TAXES

Partnerships in for Tax Scrutiny: The Internal Revenue Service published rules intended to keep companies from maintaining separate partnerships to avoid taxation. Dan Halperin, law professor at Georgetown University in Washington, said taxes due on a partnership’s earnings are allocated to the individual partners, so some companies use the structure to show a tax result “that doesn’t reflect the actual economic transaction.” Income may be shifted to a tax-exempt partner or losses may be falsified to offset a partner’s obligation, he said. Since the new rules were proposed last summer, many securities firms have stopped marketing partnership structures that could run afoul of them.