Taxation and Tax Planning

Skilled Virginia Tax Attorneys

The tax law attorneys of WAW represent individuals and businesses in a broad range of tax-related issues, from tax planning to audits, from business formation to retirement planning. Our tax attorneys will help you evaluate complex tax-related issues that affect your personal finances or your business. We offer counsel on a wide range of local, state, and federal tax matters, including sales and use taxes, personal and corporate income taxes, and estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer taxes and are routinely called upon to advise clients in structuring mergers, acquisitions, and other business transactions. We also represent clients in tax audits and other federal, state, and local tax matters. Selected areas are as follows:

Individual Tax Planning: The key to effective individual tax planning is an advisor’s collective knowledge, attentiveness and responsiveness to current tax codes and regulations combined with the advisor’s ability to implement strategies tailored to individual clients.

WAW’s first goal is to understand our client’s overall and long-term objectives. Next, we implement unique and sophisticated tax strategies designed to maximize the efficiency of our clients’ tax position as we help them achieve their overall and long-term objectives. Whether you are a business owner with concerns about income tax deductions or an individual who wants to put together a tailor-made retirement plan, you can rely on our tax attorneys for comprehensive tax planning services.

Estate & Gift Tax Planning: The optimum estate plan must factor in the most efficient method for reducing the overall tax burden, including capital gains tax, income tax, gift tax or estate tax.  Our estate tax planning attorneys work to understand our clients' overall estate planning and asset protection goals. Our firm provides services ranging from the preparation of wills and trusts to complicated equity shifting partnerships and business succession planning. We implement the most tax-efficient strategies to achieve our clients’ estate planning goals.

Succession Planning & Wealth Transfer: Lack of proper business succession planning can leave family-owned and privately held businesses vulnerable to high taxes and ownership disputes when the entrepreneur-owner of the firm retires or dies. WAW understands the unique issues entrepreneurs and their families face. Don't let the business or assets you worked a lifetime to build up disintegrate due to lack of proper planning. You can avoid potential problems in the future by contacting a WAW attorney.

Like estate and gift tax planning, succession planning and wealth transfer are strategies that allow you to control what happens to your assets. If you want the family business to stay in the family, we can plan for an orderly succession. One goal of succession planning and wealth transfer is to make sure a privately held or family-owned business remains viable. Our firm will develop a plan to ensure the long-term survival of the business, and to safeguard its value for your beneficiaries.

Our experienced succession planning attorneys can assist with:

•  Buy-sell agreements
• S-corporation planning
• C Corporation planning
• Partnership planning
•  Business valuation issues
• Business succession strategies
• Exit strategies
• Transfer of business stock
• Transfer of business assets

Non-Profit Organizations

Establishing and Maintaining Tax Exempt Status: To form a nonprofit, 501(c) organization, our attorneys will draft a trust instrument, corporate charter, articles of incorporation, articles of association or other appropriate document, and apply to the IRS for tax-exempt status. In order to maintain tax-exempt status, nonprofit organizations must meet strict IRS guidelines and file an annual tax-exempt return with the IRS. Our attorneys will make certain you know what you need to do, and what you need to report in order to continue to qualify for tax-exemption.

We form all types of nonprofit organizations, including:

• Churches and religious organizations
• Charitable organizations
• Political organizations
• Private foundations
• Associations, societies and clubs
• Business leagues or trade associations
• Agricutural or horticultural organizations