Tax Law Commons^™

Beneficial Ownership And The Remic Classification Rules, Bradley T. Borden, David J. Reiss

Bradley T. Borden

REMICs are securitized pools of mortgages that qualify for special flow-through taxation. To qualify for flow-through tax treatment, the pool must satisfy several requirements. An intended REMIC that fails to satisfy those requirements will likely be taxed as a corporation and payments made to holders of interests in a failed REMIC will likely be nondeductible dividend payments, subjecting the REMIC to significant tax and penalties. Such tax and penalties will cause beneficial interests in the pool to lose value and frustrate investors who relied upon REMIC classification as an incentive to purchase interests. Thus, tax classification is critical to REMICs …

Wall Street Rules Applied To Remic Classification, Bradley T. Borden, David Reiss

Bradley T. Borden

Investors in mortgage-backed securities, built on the shoulders of the tax-advantaged Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit (“REMIC”), may be facing extraordinary tax losses because of how bankers and lawyers structured these securities. This calamity is compounded by the fact that those professional advisors should have known that the REMICs they created were flawed from the start. If these losses are realized, those professionals will face suits for damages so large that they could put them out of business.

The original paper is available at: http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/New_York/Insight/2012/09_-_September/Wall_Street_Rules_Applied_to_REMIC_Classification/.