TELESEMINAR: Tax Pitfalls and Opportunities in Real Estate Workouts

August 31, 2010
12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
1.00 MCLE hours

Telephone

One of the most consequential and often negative outcomes of a real estate workout is the tax consequences. The property owner or developer may negotiate a workout with a creditor to reduce the principal amount or restructure periodic payments, but it’s often at the cost of substantial adverse tax consequences, including the recognition of substantial cancellation of indebtedness income that scuttles the goal of financial relief. Structure in this area is paramount – how you structure and time the workout can make all the difference in how much income the property owner must recognize, if any, and when. This program will provide real estate and business transactional counsel who are not tax specialists with a guide to planning for optimal tax outcomes in real estate workouts. The program is designed for real estate attorneys, state and local tax practitioners and construction lawyers with intermediate to advanced levels of practice experience.
 
Highlights:
 
  • Planning to avoid bad tax outcomes in real estate workouts
  • Amount of cancellation of indebtedness (COD) income depending on whether the debt was recourse or non-recourse
  • Techniques to defer or exclude COD income for the property owner
  • Tax consequences of short sales v. foreclosures and insolvency v. bankruptcy
  • Debt-for-equity exchanges, transfers to lenders, abandonment, forfeiture, and Like-Kind Exchanges
 
For more information about the new ISBA Teleseminar programs, please visit: http://www.isba.org/cle/teleseminar
 
Program Speaker:
Lou Weller, Deloitte Tax, LLP, San Francisco
 
 

Lou Weller is a principal in the San Francisco office of Deloitte Tax, LLP and serves as National Director of Real Estate Transaction Planning. He has extensive experience designing and implementing strategies for real estate acquisitions, transfers, exchanges, leases, financing, and work-outs. Before joining Deloitte, he practiced real estate, business and tax law for more than 20 years. He formerly served as the chair of the Real Estate Committee of the ABA’s Tax Section and is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel. He is also co-author of the treatise “Real Property Exchanges (3rd ed.),” published by California Continuing Education of the Bar. Mr. Weller received his B.A., cum laude, from Yale University and his J.D. and Masters in Public Policy from the University of California at Berkeley.

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