Los Angeles Tax Planning Lawyers
The firm has a full-service tax practice capable of servicing virtually all the tax requirements and estate planning needs of its clients – whether incident to an essentially non-tax matter, such as the acquisition or sale of a business or real estate, or to a purely tax-oriented matter. The firm offers its clients up-to-date assistance with respect to the content and effect of new legislation with often wide ranging impact. Tax advice is provided to operating businesses of all sizes as well as to individuals, partnerships, corporations, trusts and estates and tax-exempt organizations (including pension and other deferred compensation plan trusts). We work closely with each client's accountant, insurance advisor, stockbroker or financial advisor, pension and profit sharing plan administrator or other financial advisor.
Clients are regularly advised on the myriad of tax questions that arise in the course of corporate and business transactions. These questions can include determining whether a transaction should be structured as a taxable sale, involving increased potential for depreciation by the purchaser, or a tax-free transaction ranging in complexity from a standard statutory merger to a reverse-triangular merger. Other examples are the structuring and drafting of buy-sell agreements to achieve desired income, estate, sales and property tax benefits, planning and capitalization of new corporations, determining the desirability of S corporation elections, and avoiding personal holding company and accumulated earnings penalty taxes.
The firm offers tax advice as an important adjunct to a variety of Los Angeles real estate matters. Services extend to counseling real estate partnerships (including special allocation questions under the complex regulatory limitations), structuring of transactions to qualify as tax-deferred exchanges, minimizing the potential of real property tax reassessments on transfers of property and shifts of ownership interests, and structuring installment sales to defer taxable income and avoid the restrictions on such sales to related parties.
The firm advises clients on the effective use of programs such as pension and profit sharing plans, incentive stock option plans, deferred compensation, consulting agreements, loans and other types of compensation planning. Clients consult with the firm concerning plan loans, rollovers and avoiding potentially prohibited transactions and the problems raised by below-market interest loans, as well as the structuring of termination of and payments from employee benefit plans to avoid inherent tax traps.
Services to tax-exempt organizations encompass the initial obtaining of tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service and state taxing authorities, the structuring of the entity as a publicly supported charity exempt, when applicable, from the private foundation rules and counseling on the rules limiting or prohibiting transactions between the organization and its insiders or major contributors. Membership by the firm's attorneys on boards of tax-exempt organizations provides additional insight enabling the firm to better handle the problems faced by these unique entities.