Brown McCarroll Attorneys at Law

Every level of government has its own tax objectives, organization and statutes. The rules change regularly and interpreting them takes skill and insight. Our tax attorneys offer creative guidance that helps businesses, non-profit organizations, governmental entities and individuals achieve financial objectives while maximizing tax advantages.

Business-Oriented Solutions

Tax considerations are integral to many business decisions. From entity formation to business transactions and operations, tax issues can significantly affect your bottom line. Our tax law guidance centers on your practical business needs. We focus on offering sound advice to help you maximize tax advantages, minimize tax costs, and achieve your financial objectives.

Our tax attorneys work closely with our other practice teams, such as corporate and securities, health care, real estate, and estate planning to offer you more comprehensive advice on your range of legal needs.

Technical Knowledge

We rigorously follow all the innovations and changes in federal and state tax laws and as a result are able to answer your questions in optimal time. We also have a tax attorney who is licensed as a CPA. We have the experience to know what is important and ask the right questions upfront to answer your legal questions in a cost-effective manner.

Tax-Exempt Organizations

Our attorneys are highly skilled in all complex aspects of tax-exempt compliance, including unrelated business income issues, private benefit/private inurement issues, and tax-exempt bond financings. We assist clients with the often complicated tax exemption application process (Form 1023), as well as the annual information filing requirements (Form 990) for tax-exempt clients.

Our attorneys assist a variety of tax-exempt organizations, including:

• Major hospital systems
• Tax-exempt HMOs
• Medical research foundations
• Senior housing and long term care providers
• Private foundations
• Faith-based entities
• Homeowners associations
• Tax-exempt business associations
• Educational organizations as well as governmental entities and agencies
• Nonprofit political action committees.

For more information on the services we offer tax-exempt organizations, please visit our nonprofit organizations webpage.

Entity Formation

Choosing the right business structure is the foundation of good corporate planning, and our attorneys can help you understand the short- and long-term benefits of any particular entity.

There are many different forms a new company can take, including:

• Limited Liability Company (LLC)
• General Partnership (GP)
• Limited Partnership (LP)
• Registered Limited Liability Partnership (LLP)
• Series Limited Liability Company (Series LLC)
• C Corporation
• S Corporation
• Joint Venture
• Strategic Alliance

Our attorneys evaluate your particular situation and counsel you on which form is the best way to meet your financing needs while maximizing tax advantages.

Our work includes help implementing the appropriate management and organizational structure, whether your situation requires a straight forward structure or a creative variation. For example, we have structured entities that combine tax-exempt organizations in business arrangements with operations that generate taxable revenue. If a reorganization is necessary, we advise on entity conversions under the Texas Business Organizations Code.

Transactional Issues

Many privately owned small and mid-sized businesses rely on us for tax guidance in their everyday operations and in transactions such as mergers and acquisitions.

Because most business transactions, if not properly structured, have potential adverse tax consequences, we help business clients, including individuals who own businesses, structure transactions to avoid problems and to maximize business and tax benefits. Whether the issue is a merger or acquisition, real estate purchase or leasing, financing or restructuring, we can offer innovative strategies that give our clients the most favorable tax treatment of the deal.

As a result of Brown McCarroll’s strengths in health care and real estate law, our tax attorneys have substantial experience working on transactions in these areas.

Estate Tax Planning

Individuals and families look to us for estate planning assistance that emphasizes minimizing their tax burden.

The tax strategies we craft for our clients encompass effective ways to:

• Estimate and minimize estate tax liability exposure.
• Create a variety of trusts and lifetime gifts to shelter family assets and minimize tax impact, such as revocable living trusts, charitable trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, insurance trusts and generation-skipping trusts.
• Diversify investments in ways that structure the estate to qualify for payment of estate taxes during an extended period of years.
• Minimize the impact of the federal estate tax on a family business while transferring control to the next generation.