The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently took up the case of Menard v. Commissioner, 560 F.3d 620 (2009), considering whether the CEO of a privately-held company was receiving a dividend disguised as salary from the business he controlled. The CEO whose salary was questioned was John Menard, founder and controlling shareholder of Menards, a chain of retail hardware and building supply stores. The Tax Court took the position that John Menard’s $20 million salary was really a disguised dividend because it was much greater than the salaries of the Home Depot and Lowe’s CEOs, who earned $2.8 million and $6.1 million respectively.

The appellate court’s opinion in this case is so well-researched that I cannot help but include large blocks of text, starting with its introduction to the subject:

The Internal Revenue Code allows a business to deduct from its taxable income a “reasonable allowance for salaries or other compensation for personal services actually rendered,”[or] “payments purely for services.” Occasionally the Internal Revenue Service challenges the deduction of a corporate salary on the ground that it’s really a dividend. A dividend, like salary, is taxable to the recipient, but unlike salary is not deductible from the corporation’s taxable income. So by treating a dividend as salary, a corporation can reduce its income tax liability without increasing the income tax of the recipient. . . As a result of a change in law in 2003, dividends are now taxed at a lower maximum rate than salaries—15 percent, versus 35 percent for salary. 26 U.S.C. § 1(h)(11). This makes the tradeoff more complex; although the corporation avoids tax by treating the dividend as a salary, which is deductible, the employee pays a higher tax. But depending on its tax bracket, the corporation may still save more in tax than the employee pays, and in that event, if the employee owns stock in the corporation, he may, depending on how much of the stock he owns, prefer dividends to be treated as salary. . . . Even before the change in the Internal Revenue Code, treating a dividend as salary was less likely to be attempted in a publicly held corporation, because if the CEO or other officers or employees receive dividends called salary beyond what they are entitled to by virtue of owning stock in the corporation, the other shareholders suffer. But in a closely held corporation, the owners might decide to take their dividends in the form of salary in order to beat the corporate income tax, and there would be no one to complain—except the Internal Revenue Service.

The usual case for forbidding the reclassification (for tax purposes) of dividends as salary is thus that “of a corporation having few shareholders, practically all of whom draw salaries,” Treas. Reg. § 1.162-7(b)(1), especially if the corporation does not pay dividends (as such) and some of the shareholders do no work for the corporation but merely cash a “salary” check. A difficult case—which is this case—is thus that of a corporation that pays a high salary to its CEO who works full time but is also the controlling shareholder. The Treasury regulation defines a “reasonable” salary as the amount that “would ordinarily be paid for like services by like enterprises under like circumstances,” § 1.162-7(b)(3), but that is not an operational standard. No two enterprises are alike and no two chief executive officers are alike, and anyway the comparison should be between the total compensation package of the CEOs being compared, and that requires consideration of deferred compensation, including severance packages, the amount of risk in the executives’ compensation, and perks.

Courts have attempted to operationalize the Treasury’s standard by considering multiple factors that relate to optimal compensation. [Citations omitted.] We reviewed a number of these attempts in Exacto Spring Corp. v. Commissioner, 196 F.3d 833 (7th Cir.1999), and concluded that they were too vague, and too difficult to operationalize, to be of much utility. Multifactor tests with no weight assigned to any factor are bad enough from the standpoint of providing an objective basis for a judicial decision [citations omitted]; multifactor tests when none of the factors is concrete are worse, and that is the character of most of the multifactor tests of excessive compensation. . . . All businesses are different, all CEOs are different, and all compensation packages for CEOs are different.

In Exacto, in an effort to bring a modicum of objectivity to the determination of whether a corporate owner/employee’s compensation is “reasonable,” we created the presumption that “when . . . the investors in his company are obtaining a far higher return than they had any reason to expect, [the owner/employee’s] salary is presumptively reasonable.” But we added that the presumption could be rebutted by evidence that the company’s success was the result of extraneous factors, such as an unexpected discovery of oil under the company’s land, or that the company intended to pay the owner/employee a disguised dividend rather than salary. 196 F.3d at 839.

The strongest ground for rebuttal, which brings us back to the basic purpose of disallowing “unreasonable” compensation, is that the employee does no work for the corporation; he is merely a shareholder. [Citations omitted.] Comparison with the compensation of executives of other companies can be helpful if—but it is a big if—the comparison takes into account the details of the compensation package of each of the compared executives, and not just the bottom-line salary. This qualification will turn out to be critical in this case.

Having explained the context of this case, the Circuit Court next explained why the Tax Court’s analysis was wrong, especially its comparison of John Menard’s salary to the salaries earned by the Home Depot and Lowe’s CEOs in that year. The appellate court first rejected the notion that the taxpayer’s $17 million bonus, which was equal to 5% of the company’s net income before taxes, was more likely to be a dividend than salary because it was paid at year’s end; was approved by a board that the CEO controlled without outside directors; must be returned if the IRS should disallow the company’s tax deduction as salary; and exceeded the salaries earned by the CEOs of publicly-traded competitors (Home Depot and Lowe’s). The appellate court noted that the managers of privately-held companies often face greater risk than public companies, warranting greater reward for success:

Of particular importance to this case is the amount of risk in the compensation structure. Risk in corporate compensation is significant in two respects. First, most people are risk averse, and the scholarly literature on corporate compensation suggests that risk aversion is actually an obstacle to efficient corporate management because managers tend to be more risk averse than shareholders. Shareholders can diversify the risk of a particular company by owning a diversified portfolio, but a manager tends to have most of his financial, reputational, and “specific human” capital tied up in his job. [Citations omitted.] So the riskier the compensation structure, other things being equal, the higher the executive’s salary must be to compensate him for bearing the additional risk.

That is not a critical consideration in this case because, as we said, management and ownership in Menards are not divorced. But a second significance of risk in a compensation structure is fully applicable to this case. A risky compensation structure implies that the executive’s salary is likely to vary substantially from year to year—high when the company has a good year, low when it has a bad one. Mr. Menard’s average annual income may thus have been considerably less than $20 million—a possibility the Tax Court ignored. Had the corporation lost money in 1998, Menard’s total compensation would have been only $157,500—less than the salary of a federal judge—even if the loss had not been his fault. The 5 percent bonus plan was in effect for a quarter of a century before the IRS pounced; was it just waiting for Menard to have such a great year that the IRS would
have a great-looking case?

The appellate court also noted that the Tax Court had not considered the total compensation packages of the CEOs from the public companies, such as equity compensation, severance packages, retirement plans, and perks. The appellate court noted that the CEO of Home Depot, whose salary was used as a benchmark, actually earned $124 million over six years, and a $210 million severance package when he was forced out. The Court of Appeals also noted that the Tax Court had not considered the salaries of other senior managers, both of Menards and of the benchmark public companies, which may have indicated that this CEO was more productive and delegated less than average. The Court observed that John Menard worked 14 to 16 hours per day, six to seven days per week.

The Seventh Circuit adopted a skeptical, even sarcastic, tone toward the Tax Court’s remark that the owner of a business has no need for incentive compensation because ownership is incentive enough. The Court of Appeals held that owners should not be treated differently from other managers.

Having concluded that John Menard’s $20 million salary was not excessive, the Court of Appeals reversed.

This is the last in a series of posts containing summaries of Pennsylvania case law on the issue of double dipping in divorce. “Double dipping” occurs when an income-producing asset (such as a pension or business) is counted as marital property subject to equitable distribution, as well as income subject to an alimony or child support obligation.

Steneken v. Steneken, 873 A.2d 501 (N.J. 2005).

Although it is not a Pennsylvania decision, no discussion of double dipping would be complete without Steneken, a 2005 decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court. In this case, the husband was the sole owner of a business which was marital property subject to equitable distribution. The valuation expert performed a normalization of the owner’s compensation in his report, reducing the company’s salary expense and thereby increasing the value of the company. In determining an alimony award, the husband argued that the court should consider his lower, normalized compensation instead of his actual salary (since the excess compensation had been capitalized as part of the business valuation and divided as marital property). The trial court accepted the husband’s argument and used his normalized salary instead of his actual salary.

An appeal ensued, and the case was remanded to the trial court because the intermediate appellate court held that the record was not fully developed. On remand, the trial court reversed its earlier position and used the husband’s actual salary to determine the proper amount of alimony.

The intermediate appellate court, reviewing New Jersey’s divorce statute, held that the prohibition on “double dipping” extended only to pensions and affirmed the trial court’s decision. The husband appealed to the New Jersey Supreme Court to extend the principle to double dipping arising from the capitalization of earnings in the context of a business valuation. Since an income capitalization approach had been used by the valuation expert endorsed by the trial court, and was not challenged, the husband argued that he should not have to pay alimony from the excess compensation that had been capitalized and distributed as part of the value of the business.

The New Jersey Supreme Court disagreed, affirming the trial court’s decision to permit double dipping. Rather than adopting the intermediate court’s rationale, the New Jersey high court attacked the husband’s reasoning.

The logical flaw in defendant’s argument lies at its core. Defendant mistakenly equates the statutory and decisional methodology applied ni the calculation of alimony with a valuation methodology applied for equitable distribution purposes that requires that revenues and expenses, including salaries, be normalized so as to present a fair valuation of a going concern. Simply said, defendant’s charged mischaracterization of the issue here as one of “double counting” both misstakes the issue and ignores the fundamental principles that undergird related yet nonetheless severable alimony and equitable distribution awards.  As our statutory framework and decisional precedent make clear, the proper issue is whether, under the circumstances, the alimony awarded and the equitable distribution made are, both singly and together, fair and consistent with the statutory design. . . . Because we embrace the premise that alimony and equitable distribution calculations, albeit interrelated, are separate, distinct, and not entirely compatible financial exercises, and because asset valuation methodologies applied in the equitable distribution context are not congruent with the factors relevant to alimony considerations, we conclude that the circumstances here present a fair and proper method of both awarding alimony and determining equitable distribution.

The New Jersey court’s opinion is not convincing; other reasons might have been more forceful. For instance, the court might have started with the observation that a business valuation expert ordinarily has no expertise in executive compensation. To identify part of the owner’s salary as excessive is tantamount to saying that the business could hire someone to do the job for less, or conversely, the owner would earn less if he or she sought employment elsewhere. Such determinations are beyond the expertise of most valuation experts, and should not be relied upon to determine the owner’s earning capacity for alimony and support purposes. Yet, if those normalization adjustments are not suitable to determine the owner’s earning capacity, why should we rely on them for the business valuation?

The New Jersey court noted that if a different valuation methodology had been applied, there might be no normalization adjustment to the owner’s salary. That is true, in the case of an asset approach. However, an asset approach assumes liquidation of the company, not ongoing concern value. The owner’s excess compensation does not get capitalized under the asset approach, so there is no possibility of double dipping. In the market approach, normalization of the income statement or cash flow is performed before applying a multiplier. Therefore, the potential inconsistency perceived by the Court is illusory.

In a vigorous and well-reasoned dissent, three of the seven Justices enunciated a compromise position: that the trial court need not use normalized compensation when computing the owner’s alimony obligation but should have discretion to adjust the value of the business or the alimony award to alleviate the double dip.

Columnist Amy Feldman wrote an interesting article in this week’s Business Week entitled, “When to Take the Money.” June 30 is the deadline for executives to decide whether to defer this year’s performance bonuses to qualified plans. Ms. Feldman’s column suggests how to decide.