The Corporate (or LLC) Veil: “sufficient corporate formalities were followed”

An interesting article at Lexology, regarding the fact that, as the title says, “Creditors Find Piercing the Corporate Veil is Not So Easy.” The piece tells the story of three different cases involving disgruntled plaintiffs suing either a corporation (2 cases) or an LLC (1 case), under the so-called “piercing the veil” theory. That theory […]

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To C or LLC? That’s Today’s Question

I just read an interesting post over at The Startup Law Blog, a post written six years ago. The writer lists “12 Reasons For A Startup Not To Be An LLC.” The key word in that post is “startup,” and key thing to understand is the author’s audience, largely captured in the following paragraph from […]

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Get Your (Valuation) Discounts Now!

Two weeks ago, the Treasury Department released proposed IRS Code Section 2704 valuation regulations that, as proposed, will dramatically change the discounts currently allowed, including so-called minority and marketability discounts. Thus, gift and estate tax planning strategies that rely on such discounts to transfer property from one individual to another via the use of limited […]

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Business Start-Ups: Which Entity is Best

I’ve been reading Steven B. Gorin’s massive “book” (he calls the 1053 page PDF a “mere compilation of preliminary ideas”) titled Structuring Ownership of Privately Owned Businesses: Taxation and Estate Planning Implications. I’ve yet to do a deep dive–again, it’s 1053 pages of very dense, complicated reading–but I will. And I will because it’s chock […]

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Some Things I Learned Answering Questions on a Forum for Asking Legal Questions

So I sometimes forget that everybody’s smart, just on different subjects. For example, I don’t know much about physics. My teachers tried, but my head could only hold so much gravity and speed of light and such. Well, today I was online in an online forum where non-lawyers posed legal questions to attorneys. These were […]

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Estate & Business Planning: Facts Matter. If They’re Not on Your Side, You’re in Trouble.

I’ve just finished reading the Estate of Purdue case, a tax court case decided in December. The case is interesting as an introduction to sophisticated tax planning strategies–FLLC, trusts, and all that. However, the real lesson from this case–and others like it–is that facts matter to courts. In this case, the IRS was contending that […]

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