Reference no: EM132037761

Question - Sam is an accountant who works at KPMG. Sam has invented an "improved" squeegee for cleaning windows and dreams of making it a commercial success. He forms a corporation "Squeegee, Inc." for which he properly elects Subchapter S tax status. He invests $20,000for 100% of its stock, and lends it $30,000. Sam continues to work at KPMG, but uses all his free time to develop the Squeegee business. The corporation uses its funds to develop a prototype and tooling for manufacture. Sam then secures a spot on the TV show "Shark Tank" where he pitches his product and business, but is unable to get any of the participants to invest in his company. He spent $15,000 of his own money to travel to the California studio where shark tank was filmed and to stay at a hotel during the filming of the show, and to produce presentation materials to use for his appearance. Sam eventually is able to produce and sell 100,000 squeegees at $10 each, but his business spent more than the million dollars of gross receipts in doing so and fails. Sam gets nothing when the business is finally liquidated. In addition, Squeegee Inc is audited by New York State for its sales tax obligations, which assesses the Corporation 80,000 of sales tax, 20,000 of penalty and 10,000of interest. Since the corporation is defunct, NY collects the entire 110,000 sales tax debt from Sam as a Responsible party.

What are the tax consequences of these transactions for Sam? In particular, how are the business receipts and losses treated, the costs of the appearance on Shark Tank treated, and will Sam be able to deduct the Sales Tax collected from him by New York State?