Steven Matthew Harper's Answers

Family Limited Partnership

Notwithstanding the above advice, all of which is correct, the general answer to your question is that a FLP is often used as a device to reduce someone's gross estate for purposes of minimizing estate tax liability upon his or her death. The way it works is that the owner of a business forms a FLP and transfers the business and all its assets to the FLP as a capital contribution. He then transfers ownership units (which are the equivalent of stock shares if we were talking about...

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Gifting property

You will need to consult a Washington attorney to discuss possible state sales, income, property and/or other tax ramifications. From a federal tax perspective, you may give gifts to family members of up to $12,000 each, per year, without being subject to the gift tax. There are also a number of various trust structures that could be established that may minimize your exposure to federal income tax. However, the use of trusts is an extremely complex issue with many fine details that must be...

Payments to foreign business

Because this is a very fact-specific area of the law, the answer depends on the specific circumstances of your company's arrangement with the Chinese company. For example, if the payments can be construed as income from the performance of technical services, then under these facts your company's withholding obligation would be zero, and the Chinese company would be subject to income tax in China at a rate of 25%, pursuant to the terms of the tax treaty that exists between China and the U.S....