Winter Newsletter 2022

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On March 9, 2022, President Biden signed an Executive Order entitled “Executive Order on Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets” that outlines a whole-government strategy to ensure responsible innovation in digital assets, including cryptocurrencies. The Executive Order identifies six principal policy objectives regarding digital assets: protect U.S. consumers, investors and businesses; protect U.S. and global…

On February 7, 2022, the IRS’s Large Business & International Division (“LB&I”) announced a new compliance campaign focusing on partnership losses in excess of a partner’s basis.  The campaign will center on ensuring that partners reporting flow-through losses from partnership have adequate outside basis to deduct them. If a partner does not have adequate outside…

On January 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hughes v. Northwestern University that the plaintiff-participants will get another opportunity to assert that the Northwestern retirement plan fiduciaries violated ERISA’s duty of prudence based on the following: the number of investment options included on the plan menu; the decision to contract with multiple recordkeepers…

Andrew Howard, Ropes & Gray tax partner, outlines his thoughts on the likely impacts on private equity of the ‘ATAD 3’ EC proposal, designed to prevent the misuse of shell entities for tax purposes

If adopted, the “Directive laying down rules to prevent the misuse of shell entities for tax purposes”, aka “ATAD 3” or the “Unshell Directive”, will deny the benefits of European directives and also the benefit of double tax treaties to EU-based holding companies which fail to meet minimum substance requirements from 2024. Per the draft directive, this applies not just to equity holding companies, but to holding companies for all forms of passive income including income from debt, IP and real estate.

Access to treaties or directives is generally important for holding companies because it is likely that this will ensure that withholding taxes, and in some cases capital gains, will be applied predictably and at the lowest achievable rate applied by the relevant jurisdiction.
Continue Reading ATAD 3 – How Will Private Equity Measure Up?

In the latest installment of our Ropes & Gray podcast series addressing emerging issues for fiduciaries of 401(k) and 403(b) plans to consider as part of their litigation risk management strategy, ERISA and benefits partner Josh Lichtenstein, counsel Sharon Remmer, and associate Jon Reinstein continue the discussion from our prior episode about the Department of

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On December 8, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”), within the U.S. Department of the Treasury, published proposed regulations, Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting Requirements (the “Proposed Rule”),1 to implement the beneficial ownership information reporting provisions of the Corporate Transparency Act (“CTA”).

The CTA, enacted as part of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, is

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On December 6, 2021, the White House issued the “United States Strategy on Countering Corruption” (the “Strategy Document”) and accompanying fact sheet. This release by the Biden Administration follows a months-long interagency review of existing U.S. government mechanisms for fighting corruption on both the domestic and global fronts. The five-point Strategy Document

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