For commercial buildings, one of the more costly inevitable expenditures is the replacement of an existing roof. In an article in Corporate Business Taxation Monthly, Charles Goulding, Jacob Goldman and Taylor Goulding describe the factors taxpayers must consider when determining the tax treatment of roof replacements. They discuss the betterment test, restoration test and adaption test, which provide taxpayers with guidance in determining which costs must be capitalized and which costs can be expensed.

There are many legal tests for assessing whether a worker is an independent contractor or an employee. The distinction is important under federal, state and local tax laws, affecting contract and tort liability exposure, federal and state labor law compliance, insurance, employee benefits and other issues, as Robert W. Wood explains in an article in the Journal of Tax Practice and Procedure.

In this time of financial tumult, whether you represent troubled corporations or their creditors or shareholders, you cannot afford to be without the just published new edition of the highly regarded Tax Planning for Troubled Corporations — Bankruptcy and Nonbankruptcy Restructurings by the top experts in this area, Gordon D. Henderson and Stuart J. Goldring.

This unique book addresses the problems of financially distressed corporations and their creditors and shareholders from the early warning time when their cash flow becomes insufficient to service their debt, through the problems and opportunities arising from the need to modify their debt, to the later potential need to exchange their debt for equity, and to the ultimate potential consideration of the need to seek the protection of the bankruptcy courts.

Chapter 1, ““Developing a Strategy for a Failing Company” discusses how to avoid too much business shrinkage, liability for employment taxes, creditor liability for the debtor’s withholding taxes and creditor bad debt deductions.

Two fundamental changes included in the 2007 dual consolidated loss regulations are the separate unit combination rule and the new definition of foreign use. Though plenty of guidance is provided on each, the regulations provide limited information as to how the two provisions interact. Nonetheless, an IRS Legal Advice Memorandum provides extremely helpful guidance and represents an important first step in coordinating the foreign use and separate unit combination rules, as Irwin Halpern and Chris Trump explain in the International Tax Journal.