November 14, 2017 VIA U.S. MAIL U.S. Senate Committee on Finance 219 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510-6200 I write in support of the tax reform efforts being considered by Congress and advocate for the removal of section III.H.1 from the Chairman’s Mark of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, JCX-51-17(2017). Overview My law firm, the Royse Law Firm, is a Silicon Valley-based law firm that advises companies on tax, business, and corporate law…

Last Tuesday, on September 22, five GOP Presidential candidates participated in a forum in Silicon Valley. At our forum, you would not have heard questions such as “Do you think Carly is pretty?” or “Would you trust Donald to have his finger on the button?” or anything else that makes for good reality television and lousy elected officials. Instead, we discussed real issues that are important to Silicon Valley and, for that matter, to the…

September 15, 2017 VIA U.S. MAIL The Honorable Orrin G. Hatch Chairman Committee on Finance United States Senate 219 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, D .C. 20510 Re: Proposal to Extend Section 179 of the Internal Revenue Code to All Intangibles I write in support of the tax reform efforts being considered by the Senate Finance Committee and propose extending first-year expensing to intangible assets. Background My law firm, the Royse Law Firm, is a…

August 3, 2017 VIA US MAIL The Honorable Cory Gardner 354 Russell Senate Office Building Washington DC 20510 Re: ASIAN, Inc. Dear Senator Gardner: I write to you as a member of the Board of ASIAN, Inc. to encourage you to support full funding (at the current enacted FY2017 level) of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) in FY2018, currently included the Department of Commerce Appropriations Act, 2018.1 I applaud the…

Ideally, it would be fair for all employees whose sweat equity increases the value of a private company to share in the ownership of that company. But under current tax law, this type of employee compensation policy can be prohibitively expensive. Employees must generally include stock compensation in their taxable income at grant or when the shares become substantially vested. Likewise, stock options are generally included in income upon exercise, which allows for some timing…

Under current law, there is a presumption that workers are employees, and the IRS will aggressively pursue collection activities against employer-taxpayers that inappropriately classify employees as independent contractors. There is a conspicuous lack of bright line tests, however, for permissible classification variations under both federal tax and labor law standards. Moreover, the states’ varying standards create additional disparities in treatment. The uncertainty and complexity associated with classifying workers subjects the employer to expensive lawsuits, employment…

Immigration is a valuable source of entrepreneurship and innovation in the tech community. This is demonstrated by the Silicon Valley and other tech-heavy regions’ heavy reliance on H1-B visas to bring skilled workers from other countries into their states. These visas are only available, however, to people migrating to the U.S. to work for established companies. Conversely, startup visas can help increase our nation’s human capital and economic output by attracting the best and brightest…