Other Tax Services

Expense recovery tax consulting uncovers overpayments and overcharges in the form of duplicate payments, vendor overpayments, unclaimed property, and cost reductions in core business services. On average, these discrepancies amount to 0.1% to 0.5% of companies overall spend, and often have a valuable impact on your firm’s bottom line.

Accounts Payable Audit

Invoke’s Accounts Payable audit process leverages proprietary technology and algorithms to perform multi-year overpayment reviews that require minimal internal resources. Our system is a highly valuable extension of our clients’ Finance and Accounting departments with the goal of recovering savings, identifying new and innovative business practices, and validating the effectiveness of internal controls at no risk.

Unclaimed Property Expense Recovery

States across the nation hold billions of dollars in unclaimed property and the burden is on corporations to proactively investigate and claim their assets. A recovery may take one to four months once you involve jurisdictions and identify proper claim processes. Invoke’s expense recovery tax consultants, well versed in this process, are adept at digging deep into each state’s records to identify unclaimed property based on entity structure, including predecessor companies, to ensure you reclaim all your property.

Invoke Tax Partners’ comprehensive fixed asset reviews are a powerful income tax planning strategy that examines an organization’s entire depreciation schedule to uncover numerous opportunities for accelerating deductions and significantly improving cash flow. This strategy not only involves reviewing assets for missed cost segregation opportunities, but also provides a superior planning approach for organizations with a multistate portfolio by evaluating all assets nationwide for depreciation opportunities. Some key fixed asset review strategies include:

• Cost Segregation Studies
• Individual Asset Reviews
• 179D Energy Efficient Commercial Building Deductions
• 45L Energy Efficient Home Credit (including multifamily properties)

Cost segregation is an income tax planning strategy designed to accelerate depreciation deductions, defer taxes, and enhance cash flow to your bottom line. Commercial real estate is depreciated over 39 years, making cost segregation efforts a pivotal part of increasing cash flow to offset taxable income. In a typical cost segregation study, between 2.5% and 10% of the buildings value can be saved. In addition, carving out personal property and land improvements via a cost segregation study allow for much more favorable tax attributes.

With the national network of tax professionals at Invoke Tax Partners, the benefits of a cost segregation study extend beyond accelerating the timing of deductions in all 50 states. This process allows commercial real estate owners and investors to write off and claim losses on disposed building components. By identifying specific building components, cost segregation allows taxpayers to take a loss on disposed items, such as when replacing the roof, upgrading the lighting, or overhauling the HVAC system.

The research and development tax credit is available to businesses that design, develop, or improve products, processes, techniques, formulas, or software.

For a research activity to qualify for the R&D tax credit, it must meet four key criteria:

• The improvements or activities must be based in scientific discipline, such as engineering, computer science, biology, or physical science.
• Activities must focus on developing new or enhanced functionality, performance, reliability, or quality features of a structure or its components, including product or process designs that a firm creates for its clients.
• At the start of the research and development phase, there must be technological uncertainty. This occurs when the available information at the project’s beginning does not clearly determine the capability or method for developing or enhancing the business component, or the appropriate design for it.
• To eliminate the technological uncertainty in question, experimentation must be conducted, including evaluating a design through modeling or computational analysis and testing a material’s durability or longevity.

The research & development tax credit is primarily a wage-based federal tax credit, worth about 10% of qualified R&D activities. The credit can also be claimed retroactively for previous tax years and many states also offer additional credit.

The 179D energy efficient commercial building deduction was created as the result of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 as a tax incentive to encourage energy efficiency in building design. The deduction applies to both new construction commercial real estate and building renovations. The 179D deduction is available to commercial real estate owners and investors, as well as the engineers, architects, and designers of government owned buildings and those that are otherwise tax-exempt.

Any commercial real estate owner with new builds or recent renovations may qualify for 179D deductions. Our nationwide network of tax consultants provides a comprehensive review of your properties, including the following, to determine if energy efficiency deductions are a viable solution for your portfolio:

• Modeling and building inspections
• Comprehensive reviews of construction documents
• Facilitating project scope interviews with the design and engineering teams
• Preparing energy efficiency certifications
• Obtaining allocations from government building owners
• Assisting with amended property tax returns or filing a change in method of accounting
• Providing audit support

The 45L Energy Efficient Home Credit allows multifamily developers to claim a tax credit for each eligible dwelling unit sold or leased from January 1, 2023 – December 31, 2032. The benefits of this tax credit include:

• $500 tax credit per unit for multifamily homes constructed after 2020 and certified as ENERGY STAR Single Family New Homes Program. When constructed with prevailing wage, the credit increases to $2,500.
• $1,000 tax credit per unit for multifamily homes certified as DOE Zero Energy Ready Home. When constructed with prevailing wage, the credit increases to $5,000.

For multifamily buildings leased or sold prior to January 1, 2023, an eligible contractor must have constructed a qualified energy efficient multifamily building, as well as owned and have had a basis in the building during its construction. Both new construction and renovations to existing residences are eligible when they meet the following qualifications:

• Certified to provide an annual level of heating and cooling energy consumption that is at least 50% below a comparable dwelling unit constructed in accordance with the standards of 2006 IECC.
• Improvements to the building envelope that provides at least one fifth of the 50% reduction in energy consumption.
• Three stories above grade or less in height.
• Sold or leased as a residence (the credit can be taken retroactively for three years back or to any open tax year).