The Tax Navigator – Tax and Legislative Developments

Join Sean Muller, The Tax Navigator, as he discusses tax and legislative developments, including the launch of the IRS’s electronic whistleblower form and the Trump Accounts website. He also covers safe harbor provisions for carbon sequestration credits, tax installment options for farmland sales and a proposed non-taxable $1,776 “warrior dividend” for military personnel.

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Detailed Description of The Tax Navigator – Tax and Legislative Year End Developments

00:00:00
Sean: Well, happy holidays to everyone. Congress did absolutely nothing last week. They talked about it, but didn’t do anything.

00:00:06
Sean: But a number of things did happen. Treasury did release a new website around the Trump accounts. It’s trumpaccounts.gov, so there’ll be a lot of action on that in January.

00:00:18
Sean: The IRS did release a new whistleblower form, used to be a paper form. And so, for those folks out there who want to turn in tax sheets, you can get a payment from the IRS. It used to be a paper form, and now it’s an electronic Form 211.

00:00:32
Sean: You can get up to 15% to 30% of the collected amount. To be a guaranteed amount, it has to be a penalty or tax bill over $2 million. But if it’s less than $2 million, you get a discretionary bonus up to 15%. So, the IRS is moving to paperless on that stuff.

00:00:49
Sean: We’ve actually moved our notices now. We’re out of 2025, and now we’re in 2026. Notice 2026-1 was about carbon sequestration, which was part of the OBBBA, and it was actually one of the tax credits that was extended.

00:01:04
Sean: Unfortunately, the EPA may not have the greenhouse gas tool that they’re supposed to have to claim the credit. And so, they’re allowing a safe harbor, where a client can actually get an engineer or a geologist to actually prepare the form for the tax credit if the EPA does not provide the form by June 10th. So, they are providing a safe harbor on that.

00:01:29
Sean: There’s another part of the OBBBA bill that talks about farmers selling qualified farmland to other farmers, and there’s actually a tax delay on that. So, you actually don’t have to pay the tax in four annual installments.

00:01:40
Sean: So, if you were to sell something here in December, your first payment would be due April 15, and then the next three payments would be due in successive tax years.

00:01:51
Sean: Now if you ever miss a tax year or ever miss a tax payment, then you’re out of luck, and everything gets accelerated. But there’s that in there.

00:02:00
Sean: Another part of the OBBBA that we didn’t get a lot of talk about was $2.9 billion was set aside for military. They’ve decided to call that a “warrior dividend,” and it’s $1,776 each. And Secretary Hegseth came out this week and said if the $1,776 goes out, the intent is for it not to be taxable to our military.

00:02:23
Sean: We probably expect that to go through because even though the Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on anything right now, the Democrats are not going to question anything for the military right now.

00:02:33
Sean: So that is really about it for the week. I do want to wish everyone a happy holidays.

I do want to thank all the people behind the scenes that have helped with all this stuff. We’ve got Cole, Tyler, Lori, Emma and Rob who have all been instrumental behind the scenes on that. And then, also, when I’m out of the office, my daughter is also our director.

00:02:51
Sean: So, I want to thank all of them and wish you all happy holidays.

This episode of The Tax Navigator was recorded prior to publication. Some references or updates discussed may reflect information current as of the recording date.