The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has the most advanced and aggressive residency audit program in the nation. Auditors are constantly on the hunt for revenue by pursuing non-residents for New York taxes. With the pandemic this year requiring many people to work from home, tax season will particularly complicated for many taxpayers and practitioners. These impacts will surely be felt in future personal income tax audits conducted by the Department of Taxation and Finance.
With the loss of the SALT deduction as part of the 2017 federal tax reform, more taxpayers are attempting to leave New York than ever before. Consequently, there continues to be a great deal of New York audit activity in the residency area. A working knowledge of how New York's complex residency rules work is absolutely critical for tax practitioners, business owners, executives, and other professionals that deal with tax issues for high net-worth individuals. This two-hour CPE webinar will help you understand the rules, requirements, and issues in working through New York's residency tests and associated personal income tax issues, as well as the potential New York tax consequences for taxpayers working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Timothy Noonan, a highly regarded New York tax practitioner and co-author of the New York Residency and Audit Allocation Handbook, will moderate a discussion amongst his colleagues, Andrew Wright, Emma Savino, and Kristine Bly, that will include a practical review of the residency fundamentals in New York, helpful insights into the audit process gained from years of experience handling New York residency audits, and best practices for advising clients on changing residence and successfully defending those changes on audit.
Issues around the COVID-19 pandemic will make the 2020 tax year even more complicated for New York taxpayers whose claimed moves may have been impacted by the pandemic or who were required to work for New York employers from their homes outside New York during the pandemic. How will the Tax Department approach the practical impacts of the coronavirus on taxpayers claiming change of domicile? How should nonresidents of New York allocate wage income? Does the convenience rule apply to taxpayers required to work from home? These are just some of the questions that will be addressed during this course.
Publication Date: June 2020
Designed For
All CPAs, enrolled agents, tax return preparers, tax attorneys, and other practitioners who prepare New York returns and/or are responsible for preparing multistate returns for clients or advise on cross-border tax issues or disputes.
Topics Covered
- Overview of New York Residency Rules, Part 1: Domicile
- Overview of New York Residency Rules, Part 2: Statutory Residency
- COVID”19 and Residency
- Nonresident Allocation Issues
Learning Objectives
- Describe New York's residency domicile requirements
- Identify key issues facing New York residents and nonresidents and strategies to defend positions in case of audits
- Recognize how to advise on clients on income allocation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic
- Describe the five domicile factors
- Recognize exceptions for day counting as it relates to statutory residency
Level
Basic
Instructional Method
Self-Study
NASBA Field of Study
Taxes (2 hours)
Program Prerequisites
None
Advance Preparation
None
Instructors
Timothy Noonan
Tim focuses his practice in the state and local tax area. His work primarily involves New York State and New York City tax litigation and controversy. Over the past 20 years, he has handled more than 1,500 personal income tax, sales tax, corporate tax, or other New York tax audits. Tim also has handled about 100 cases in New York’s Division of Tax Appeals.
Tim leads the firm’s Tax Residency Practice and he is one of the leading practitioners in this area of the law. He has handled some of the most high-profile residency cases in New York over the past decade, including a 2014 win in the Gaied case, one of the first New York residency cases to ever reach New York’s highest court. Tim also co-authored the 2018 edition of the CCH Residency and Allocation Audit Handbook and Contesting New York State Tax Assessments (Fourth Edition), published by the New York State Bar Association, and he authored the New York Tax Litigation chapter in Thomson Reuters’ Commercial Litigation in New York State Courts treatise. He is often quoted by media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Forbes, on residency and other state tax issues.
Tim also has handled a significant number of residency and sales tax issues in other states, including work with many national and international clients on multistate compliance or voluntary disclosures. He has also appeared before the Connecticut Supreme Court and the Michigan Court of Appeals in litigated matters and is admitted to practice law in Connecticut.
Andrew W. Wright
Andrew focuses his practice on state and local tax matters. In particular, Andrew manages many different types of tax matters before the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance and New York City Department of Finance from audit through appeal, with a particular focus on New York residency audits. Andrew handles personal income tax, sales tax, and corporate franchise tax matters, including successful appeals regarding qualification for Empire Zone tax credits. Andrew also handles multistate tax matters for New York businesses, including state-level voluntary disclosure projects and audits of New York businesses doing business in other states.
Andrew has significant experience in 548-day rule audits and tax planning. He has successfully helped many clients plan for, execute, and defend on audit, 548-day rule strategies which resulted in nonresident status in New York. Clients he assists include: US expatriates living abroad for employment, those wishing to change their residency to a foreign country, and New Yorkers wishing to minimize State and/or City tax on discrete liquidity events.
Finally, Andrew is heavily involved in the area of multistate tax compliance for cross-border businesses. In conjunction with appropriate federal and international tax planning, Andrew advises on U.S. state and local tax compliance issues to identify tax liability and risk concerns for cross-border businesses. Once the compliance issues are identified, Andrew works with these businesses to resolve past compliance issues and ensure compliance on a go-forward basis.
Emma M. Savino
Emma Savino is an associate in the State and Local Tax Practice. She handles disputes involving the New York State and City Tax Departments and counsels businesses and individuals in a range of multistate, state and local tax issues. She advises clients on all aspects of state and local tax from planning and compliance, to audit and litigation.
Prior to joining Hodgson Russ, Emma served as a volunteer law clerk for United States District Judge William Skretny of the Western District of New York. She was also employed as a law clerk at a local firm for nearly two years. Prior to attending law school, Emma worked for TJX Canada as an allocation analyst.
Kristine L. Bly
Kristine is a senior audit manager in the State & Local Tax Practice. Kristine has ten years of experience in the field of federal, state and local taxation. She concentrates primarily on New York State and New York City personal income and sales tax matters. She assists the firm's tax attorneys in a variety of endeavors, including document and tax return review, audit assistance, computational analysis, and tax planning. All of her work is focused on providing clients with top notch and cost-effective tax representation.
Kristine has been a forerunner on the use of technology in audits, having extensive knowledge on the review and use of historical cell site location data. She has consulted with companies providing verification application technologies and has beta tested multiple such products.
In addition to contested tax matters, Kristine also works with firm clients to monitor their statutory residency, work day allocation and domicile day counts. The quality of her monitoring is enhanced by her experience as an auditor and her years of successfully defending taxpayers.
Prior to joining Hodgson Russ, Kristine was an auditor with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance performing tax field audits. While at the Tax Department, her corporate franchise (income) tax auditing experience involved all issues, including apportionment, income modifications, and combined reports. Her personal income tax experience involved flow-through entities, income modifications, and residency issues.
Kristine is an Enrolled Agent, who is a federally-authorized tax practitioner empowered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Hodgson Russ LLP
Hodgson Russ has approximately 200 attorneys in offices in Albany, Buffalo, New York City, Rochester and Saratoga Springs, New York; Hackensack, New Jersey; Palm Beach, Florida, and Toronto, Canada.
We serve a wide range of clients, from multinational and privately held corporations to nonprofit organizations, governmental entities, and individuals. Our attorneys practice in every major area of law and use multidisciplinary work teams to serve the specific, often complex, needs of our clients.