Hello everybody, this is Steve Goren and welcome to my quarterly newsletter seminar. This one is titled "Self-Employment Tax and LLC's New Partnership Audit Rules: Selected Issues from Hector Linkers". We're going to cover all three topics. For those of you in New York, New Jersey, or Indiana, you will need to verify your attendance. Three code words will appear, and you should write them down as you will need to provide them in the verification form, including the login instructions sent to you. All CLE questions should go to le-TC at Thompson Coburn com. First, I'm going to talk about self-employment tax and LLC's. Then, I'll get into the new partnership audit rules that will take effect next year. Finally, we'll discuss selected issues from Heckerling. To start, I will give you the first code word, which you need to write down for your CLE credit. The code word is "round peg," and it relates to the topic of fitting a round peg into a square hole, specifically regarding self-employment tax and LLC's. Next, I will cover the limited partner exclusion in self-employment tax. I will discuss the leading case in this area and also touch on a recent CCA. But before we dive too deep, let's briefly discuss the limited partner exclusion. There is a statutory exclusion from self-employment tax for limited partners in a limited partnership. Just a quick reminder about how self-employment tax works. For an employee, FICA tax is paid at a rate of 7.65% on earnings up to around $117,000, with an increase in 2017. After that, the tax is 2.9%, which is the Medicare tax. When earnings reach $250,000, the tax rate becomes 3.8%, which includes a supplemental Medicare tax. For self-employed individuals, such as sole proprietors or general partners in a partnership, they are responsible for...