Tax Planning

Individual Tax Planning

In this practice area, we assist our clients in minimizing their Florida and federal individual tax liabilities. This often involves or includes:

+ Resolving questions about how the law applies to a client’s situation
+ Planning to defer taxes, through like-kind exchanges, contributions to qualified retirement plans, installment sales and other mechanisms
+ Planning to minimize or avoid Florida sales, documentary stamp, intangibles, and other taxes
+ Maximizing the use of favorable capital gains and qualified dividend rates of tax
+ International tax planning, including use of tax treaties, foreign earned income exclusions, U.S. taxation of nonresidents, FIRPTA, foreign trust taxation, withholding taxes, residency determinations, portfolio interest obligation planning, U.S. real property interest planning, international exchange of information, foreign tax credit planning
+ Tax reporting and compliance
+ Deduction limitations

Entity Planning

In this practice area, we assist our clients in minimizing their Florida and federal tax liabilities that relate to entities. This often involves or includes:

+ Determining the best or most appropriate entity to use
+ Entity formation, including corporations, LLC’s, partnerships, business trusts, and land trusts
+ Entity agreements, including operating agreements and partnership agreements structured to achieve tax, asset protection, and business objectives and benefits
+ Stock option plans and agreements, phantom stock arrangements,

Business Structuring

In this practice area, we assist our clients with structuring their businesses and transactions in a tax efficient manner. This often involves or includes:

+ Planning for business formation, redemption, and liquidation transactions
+ Structuring of purchase and sales of businesses and assets
+ Structuring and compliance with tax incentives and provisions relating to mergers and reorganizations
+ Advantageous use of agency and contractor agreements and royalty and licensing agreements
+ Use of compensation and other payment arrangements to reduce entity taxation

Retirement Planning

In this practice area, we assist our clients with their retirement planning issues, including:

+ Pensions, traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs
+ Nonqualified retirement planning
+ Insurance as a retirement plan
+ Contribution and distribution planning

International Business

In this area, we assist our clients with relevant international tax issues, including:

+ Planning for CFCs, PFICs, DISCs
+ Check-the-box planning and elections
+ Importer and exporter planning
+ International reorganizations, including Section 367 and inversion rules
+ Royalties and intangibles planning
+ Tax reporting and compliance
+ FATCA
+ Special provisions relating and air and shipping business
+ Section 482 and other limits on related party transactions
+ Earnings stripping
+ Foreign tax credit planning

Preimmigration And Expatriation

In this area of practice, we assist taxpayers who plan to come to or leave the U.S. This typically involves the:

+ Review and structuring of holdings, businesses, assets, and circumstances for persons contemplating immigrating into the U.S.
+ Review and planning of for persons contemplating expatriating from the U.S.

Jenna Rubin presents at ABA National Symposium

On May 12, 2023, Jenna Rubin presented at the 35th Annual Real Property Trust and Estate Law Section of the American Bar Association’s National CLE Conference in Washington DC. She took part in a panel discussion on “Black Tie Optional: The Eroding Formalities to Creating a Valid Will.”

24 Feb 2022

Article by Charles and Jenna Rubin featured on cover of Florida Bar Journal

An article written by Charles Rubin and Jenna Rubin is featured on the cover of this month’s Florida Bar Journal and can be found here.

27 Dec 2021

Jenna Rubin appointed to ACTEC Fiduciary Litigation Committee

Gutter Chaves is pleased to announce that Jenna G. Rubin has been appointed to the Fiduciary Litigation Committee of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC) for the 2022-2023 year.

14 Dec 2021

FBAR Case Reversed – Nonwillful Filing Penalties Based on Number of Accounts Not Reported

Back in 2000, I wrote here about a case where a taxpayer did not report multiple foreign accounts on an FBAR. The question for the court was whether the $10,000 penalty for a nonwillful failure to file meant $10,000 per return not filed, or $10,000 per account not reported on the return. For . . .

22 Nov 2021

Of Spousal Gifts and the Substance Over Form Doctrine

U.S. spouses each have a unified credit that allows for substantial gifting to third parties without requiring the payment of gift tax. What happens if one spouse has assets to be gifted away, but that spouse does not have sufficient remaining unified credit exemption to cover the gift and wants to use the exemption of the other spouse?

At times, the spouses can agree to split the gift for gift tax purposes, which treats 1/2 the gift as coming from each spouse. This allows the unified credit of the spouse not making the gift to be used to avoid gift tax on the 1/2 that such spouse is treated as making. However, it can be an imperfect solution if the spouse with the assets does not have enough unified credit to offset his or her 1/2 of the gift.

Oftentimes, the parties may contemplate having the party with the assets transfer them by gift to the other spouse (a tax-free gift under the gift tax marital deduction), and then the receiving spouse makes a gift to the third party applying his or her own unified credit. The question in these circumstances is whether the IRS will respect the transaction and allow the receiving spouse’s unified credit to be applied to the gift to the third party, or whether it would seek to apply the “substance over form” doctrine to treat the gift as coming from the spouse who transferred the assets to the other spouse and does not have enough unified credit to fully cover the gift.

This is not a black and white issue. On one end of the spectrum. . .