Jen: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Jen Lemanski and I’m back again with Frank Landreneau a director and one of the faces of our international tax team. Frank, welcome back to the playbook.

Frank: It’s great to be back.

Jen: In our last segment we were talking about mistakes that multi foreign multinational companies can make when they’re doing some debt financing, can you elaborate a little bit more on that?

Frank: One example would be, you know when companies first start out they’re not necessarily knowledgeable about what their financing needs might be so they make a short term loan or advance considering it short term. They don’t charge interest and don’t document it as a loan. They accrue interest. And the results of that is that it may not be respected as debt, so when a repatriation payment, let’s say they want to bring profits back to the home office outside the U. S., the payment may be considered, as opposed to being considered a loan repayment, the IRS would consider it a dividend payment which could trigger some withholding taxes if not treated properly.

Jen: Interesting. And now where do interest expense deductions come into this?

Frank: That’s another result of faulty planning, is that if the company has been leveraged too much and whereas the debt is to significant and no equity financing is used, then interest deductions may not be allowed because there are new limitations. Some of these limitations existed but the formula has changed.

Jen: Now are those limitations permanent or is it a short term thing?

Frank: No it’s actually, the way it’s computed is, there is 30 percent of your adjusted taxable income. So there’s certain, you take your taxable income with certain add backs and deducts, take 30 percent of it, it’s carried forward indefinitely so it’s not a permanent deal but if your U.S. company is not, if you don’t manage profits appropriately and you have losses then they could become long term denials of deductions which could become quasi-permanent.

Jen: And at what point would somebody call an adviser like you to help them kind of prepare for something like this?

Frank: I would say right from the start. PKF Texas has something called International Healthy Start program. And that type of planning along with other types of planning like transfer pricing or other types of considerations when you come to the U.S., is all part of the mix of what we provide as a service offering to clients.

Jen: All right well great to know. Well we will get you back to talk some more international tax soon.

Frank: I’d love to, there’s a lot to talk about.

Jen: Alright great, thanks Frank. To learn more about other international topics including transfer pricing visit www.PKFTexas.com/InternationalDesk.  This has been another thought leader production brought to you by PKF Texas the Entrepreneurs Playbook.  Tune in next week for another chapter.