Bill’s practice focuses on tax-exempt organizations, charitable giving, estate planning and administration, individual and charitable trusts and personal tax planning.
Bill annually speaks at the Douglas W. Conner Advanced Estate Planning Administration Seminar and the Annual Trusts and Estates Seminar, sponsored by Virginia CLE.
Relevant Experience
- Advised individual clients on transfer tax reduction, probate avoidance, post-mortem planning with disclaimers and elections and suits to construe or modify wills and trusts.
- Formed numerous charities, business leagues, social welfare organizations, title-holders and other exempt entities and obtained federal, state and local tax exemptions for them.
- Assisted charities in obtaining definitive or advance rulings on public charity status and regaining that status after tentative adverse rulings by the IRS.
- Advised private foundations on applicable reporting criteria, self-dealing prohibitions, income distribution rules, investment restrictions, expenditure limitations and termination guidelines, as well as the substantial excise taxes used to enforce them.
- Counseled charities on planned giving, gift acceptance policies, professional fundraiser contracts, donor advised funds, state solicitation rules, charitable deduction substantiation issues, non-deductibility standards and other tax reporting and disclosure issues.
- Created exempt and taxable affiliates for hospitals, educational institutions, trade associations and other exempt entities; advised on unrelated business tax issues and structured joint ventures with other exempt organizations and for-profit entities.
- Advised charities and their directors on private inurement and intermediate sanctions issues, uses of endowments and other restricted gifts and questions involving corporate governance and fiduciary duties.
- Addressed client and professional groups on such topics as planned giving, unrelated business income tax, intermediate sanctions, private foundations and alternatives, wills and trusts, augmented estate and probate rules and fiduciary duty issues.