Treasury and the IRS released regulations under Section 385 that finalize the treatment of certain qualified short-term debt instruments, transactions involving controlled partnerships, and transactions involving consolidated groups for purposes of classifying certain interests in corporations as stock or indebtedness under final regulations published in 2016. While the 2020 Final Regulations, published May 13, do not contain substantive changes from the proposed and temporary regulations that were issued contemporaneously with the issuance of the 2016 Final Regulations, they have practical impact for multinational enterprises and present several issues and potential traps that corporations should consider in structuring or revising their intercompany debt or financing arrangements.
