Catherine is the sole stockholder of Cat Co., a calendar-year C corporation. It is early 2020, and Catherine has determined that the corporation has a business need for a tract of land that Catherine owns personally. Her plan is for the corporation to use the land for eighteen months from March 1, 2020 through August 31, 2021. The fair market value of the land is $500,000. Catherine’s basis in the land is $100,000. She has held the land as an investment since 2016. 

Catherine is considering the following three possible courses of action:

 She transfers the land to the corporation in exchange for stock of the corporation in a §351 transfer on March 1, 2020and the corporation owns the land until August 31, 2021.

She leases the land to the corporation for its fair rental value of $3,000 per month from March 1, 2020until August 31, 2021. 

She sells the land to the corporation for its fair market value of $500,000 on March 1, 2021 and the corporation owns the land until August 31, 2021. 

Whichever choice is made, the land will be sold to a third party on September 1, 2021 by Catherine in option #2 or by the corporation in options #1 and #3. Catherine estimates that the proceeds from the sale of the land will be $500,000 on September 1, 2021. The corporation’s taxable income, exclusive of rental payments and/or gain or loss on land sale, will be $150,000 in 2021 and 2021. Catherine’s adjusted gross income, exclusive of rental income and/or gain or loss on land sale, will be $200,000 in 2021 and 2021. She is single with no dependents. She will not itemize her deductions. The individual tax rate schedules for 2020 and 2022 are available in the module on Brightspace labeled General Information Files. The pages with the tax rate schedules also show the standard deductions for 2020 and 2021.  For single individuals in 2021, the threshold between the 0 percent tax rate and the 15 percent tax rate on long-term capital gains was $40,400. The threshold between the 15 percent and 20 percent tax rate was $445,850. These are the thresholds used in the video demonstration. The same thresholds for 2021 were $41,675 and $459,750. The corporate tax rate on all taxable income is a flat 21 percent in both years. 

Required: 

Create an Excel spreadsheet that will compute the income taxes payable in 2020 and 2021 by Catherine and Cat Co. 

Compute the total taxes payable under options 1, 2, and 3. Based on your findings, what do you recommend to Catherine?