Tax Planning for Real Estate

Turner Padget’s Tax Planning for Real Estate attorneys have significant experience and expertise in counseling real estate owners, developers, and investors.  Our representations typically involve advising our clients with regard to the tax aspects of real estate transactions and in the development and implementation of creative and practical solutions to the unique tax problems our clients face.

During the pre-acquisition and development phase, we regularly advise and assist clients with regard to selecting and forming the appropriate type of entity for real estate ownership.  Our advice focuses on helping the client choose the entity structure that will provide the most tax advantages while also meeting our clients’ non-tax, business objectives.  Our attorneys thereafter continue to work with our owner, developer, and investor clients to identify tax efficient ownership and exit strategies such as conversion of ownership entity status, conservation easements, and I.R.C. Section 1031 “like kind” exchanges.

Several of our attorneys have advanced degrees in taxation and are certified specialists through the Supreme Court of South Carolina.  We pride ourselves in the depth and breadth of knowledge and experience of our group’s attorneys.  Part of this knowledge comes from staying on top of legislative and industry developments.  This knowledge and expertise facilitates our use of sophisticated solutions that can be integrated with a client’s estate plan or to accomplish charitable objectives.

Experience

  • Represented hundreds of clients in structuring and closing tax-deferred, “like kind” exchanges and reverse exchanges under the safe harbor provisions of Internal Revenue Code Section 1031 and Rev. Proc. 2000-37 respectively.
  • Advised client in regard to, and closed, two apartment complex development projects involving low-income housing tax credits and the Housing Credit Exchange Program promulgated under Section 1602 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
  • Served as landowner and land trust counsel in negotiating, drafting, and closing purchased and donated conservation easement transactions during the previous three years involving well in excess of ten thousand acres of real property and over ten million dollars in state and federal tax incentives.
  • Designed and implemented numerous strategies using, among other things, combinations of limited liability companies (LLCs), family limited partnerships (FLPs), charitable remainder trusts (CRTs), and intentionally defective grantor trusts (IDGTs) to minimize the income tax and estate tax burdens associated with certain types of real property while also facilitating the transfer of that property or the value associated with it to subsequent generations.
  • Designed a Charitable Lead Trust to which a successful physicians' group contributed its medical office building, thus creating an income tax deduction.  The purchaser of the practice leased the office building back with rent that enabled the building to be transferred to the physicians’ children at the end of the trust term at a value substantially higher than the original value, without incurring a gift tax.