Steven is a member of the firm’s Corporate Department.
Steven practices in the areas of business law, taxation and domestic and international estate planning. Steven is a commentator on tax issues for the Boston Globe, Business Week and other publications.
Education
- University of Pennsylvania, B.S. in Economics, 1967
- Suffolk University Law School, JD, Law Review, 1972
- Boston University School of Law, LLM., Taxation , 1978
Admissions
- Courts of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
- S. Tax Court
Memberships
- Boston Bar Association
- American Bar Association
Estate and asset planning
- Creation and administration of various private foundations of up to $10 million.
- Counsel to estate of U.S. citizen and French resident with respect to examination of French inheritance tax.
- Counsel to individuals and families of various levels of wealth up to $90 million assisting them to plan for wealth transfer through QPRT’s, irrevocable insurance trusts, private annuities, limited liability companies, charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, qualified domestic trusts, and GRAT’s.
- Counsel to closely-held, family businesses advising them in approaches to equitably treat both active and inactive members and general succession issues including the drafting of buy-sell agreements.
- Counsel to individuals in advance of marriage including the drafting of “living together” agreements and prenuptial agreements.
- Counsel to fiduciaries of estates in connection with probate administration of varying sizes.
- Counsel to estates of various sizes to assist in administration with related to assets located in various locations throughout the world.
- Personal representative to various estates holding diverse assets including private equity funds, early stage companies and various real estate interests.
Tax
- Represented a corporation through a trial in the Tax Court to preserve deductions taken related to forbearance fees.
- Represented individual taxpayers leading to settlement a few weeks prior to trial in Tax Court.
- Represented foreign individual taxpayers to effectively plan for their acquisitions of real estate in the U.S.
- Counsel to subcontractor in the sale of his business for $65 million structured as a sale of shares of an S corporation under §338(h)(10) and subsequent defense of the plan during an IRS examination resulting in “no change”.
- Various §1031 exchanges of real estate.
- Represented food distribution corporations on Appeals within the IRS involving $500,000 of tax in dispute.
- Represented various taxpayers to successfully resolve Offers in Compromise in matters exceeding $17 million.
- Represented many taxpayers to compromise criminal tax exposure related to failure to report income from foreign bank accounts and to file foreign bank account reports.
- Counsel to various not-for-profit organizations including private foundations and Section 501(c)(6) trade organizations, and his experience includes the defense of challenges by the IRS of their statuses as tax exempt.
- Super Lawyer in 2004, 2006, and 2007
- Top Rated Lawyer in Tax Law by American Lawyer Media and Martindale-Hubbell, 2013