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New York Reminds Us: “Sale of Intangible Property May be Taxable as Sale of Real Property”

April 16, 2018

New York’s legislature has been in the news lately after having “rotated an avian creature through more than 90 degrees”[1] at Congress in response to the limitations passed under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on the deduction of state and local taxes. The provisions recently enacted by the State that have received the most attention are also the ones that are likely to have the least impact: the voluntary payroll tax (which business owners don’t care for) and the statewide charitable funds (which the IRS doesn’t care for and has stated it will challenge).

NY-Source Income

In the meantime, the Department of Taxation (the “Dept.”) has just issued some helpful guidance that will be of far greater interest to certain closely-held businesses that count nonresidents among their owners.

Specifically, the Dept. issued a memorandum that discusses the expansion of the definition of New York (“NY”) source income for nonresident individuals – effective for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2017 – to include the gain or loss from the sale of ownership interests in certain entities that own shares in cooperative housing corporations located in NY.

Before discussing the memorandum, let’s review its background.

Some History

In general, nonresidents are subject to NY personal income tax on their NY source income.

NY source income is defined as the sum of income, gain, loss, and deduction derived from or connected with NY sources. For example, where a nonresident sells real property or tangible personal property located in NY, the gain from the sale is taxable in NY.

In general, under NY tax law (the “Tax Law”), income derived from intangible personal property, including interest and gains from the disposition of such property, constitute income derived from NY sources only to the extent that the property is employed in a business, trade, profession, or occupation carried on in NY.

From 1992 until 2009, this analysis also applied to the gain from the disposition of interests in entities that owned NY real property. Thus, generally speaking, a nonresident who owned an interest in a close corporation, for example, that owned NY real property, could sell such interest without realizing NY source income and incurring NY income tax.[2]

2009 Amendment

However, in 2009, the Taw Law was amended to provide that items of gain derived from or connected with NY sources included items attributable to the ownership of any interest in real property located in NY.

For purposes of this rule, the term “real property located in” NY was defined to include an interest in a partnership, LLC, S corporation, or non-publicly traded C corporation with one hundred or fewer shareholders, that owns real property located in NY and has a fair market value (“FMV”) that equals or exceeds 50% of all the assets of the entity on the date of the sale or exchange of the taxpayer’s interest in the entity.

In accordance with an “anti-stuffing” rule, only those assets that the entity owned for at least two years before the date of the sale or exchange of the taxpayer’s interest in the entity are used in determining the FMV of all the assets of the entity on such date.

The gain or loss derived from NY sources from a nonresident’s sale or exchange of an interest in an entity that is subject to this rule is the total gain or loss for federal income tax purposes from that sale or exchange multiplied by a fraction, the numerator of which is the FMV of the real property located in NY on the date of the sale or exchange and the denominator of which is the FMV of all the assets of the entity on such date.

2017 Amendment – Coops

Then, in 2017, the definition of “real property located in NY” was expanded once again, this time to add an interest in a partnership, LLC, S corporation, or non-publicly traded C corporation with one hundred or fewer shareholders that owns shares of stock in a cooperative housing corporation where the cooperative units relating to the shares are located in NY, provided that the sum of the FMV of the entity’s real property located in NY, plus the FMV of its cooperative shares, and related cooperative units, equals or exceeds fifty percent of all the assets of the entity on the date of the sale or exchange of the nonresident taxpayer’s interest in the entity.

This is no small change when one considers (a) the number of nonresidents with interests in entities that own real estate, including cooperatives, in NY, and (b) estimates that between 70% and 75% of Manhattan’s residential inventory consists of cooperatives.  It was also a change that was bound to occur in light of the fact that the IRS concluded long ago that stock in a NY cooperative apartment constitutes real property for many tax purposes, including the like kind exchange rules, and that NY itself has long taxed (since 2004) the gain recognized by nonresidents on their sale of cooperative apartments.

The Memorandum

The Dept.’s memorandum restates the amended Tax Law, as outlined above, and then explains that a nonresident must include all or part of the gain or loss from the sale or exchange of an interest in any of the above entities in the nonresident’s NY source income if the entity owns:

  • real property located in NY, and/or
  • shares of stock in a NY cooperative,

and the FMV of all its real property in NY and shares of stock in NY cooperatives equals or exceeds 50% of the FMV of the assets the entity has owned for at least two years on the date of the sale or exchange.

Less than Two Years

According to the memorandum, if all the entity’s assets have been owned for less than two years, then the 50% condition is met.

Fraction of Gain Included

The portion of the gain or loss the nonresident must include in NY source income is the total gain or loss reported on their federal return from that sale or exchange multiplied by the following fraction (determined as of the date of the sale or exchange): (a) the FMV of the entity’s real property in NY and the shares of stock in NY cooperatives, over (b) the FMV of all the assets that the entity owns.

Part-year Resident

A part-year resident individual – one who is not a statutory resident and who successfully changed domicile during the tax year – is subject to this inclusion rule if they have a sale or exchange of an interest in an entity and the gain or loss on the sale or exchange occurs in the nonresident portion of the tax year.

Tiered Entities

If a nonresident sells or exchanges an interest in an entity that is part of a tiered structure of entities, the change in the “NY source inclusion rule” applies to the sale or exchange if any entity in the tiered structure owns real property in NY or shares of stock in NY cooperatives.

If a partnership in a tiered structure of entities sells or exchanges its interest in an entity in the tiered structure, the partnership must determine whether it has any NY source income relating to the sale or exchange for personal income tax as if it were a nonresident individual.

Looking Ahead

In any investment transaction, a price must be established for the amount of the investor’s equity contribution in the investment entity. Similarly, in any sale by the investor of their interest in the entity – whether to a third party buyer or back to the entity itself – the price at which the interest is to be sold must be established.

Each of these situations will entail negotiations between the investor and the investment entity, and between the investor/seller and the buyer. In each case, it will behoove the investor/seller to understand and account for the tax costs of the investment and of the ultimate sale in advance of any discussions. This will enable the investor/seller to settle on the appropriate sales price: one that will yield, as closely as possible, the desired after-tax economic result.

In the case of a nonresident taxpayer with an interest in an entity that owns at least some NY real property and/or shares of stock in a NY cooperative, the taxpayer will need to determine whether the entity meets the 50% threshold described above. In some cases, depending upon the entity’s business or investment purpose, not to mention the authority or leverage possessed by the nonresident, it may be possible to periodically adjust the entity’s investment holdings – being mindful of the two-year “anti-stuffing rule” – so as to fall short of the threshold. Of course, any such adjustments must make sense from a business or investment perspective.

Where the nonresident has little control over the entity, it may be possible to “time” the sale of his or her interest, taking advantage of a drop in real estate values or of an increase in the value of other assets held by the entity (for example, securities). However, this option may be impractical in cases where, for example, a shareholders or operating agreement restricts the sale of interests in the entity.

The important point is for the nonresident to recognize at the inception of their investment in an entity that there may be an issue on a subsequent disposition of the investment, to try to account for the ultimate tax cost when pricing the acquisition of the investment and/or its later sale, and to try to secure the periodic valuation of the entity’s underlying assets so as to facilitate any decision as to a disposition, and to support one’s reporting position in the event of a sale.


[1] One of my high school teachers would sometimes respond with “tauric defecation” to a student’s excuse for not having completed an assignment. Bronx Science, after all.

[2] I’ve seen too much of this. Real property should rarely be held in a corporation by a U.S. person.