Day One
7:30 am Registration and Continental Breakfast
8:45 am Opening Remarks
9:00 am Overview - Basic Building Blocks
- Description of the basic instruments used in developing financial products: forwards, options and notional principal contracts
- What are the economics of these instruments?
- What is the taxation of these instruments?
- Special rules for business hedges
- Mark-to-market taxation
- Hot Products
11:00 am Break for Refreshments
11:15 am Taxation of Debt Instruments
- OID and imputed interest
- Convertible debt and investment units
- Contingent debt instruments
- Limitations on interest deductions
12:00 am Lunch
1:15 pm Hot Products
- Feline PRIDES
- Contingent Convertible Debt
- Convertible debt with hedge and warrants
- Debt with forward subscription agreement
2:00 pm International Financing and Financial Transactions of Foreign Persons
- Withholding
- Foreign Tax Credit
- Subpart F
- PFICs
3:15 pm Break for Refreshments
3:30 pm Tax Traps
- Section 1256 Contracts
- Straddle rules
- Dividends received deduction: holding periods and other issues
- Foreign currency hedging and derivatives
- Constructive sales/constructive ownership
- Anticonversion rules
4:45 pm Summary and Q&A
5:00 pm Conference Adjourns for the Day
Day Two
8:00 am Continental Breakfast
8:20 am Chairperson’s Review of Day One and Preview of Day Two
8:30 am Accounting for Derivatives and Hedging
- Understanding the principles of FAS 133 for derivatives and hedging
- Managing GAAP/tax differences caused by the FAS 133 rules
9:45 am Refreshment Break
10:00 am Tax Controversies
- Will the recent IRS victories change the behavior of the IRS, taxpayers, or the market?
- How can taxpayers best support and defend their financial transactions?
- Preserving privilege on financial products transactions while living in the glass house of FIN 48
- How to respond to requests for electronic documents
11:00 am Qualified Business Units, Functional Currency, and Section 988 Foreign Currency Transactions
- Basic rules
- Foreign currency hedges
- Foreign currency instruments
12:00 pm Lunch
1:00 pm Disparate Tax Treatment of Economically Equivalent Investment Tools
- Various investment “tools” achieve economically equivalent results.
- Tax treatment of these tools is disparate.
- Opportunity-select the tool that should deliver the optimal tax result.
- This is free “tax alpha” for sophisticated, well-advised investors.
- Real world applications: single stock concentration risk management, portfolio hedging, structured products.
- Vital implications for fiduciaries under the Uniform Prudent Investor Act.
2:45 pm Summary and Question & Answer Session
3:00 pm Conference concludes

