Moseley Law Review

When property owners do not pay their property tax bills, tax lien certificates can be a safe, collateralized complement to a balanced portfolio – but only if you have time, knowledge and the ability to reinvest your money when short-term certificates are redeemed early.

Business tax liens can hurt your finances, your credit and can possibly even put your business in jeopardy. “A tax lien can be devastating to you and you should do everything you can to avoid it,” says Barbara Weltman, attorney and author of J.K. Lasser’s Small Business Taxes.

Buying property at the County Treasurer’s tax deed auction sounds easy and profitable. However, during my 30 years of representing tax deed buyers, I have seen a multitude of mistakes made. I have written this article to help you avoid making the same mistakes I have seen.

It has been ten years since the IRS started winning big in foreign bank account cases. Some people have gone to prison, but the vast bulk of offshore accounts have been disclosed under the IRS programs designed for taxpayers to come forward. In fact, the IRS has collected over $10 billion in taxes and penalties, and more keeps coming in.

Reports of Foreign Financial and Bank Accounts (FBAR) have gained prominence since the Department of Justice began investigating the accounts of Swiss banks, starting with UBS almost a decade ago. Who must file FBARs? Many people who own foreign accounts hail from other countries, and the answer to this question is not always obvious.

Private equity and investment companies operate funds that pool the investments of anybody prepared to part with their money for a sustained period of time. The private equity firm takes this cash – often alongside a large portion of bank debt (making it a ‘leveraged buyout’, or ‘LBO’) – to buy companies or other assets with the goal of selling them on at a massive profit.

To understand what private equity lawyers do, you really have to take a step back and know what a private equity firm (ie, the PE lawyer’s client) does. Essentially, PE firms operate funds that pool the investments of pension funds and anybody else who has a lazy few million that they’re prepared to part with for a decade or so.