often bear the brunt of the publicâs gripes against a company. Prominent business leaders, such as business executives, are often the targets of threats due to their affiliation with the company and are in need of protection as a result. Ensuring their safety is often…
Happy New Year from California. Â As a reminder, starting January 1, 2024, changes to California’s state disability insurance (SDI) program will effectively increase taxes for employees working in California by 1.1% on income over $153,164. This is the result of both the elimination of the taxable wage limit (which was $153,164 in 2023) and an increase in the California SDI rate, from 0.9% in 2023, such that SDI will apply on all wages at a…
2022 will be viewed as a year of political turmoil in the UK with three different prime ministers during the year. While all were leaders of the UK Conservative party, the tax policy objectives were significantly different leading to proposed changes being reversed in some cases. For more information on the latest developments in the UK, see our recent NASPP guest blog post here. *Thank you to our colleague Gillian Parnell in our London office…
On February 10, 2022, the Australian Parliament passed legislation which eliminates termination of employment as a taxable event for Employee Share Scheme (ESS) awards that qualify for tax deferral (i.e., stock options, restricted stock, restricted stock units (RSUs), or an employee stock purchase plan offered to employees). ESS awards that qualify for tax deferral are subject to taxation when an âESS Deferred Taxing Pointâ occurs. Currently, an employeeâs termination of employment is one of the…
After months of partisan bickering and Senate inaction, Congress finally passed another round of COVID-19 relief legislation as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, P.L. 116-260, (âCAAâ), which was signed into law on December 27, 2020. We provide a summary of the tax-related CAA provisions and key modifications to the Paycheck Protection Program (âPPPâ), before discussing President Bidenâs tax agenda for 2021. The CAAâs tax provisions focus primarily on providing economic relief to taxpayers…
Now that we have had a couple of weeks to digest the IRSâs guidance in Notice 2018-68 on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Actâs (TCJAâs) amendments to Code Section 162(m), itâs a good time to take a closer look at the âgrandfatheringâ rule. As a reminder, the TCJA (i) eliminated the âperformance-based compensationâ exception to Section 162(m)âs $1 million limit on the deductibility of covered employee compensation, (ii) expanded and made permanent the group of…
After discussing the issues for a tax deduction for share-based awards in Israel in my last blog, I wanted to revisit another tax deduction conundrum, this time in Canada. In the past, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) generally has not allowed a local tax deduction for the cost of share-settled awards (other than under very narrow circumstances). However, based on a technical interpretation released on April 12, 2017, the CRA updated its position such that…
Join Baker McKenzie for a two-part webinar series to examine how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act impacts compensation and benefits arrangements maintained by both public and private companies and what actions your company needs to take. PART 1: From the PRIVATE Companyâs Perspective | January 9, 2018 We will discuss the provisions with the biggest impact on private companies, including the introduction of a new income tax deferral regime for options and RSUs relating to âqualified stock.â PART 2:…
Under current law, taxpayers who hold multiple lots of the same shares can identify which shares are considered sold for purposes of calculating capital gains. Section 13533 of the Senate tax bill would eliminate this flexibility and mandate a first-in, first out (FIFO) approach. This will adversely impact employees who have acquired low cost basis company shares in the past and continue to hold those shares. The obvious –  Following enactment,  employees will want to…