Accountable Plans

[Guest jlewandowski]

Does anyone have any information about accountable plans? For instance I have a client that wants to reimburse his employees for tools. Do i need a document? What are the filing requirements, etc.

[Harwood]

You might try page 52 of IRS Publication 535 "Business Expenses"

http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p535.pdf

Also, Treasury Regulation 1.62-2

[GBurns]

This is something that your client most likely will not be able to do. Aside from it being very unlikely that there will be anything that is reimburseable, the maintainig of compliance will be very difficult. I have not seen any of the programs out there that are compliant and providing a single case TPA service would not be cost effective. The IRS has in the past tried to warn that this is a difficult task and issued a CIP trying to explain:

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/article/0,,id=97388,00.html

There were also some Tax Court cases involving trucking and delivery companies in which the same and similar issues were raised. In general, it can very rarely be done with small tools and tools used by employees. There definitely is a problem trying it with tools already purchased and in use. One problem being that the employee most likely already took a deduction on his tax return for the items which would render them not further reimburseable. Large tools and independent contractors have other issues.