Scott J. Bakal
Scott J. Bakal, co-chair of Neal Gerber Eisenberg’s Taxation practice group, finds tax-sensitive solutions to complex financial situations, business transactions, and estate planning matters. Scott works primarily with entrepreneurial companies and high net worth individuals, often focusing on international families and companies with cross-border operations. Scott strives to find the most elegant but simple solutions for the problems faced by sophisticated high net worth individuals and privately held companies operating in the U.S. or around the world.
Scott's experience includes the following:
- Representation of real estate funds owned in part by sovereign wealth funds.
- Representation of numerous offshore investors in their real estate investments and active U.S. business activities, in order to create structures that were both income tax and estate tax efficient.
- Representation of a hedge fund management company in connection with a capital investment by a leading private equity firm.
- Representation of an insurance brokerage firm in connection with the design and implementation of life insurance premium finance and life settlement programs.
- Representation of a real estate investment trust operating as an Angolan home mortgage lender.
- Representation of numerous clients who chose to participate in the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative, including finding exceptions to the penalty regime, where appropriate, for multiple clients who were told by other tax advisors that no option for avoiding penalties existed.
- Restructuring a controlling shareholder's position in a publicly held company in order for the shareholder's family to take advantage of available estate tax deferral provisions for certain concentrated holdings.
- Representation of numerous taxpayers in like-kind exchange transactions.
- Serving as an expert witness in a case before the U.S. Tax Court.
For a complete listing of Scott's representative matters, click here.
Scott has spoken at the American Bar Association - Tax Section, the Palm Beach Tax Institute, Chicago Bar Association and the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education on income tax matters and has served as an adjunct professor at IIT/Chicago-Kent College of Law. He is a member of the American Bar Association-Section of Taxation, the International Fiscal Association, and the Society of Trusts and Estate Practitioners.
Chicago, Illinois 60602-3801