Tax

Taxes are unavoidable, and tax laws and regulations can be complicated. Taft’s Tax attorneys work diligently to provide clients with sophisticated, direct, common sense legal advice to keep their businesses operating efficiently. Our attorneys translate tax law, regulations, and associated ramifications in a way that is understandable to our clients.

Attorneys on our Tax team are involved in all aspects of the firm’s transactional practice and can draw upon their experience in corporate, partnership, and limited liability law; state and local tax issues; mergers and acquisitions, and other related areas. Our practical economic and tax solutions are specifically tailored to our clients’ needs, whether for routine tax audits, appeals, and litigation or for domestic or foreign tax planning.

Our clients include public and private corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships, financial institutions, domestic joint ventures, new business ventures, non-profit organizations, and individuals. We represent traditional manufacturing and service businesses, high-tech businesses, real estate developers, health care companies, sports teams, national banks, and many others. We often provide critical advice regarding the structuring of major transactions to help our clients achieve the financial results they seek.

Partnerships, Limited Liability Companies and S Corporations

Our corporate and tax attorneys work closely with clients, advising them with respect to partnerships, as well as limited liability companies and limited liability partnerships that are classified for tax purposes as partnerships. Our clients include closely-held entities, such as S corporations, family and development partnerships, and limited liability companies. We provide counsel to clients that are classified as disregarded entities for tax purposes. We advise them with respect to compliance and planning.

We have extensive experience with disguised sales, restructurings and sales, tax-free rollovers, tax disputes, debt finance allocations, and the tax effects of contributing or distributing appreciated property from partnerships and limited liability companies. We also structure complicated economic arrangements that involve special allocations of income and loss and multiple classes of ownership interest.

Venture Capital and Private Equity

Our venture capital and private equity attorneys regularly work with members from our tax team to help clients acquire start-up and established companies and form private equity funds. Our experience is also required with investors who are tax-exempt entities concerned with unrelated business taxable income or foreign parties.

We help with the structuring of portfolio company acquisitions, especially when complicated economic arrangements exist, including structures granting management profits interest and sponsors carried interests in the venture. We work with attorneys in our bankruptcy group and other practices to structure acquisitions of companies in workout situations and deal with issues such as forgiveness of debt income.

Real Estate

Members of the group assist our real estate attorneys with matters such as:

  • Acquisition and development of real property, including tax advice regarding the structure of ownership entities and joint venture transactions.
  • Financing of real property assets, including mortgage loans and new market tax credit transactions.
  • Sale/leasebacks.
  • Sales.
  • Like-kind exchanges (including tenant-in-common arrangements).
  • Opportunity Zone Planning.
  • Other dispositions of real estate assets.

We also assist in the restoration of historic buildings and their conversion into residential condominiums.

Nonprofit and Tax-Exempt Organizations

Taft has extensive experience in advising nonprofit organizations, foundations, and tax-exempt entities in all aspects of their organization and operation. We counsel these clients on a wide range of issues, including governance, foundations, endowment funds, charitable giving and planned giving programs, and fundraising, as well as tax matters such as unrelated business income, intermediate sanctions, and joint ventures. Taft Tax attorneys also advise individuals, corporations, and tax-exempt entities on tax efficient structures for charitable gift planning, including charitable trusts and private foundations. See our Nonprofit and Tax-Exempt Organizations group for more information.

Related Practices

Related Industries

Awards

  • Ranked National Tier 1 by Best Lawyers® “Best Law Firms” 2024 for Tax Law

  • Ranked in Chambers USA Guide for Tax in Ohio (2020 – present)

Notable Matters

  • Developed a TIF economic development strategy for leveraging private development into public infrastructure projects.
  • Established a TIF District and financing strategy to finance a wind turbine for an industrial development area.
  • Developed a TIF District to attract a manufacturing company and strategy for using tax-exempt industrial revenue bonds and other state and local tax incentives to finance the project.
  • Utilized a TIF strategy for a multimillion-dollar mixed-use development and adaptive reuse of a building.
  • Assisted a developer in acquiring and redeveloping an existing inner city building for a mixed-use retail, office and residential development with financing partially obtained through an NMTC loan and that also involved federal and state historic tax credits.

All Tax Professionals

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