Business, Tax & Estate Planning

Encompassing a wide range of experience, Schwartz Cooper’s Business, Tax and Estate Planning attorneys focus on a broad range of integrated and comprehensive practice areas directed toward the firm's individual clients, families and businesses. We employ an interdisciplinary approach that enables us to effectively meet all of our clients' personal and business needs.

Business and Tax Planning

Our tax clients represent virtually all sectors of the United States and foreign economies including manufacturing, distribution, financial services, securities and commodities, sports and entertainment, transportation and other service industries, commercial real estate, and luxury goods. Our tax attorneys are involved in a number of industry-related organizations and are well-versed in the specialized tax rules governing particular industries.

Our lawyers have extensive experience in the tax planning and structuring of limited partnerships, limited liability companies, syndications, public and private charitable organizations, and joint ventures, as well as “C” and “S” corporations. In addition to organizing and structuring, we also are intimately involved with mergers and acquisitions (both acquisitions and sales between unrelated parties as well as the restructuring of the internal operations of affiliated groups), reorganizations, divestitures, spin-offs, liquidations, stock and other asset sales and distributions, leveraged buyouts, workouts, bankruptcy and other restructurings, real estate investment trust and umbrella-partnership-REIT transactions, joint venture and partnership transactions, and the issuance of debt and equity securities. Our clients often rely upon our tax opinions in structuring large, complex transactions where it is not feasible to seek an advance ruling from the Internal Revenue Service. In addition, our tax attorneys also have significant experience in obtaining private letter rulings and other technical guidance from the IRS with respect to specific transactions.

Our tax attorneys have significant experience advising clients on a variety of international business activities and tax matters, including both the taxation of foreign entities and individuals in the United States and the taxation by foreign countries of United States businesses and individuals. Our international tax practice encompasses a wide variety of transactions, including overseas business structures for start-up operations and acquisitions to maximize the beneficial tax use of losses and opportunities for deferral of United States taxation on foreign earnings, and to minimize taxation on transfers outside the United States, financings, foreign reorganizations and divestitures, and joint venture arrangements involving both foreign and domestic entities. Our attorneys are often called upon to counsel clients on highly complex and specialized federal tax rules applicable to United States businesses operating internationally, including transfer pricing, tax treaties, foreign tax credits and various limitations thereof, controlled foreign corporations and passive foreign investment company rules, and foreign sales corporations. Additionally, our attorneys have been responsible for the planning and implementation, with the assistance of experienced foreign counsel, of a variety of international tax structures designed to minimize the imposition of non-United States income and other tax throughout the world.

Tax Controversy Matters

We have a tax controversy practice that involves tax negotiation and litigation on all income, estate and gift tax issues. In a related vein, we also have a growing estate and trust controversy practice which encompasses complex negotiations and litigation involving contested trust and estate matters, including challenges to the governing instrument, construction suits, breach of fiduciary duty claims and guardianships.

Estate Planning

We are actively engaged in providing estate planning and business succession planning services to individuals and families throughout the United States and the rest of the world. Each client and family presents a unique set of personal and financial circumstances that require a carefully tailored estate plan. By taking an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to estate planning, we have been able to address clients’ business and personal needs in a way that minimizes future income, estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer taxes -- maximizing the benefits to an entire family while serving the individual needs of family members.

We assist our clients in formulating and implementing their planning objectives through not only wills, trusts, and powers of attorney, but also sophisticated leveraged asset transfer techniques and asset protection devices such as irrevocable life insurance trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, family limited partnerships and intra-family sales. We counsel our family business owner clients on alternatives for transferring ownership and control to the next generation, and solving liquidity concerns associated with estate taxes.

Additionally, our group focuses on a number of special areas, including asset protection strategies, elder law, “special needs” and disability planning, charitable planning, and life insurance planning.

In addition, assisting families (or individuals) with net worth ranging from several million of dollars to tens of billions of dollars, the firm has come to learn that certain clients have more of a global than national presence and are thus able to adopt investment strategies that transcend national boundaries. Although investment opportunities for such families increase, the location of assets and spread of family members across the globe raise the bar of complexity in their personal or “home office” tax and organizational planning. It is in this complex arena that the firm has focused extensive study and efforts, developing “holistic” international income, capital, estate, inheritance, and gift planning solutions to high net worth clients/families with assets (typically) outside of the country of their permanent domicile and in need of individually-tailored solutions to the problems presented. In each such case, we work closely with the client’s banking relationship managers and financial planners (including those of the major German, Canadian and Swiss banks) to tailor the right solutions for their individual needs. In this regard, we represent on an on-going basis some of the world’s greatest wealth, including those of multi-billion dollar families with assets spread throughout the world.

Probate and Trust Administration

We are actively engaged in all aspects of the administration of large and complex estates and trusts. In addition to the administration process, we are regularly involved in the preparation of federal estate tax and income tax returns and have experience in representing estates in federal audits. We also may be called upon to devise creative post-mortem tax planning strategies to reduce both transfer and income taxes.

Representative Matters

Assisted a foreign multi-national corporation in connection with its acquisition of a publicly-traded United States group of consolidated corporations.
Represented a wealthy family in connection with its tax-wise, philanthropic activities, including charitable gifts aggregating as much as $60 million in a single year.
Assisted numerous sports celebrities with virtually all of their personal planning needs, including estate and insurance planning, transactional matters, income tax issues and litigation needs.
Developed tax-sensitive acquisition programs for several real estate investment trusts, including creative techniques which minimize the adverse tax consequences for persons from whom they acquire real estate.
Planned and implemented complicated “like-kind” exchange programs.
Developed and implementated creative tax-oriented techniques designed to take publicly traded professional services companies private using leveraged employee stock ownership plans.
Represented real estate joint venture development partners in connection with the establishment, operation, and dissolution of their respective joint ventures.
Developed and implemented “synthetic” structures designed to achieve business and tax efficiencies similar to a spin-off of unwanted assets or subsidiaries where more traditional spin-off structures are unavailable.
Assisted a domestic group of companies in connection with their purchase of companies from bankrupt corporate estates and their subsequent management of purchased assets.
Represented various real estate developers and other owners in connection with the restructuring of hundreds of millions of dollars in secured and unsecured debt.
Developed and implementated creative techniques involving tax-wise charitable giving, family limited partnerships and limited liability companies, and techniques designed to reduce the imposition of United States estate, gift and generation-skipping taxes.