Professor Beckett Cantley* is one of the nation’s leading legal authorities on U.S. Captive Insurance and serves as an expert witness in captive insurance company litigation matters. Mr. Cantley* is now available as an expert witness in captive insurance company litigation matters.
Professor Cantley* is the former American Bar Association (ABA) Taxation Subcommittee Chairman for the Captive Insurance Committee. He has given numerous speeches and published dozens of articles on Captive Insurance issues over the last decade and has served as an expert witness in multiple high-profile captive cases. Mr. Cantley* has given speeches on CIC throughout the U.S. and published dozens of articles on captive insurance issues over the last decade. His captive insurance law review articles have made him a Top 10% all-time downloaded author on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN).
Issues related to CIC compliance are highly complex and ever-changing. The predominant threats to compliance previously involved the shifting and distribution of risk. Today, other pressing concerns involve the tax loophole created by CIC investments in life insurance, loans made to shareholders or insureds, and gray areas involving CIC ownership by entities set up to benefit the descendants of the primary insureds. Captive insurance companies domiciled offshore have also come under great scrutiny due to tax evasion concerns.
Professor of Tax Law
Frequent speaker on taxation
Presentations on Captive Insurance Issues
Media Quotations on Captive Insurance Issues
WASHINGTON — Internal Revenue Service officials today urged participants in abusive micro-captive insurance arrangements to exit these transactions as soon as possible.
The IRS has stepped up examinations of these arrangements and has recently won yet another case in U.S. Tax Court that such arrangements are not eligible for the tax benefits claimed.
On March 10, 2021, the U.S. Tax Court held in Caylor Land & Dev. v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2021-30 (2021), that yet another micro-captive arrangement failed to qualify as insurance for federal tax purposes. This decision follows several earlier Tax Court decisions that also confirmed the IRS’s determinations that certain micro-captive arrangements were not eligible for the claimed federal tax benefits. In Caylor, the Tax Court also sustained the IRS’s determination of accuracy-related penalties and rejected the taxpayer’s claim of reliance on tax advice.
Professor of Tax Law
Frequent speaker on taxation
When captives started, the law didn’t have a working definition of “insurance company.” This made it easy for the IRS to legitimately argue these new companies weren’t insurance companies under the law. In fact, a strong argument can be made that captive insurance litigation helped to provide the law with a formal and very well-developed definition of “insurance company.”
—Beckett Cantley* Author, “US Captive Insurance Law”