Advising Family Office Clients on Recurring Legal, Tax, and Business Issues

Description

Family offices are centralized entities focusing primarily on wealth management services for high net worth individuals and families and providing a variety of personalized services for the family, including tax, estate planning, investment, and charitable giving.

Depending on the nature of the family office (e.g., single-family vs. multiple-family family office), there is a range of compliance obligations relating to investment adviser regulation. Those obligations include possible SEC oversight, compliance programs, record retention, cybersecurity, and a plethora of other matters that SEC-regulated advisers must address.

However, the SEC exempts certain family offices from registering as investment advisers or commodity pool operators and from certain related compliance.

The family office is traditionally structured as a limited partnership or limited liability company to provide investment management, tax, accounting, and concierge services to family members and various family entities. Before the end of 2017, most family offices could not structure themselves in a particularly tax-efficient manner. Tax reform disallowed deductions under Code Section 212 but reduced the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, allowing for certain organizational and investment structures that can improve tax efficiency.

Listen as our experienced panel of attorneys explains and offers best practices for crucial legal issues in advising family offices.