TY - JOUR T1 - Open Questions and Recent Guidance Regarding the Life Settlement Industry JF - The Journal of Structured Finance SP - 83 LP - 92 DO - 10.3905/JSF.2009.15.2.083 VL - 15 IS - 2 AU - Frederic J Gelfond Y1 - 2009/07/31 UR - https://pm-research.com/content/15/2/83.abstract N2 - Billions of dollars are being made available by investors from all over the world who are looking to participate in the life settlement industry. For investors who can develop reliable actuarial models and establish long-term business processes, this option presents a means of diversifying a portfolio with non-correlated assets. Despite the number of willing investors and the frequency with which these transactions are occurring, no “cookie cutter” transaction type, or business structure, is predominant in the industry. That is, there is a variety of participants in terms of form of entity, domestic and foreign locale, degrees of active participation in the operation of the “business,” sophistication and needs as to actuarial and business modeling, and expectations regarding buying and holding and securitizing the policies. Among the more significant drivers of this variation in structuring is a given investor’s identification and understanding of the numerous tax issues that are potentially involved. The problem, however, has been the apparent lack of guidance as to how to apply potentially applicable tax rules that were not drafted with this evolving industry in mind. In May 2009, the Internal Revenue Service released two revenue rulings (Revenue Ruling 2009-13 and Revenue Ruling 2009-14) that answer many of the questions that taxpayers have been asking in this area—or do they?TOPICS: Financial crises and financial market history, legal and regulatory issues for structured finance ER -