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Information Letter Shows Need for Broader Guidance on Difficulty of Care Exclusion

Posted on Feb. 21, 2019

At the Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic Grantee conference in December, I presented on the tax treatment of state payments for in-home care, alongside Daniel Kempland of Washington University and Sarah Lora of Legal Aid Services of Oregon. The topic will also be discussed at the Pro Bono and Tax Clinics Committee meeting during the ABA Tax Section’s May Meeting. So a related item in February 5th’s Tax Notes caught my eye. IRS Information Letter 2018-0034 responds to questions about “difficulty of care” payments under section 131(c). The letter must have gotten caught by the shutdown on its way out the door; its official release date is 12/28/18.

Difficulty of Care

Section 131 promotes community care for severely disabled adults by excluding certain state payments from caregivers’ gross income. Specifically, section 131 excludes from gross income any “qualified foster care payments” and “difficulty of care” payments received by a foster care provider from a state or from a qualified foster care placement agency.

There are multiple tax questions that arise in this context. When in-home care is provided to adults with disabilities, one question is whether the “difficulty of care” exclusion applies to any of the caregiver’s income. Difficulty of care payments are defined in 131(c) as

payments to individuals which are not [qualified foster care payments], and which—

(A) are compensation for providing the additional care of a qualified foster individual which is—

(i) required by reason of a physical, mental, or emotional handicap of such individual with respect to which the State has determined that there is a need for additional compensation, and

(ii) provided in the home of the foster care provider, and

(B) are designated by the payor as [difficulty of care payments]

In health care, community or home care is contrasted with institutional care, e.g. in a nursing home. Government programs that pay for care at home allow people with disabilities to continue living in their communities, where they may enjoy greater “family relations, social contacts, work options, economic independence, educational advancement, and cultural enrichment.” (Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581 (1999))

For caregivers who are family members or low-wage workers, the gross income exclusion can make a significant difference by freeing up funds for other living expenses. (At certain income levels caregivers may be better off with taxable income for the Earned Income Credit; the tax impact is not uniform.) Also, under the Affordable Care Act adults can qualify for Medicaid based on their modified AGI. Sec. 131 is not one of the modifications, so the difficulty of care exclusion gives some caregivers access to nearly free health care. This is a big deal.

In several cases in the 1990s and 2000s, the Service challenged the applicability of section 131 to family members who cared for disabled relatives. The general theory was that a biological parent cannot be a “foster parent” within the meaning of the statute. However, in 2014 it reversed this position in Notice 2014-7. For unclear reasons, Notice 2014-7 only addresses one specific type of Medicaid waiver program. It also does not address FICA or FUTA treatment of qualifying payments. Since then, the IRS has not issued any regulations or other guidance under section 131 besides website FAQ and a PLR.

Unfortunately, the wide variety of state programs, a lack of general reliable guidance from the IRS, and differing levels of state responsiveness to caregiver groups have led to disparate treatment of caregivers’ income depending on where they live. There is much more to say on this topic. For more on Notice 2014-7 and the FAQ, the National Health Law Program has an excellent summary written for health care advocates.

Information Letter 2018-0034

On September 25, 2018, a requester wrote to the IRS on behalf of

business clients who provide “Alzheimer, dementia, adult and family care and mental health and residential support services.” Specifically, you asked about the tax treatment of “social security personal care services funding” and “Medicaid waiver payments” received by these clients under a program by the “Division of Social Services via a network of oversight groups.”

The IRS’s answer is quite short.

Notice 2014-7 specifically addresses payments made under § 1915(c) of the Social Security Act (Act), relating to Home and Community-Based Services waivers, and does not specifically address the tax treatment of other state Medicaid programs. Whether the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will treat payments received under a state program other than a program under of § 1915(c) of the Act as difficulty of care payments depends on the nature of the payments and the purpose and design of the program. See Q&A1 at www.irs.gov/Individuals/Certain-Medicaid-Waiver-Payments-May-Be-Excludable-From-Income.

If your clients would like the IRS to address whether payments described in your letter or other similar payments are excludible from gross income under § 131 of the Code, they may request a private letter ruling. Revenue Procedure 2018-1, 2018-1 I.R.B. 1, (and the first revenue procedure of each year), provides the procedures and fees for a taxpayer to request a private letter ruling.

This response is likely frustrating for the requester, but it was to be expected.

An Information Letter “provides general statements of well-defined law without applying them to a specific set of facts.” There is no user fee to request one, but the advice given is not binding on the IRS, so it does not protect the taxpayer from audit or penalty. For binding and reliable advice, taxpayers must pay a hefty user fee to get a Private Letter Ruling (PLR). The parties who requested Information Letter 2018-0034 would likely need to pay $30,000 if they wanted a PLR. There are reduced fees for taxpayers with gross income less than $250,000 (a fee of $2,800) and for taxpayers with gross income less than $1 million (a fee of $7,600). One can understand why the requesters tried the free option first.

In the wake of Notice 2014-7, the State of California paid for a PLR (PLR-127776-15), and it now has guidance on the applicability of section 131 to its four programs that support in-home care for disabled adults. But not every state or company can afford $30,000. For many individual caregivers, the reduced fee of $2,800 may as well be $30,000. Also, technically only the requester can rely on a PLR. The letter to the State of California posted by the IRS is redacted so the public cannot see which specific programs were at issue. If the state had not posted an unredacted version, California families would not be able to tell whether the guidance applied to their program.

The analysis in California’s PLR has uniform application to thousands of individual taxpayers. Yet in order to rely on it, each caregiver needs to request their own PLR. This is an inefficient system; the PLR is simply not the right tool for issues that have broad, relatively uniform application to third party taxpayers.

It is not clear why the 2014 guidance was so narrow in scope. While caregiver programs do vary by state, the IRS has identified principles in its FAQ that could provide a basis for broad national guidance. I hope the IRS will develop a regulation project or a broader guidance project on the difficulty of care exclusion. IRS and Treasury Department resources are stretched thin and have been for many years. However, the government should prioritize guidance for issues that have a deep impact on thousands of low-income taxpayers and that are not suitable for individual guidance through the PLR process.

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