Today's tax laws are an ever-expanding maze. Tax-related decisions can be especially difficult for owners of closely held and family-owned businesses, who must make decisions that impact both their business and their family. Wealthy individuals and high-income earners also face this tangled, and apparently incomprehensible maze of laws and regulations.
We understand that you need to minimize your tax burden and protect your wealth - in a way that serves both your personal and business needs. Reish & Reicher's tax practice responds to this need.
We were initially organized as a tax firm, and we view our tax practice as a key element of our representation of businesses and individuals. All of our tax and estate planning attorneys are experienced tax practitioners. Many of our senior tax attorneys are also certified public accountants, which gives you the dual benefit of legal and accounting advice. Whenever possible, however, we use younger lawyers for research or other appropriate tasks. This enables us to solve your problems more cost-effectively and efficiently.
Reish & Reicher enjoys an outstanding reputation for tax planning for owners of closely-held and family-owned businesses, executives, professionals, real estate investors, and other successful individuals.
AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION
Business and Individual Tax Planning
Saving money on taxes is an important consideration behind many of the decisions made by businesses and individuals. Preventive tax planning can save you and your business money.
To achieve optimum results, you must plan before you act. You must consider, in advance, the tax ramifications of your actions, for matters such as: starting, expanding, buying or selling a business; or significant life changes, such as marriage, divorce, and retirement.
We work with you to provide answers and insights targeted toward saving taxes, both now and in the future. We communicate the options and match our recommendations to your specific goals and circumstances.
Some of the ways we have assisted clients:
- Advising our client how to avoid income tax in the sale of their business for millions of dollars.
- Advising our client on how to save substantial income taxes through incorporation, after having operated the business for several years as a partnership.
- Advising our client how to minimize income tax results in connection with the settlement payment in a complex litigation matter.
- Advising trustees on how to minimize income taxes both for the trust and for the trust beneficiaries.
- Advising our clients on the use of retirement planning to defer and minimize income taxes
Estate Planning and Probate
If you have a closely held or family-owned business, estate planning is critical to preserve and protect your estate from a substantial tax bite. Death taxes can deplete an estate, subtracting as much as half of the assets before distribution to beneficiaries. They can force the sale of a business, despite the wishes and best interests of the survivors.
For financially successful individuals, estate planning can make a substantial difference in the legacy for family members and in how much privacy is provided concerning estate assets. Our estate planning attorneys counsel you on the available options, such as family limited partnerships and charitable trusts. We also prepare:
- Personal residence trusts
- GRATs
- Life insurance trusts
- Living trusts
- Wills
- Durable powers of attorney for healthcare and property
Each of these instruments is tailored to your specific objectives, based on your family and your needs. We also handle probate and trust administration; pre- and post-mortem income and estate tax planning; and federal estate and gift tax returns.
In addition, we advise partnerships, closely held businesses, and professional groups on the need for buy-sell agreements and related issues, including the use of life insurance in those agreements.
Some of the ways we have assisted clients:
- Structuring a family business in a family with four children, so that following the retirement or death of the parents one child has control of the business, yet all four children are treated fairly and equally, even though 50 percent of the family's wealth is in the business.
- Using a family-limited partnership to own commercial real estate in order to achieve wealth transfers to family members at a 60% discount from market value - while the parent maintains full control of the property.
- Separating real estate interests from a family-owned corporation to minimize eventual estate taxes.
- Planning before death for the sale of a company where none of the five children or the wife want to take it over and where a large estate tax liability would result from the value of the corporation at death.
- Filing actions against an individual who was abusing his position as trustee of a trust, resulting in a return of a significant amount of assets to the trust and the appointment of a corporate fiduciary to replace the individual.
Asset Protection Planning
In today's world, a lawsuit judgment can wipe out a lifetime's accumulation of assets. We help our clients structure the ownership of their assets so that an unexpected lawsuit cannot devastate their financial well-being. By using domestic and foreign trusts, and by organizing assets so that the law's protection is used to your advantage, and not the creditor's, planning can protect pension benefits, your home, other real estate investments, stocks, bonds, and so forth.
As with many other services we provide, planning is the key, and we are well-practiced in advising our clients how to plan to protect their assets to the maximum extent of the law.
Some of the ways we have assisted clients:
- Designing and implementing domestic and foreign irrevocable trusts to provide estate and income tax savings, while also increasing the protection of assets from possible claims of future creditors or lawsuits.
- Restructured a client's retirement plan account to be fully exempt from creditors under Federal and California law.
- Prepared and implemented a foreign trust to protect selected assets from claims of future creditors.
- Prepared and implemented tiered limited liability entities and limited partnerships to insulate assets from claims of future creditors.
- Designed specialized California irrevocable trust to protect assets from future creditors, while achieving income, gift and estate tax advantages.
- Split up and repositioned corporate entities' assets so that lawsuits against the corporation could not reach certain actual assets of the corporation.
Probate and Trust Litigation
- Will contests
- Trust litigation
Some of the ways we have assisted our clients:
- Prosecuted and defended actions on behalf of heirs and interested parties to set aside wills, trusts and/or inter vivos gifts.
For more information about the services of our Tax, Estate Planning and Probate practice, please contact INFO-RR@reish.com or phone (310) 478-5656.
