Distributions & Shareholder Basis

Practitioners advising on proper methods to use for shareholders to acquire basis in loans made to S corporations incurring losses can take away several points from recent court decisions.

When an S corporation has losses and deductions in excess of basis, some of which are nondeductible, noncapital expenses, will there be a carryover of the nondeductible items for purposes of reducing basis in a future year?

Under the economic outlay doctrine, to obtain basis in an S corporation with respect to debt, a shareholder must make an actual economic outlay, the outlay must somehow leave the shareholder poorer in a material sense, and the debt created must run directly between the shareholder and the S corporation.

A practitioner should take special care in advising clients on shareholder loans to an S corporation. Repayment of the loans by the corporation has the potential to generate unexpected taxable income to the shareholder.

PPA amended Sec. 1367(a)(2) to limit the reduction in a shareholder’s basis to the shareholder’s pro-rata share of the S corporation’s adjusted basis of the contributed property, not the FMV.

Editor: Anthony S. Bakale, CPA, M.Tax. On April 12, 2007, the Service issued proposed amendments to Regs. Sec. 1.1367-2 and -3 (REG-144859-04), to address concerns about the treatment of S shareholders’ open account debt. Background Regs. Sec. 1.1367-2(a) states that open account debt is a shareholder advance that is not