Structuring and Tax

Galaniuk Law assists in the structuring of your transactions under consideration of the German American tax environment. Galaniuk Law helps especially small and mid sized and family businesses develop tax efficient business/transaction structures for the US and German market.

The Background:

International tax planning can be very challenging and expensive. Tax is usually only one aspect of a larger set of facts and circumstances. The business deal, documentation, compliance and visa aspects e.g. are often more important than – and often irreconcilable with – the tax aspects. It may also be difficult to find advisory that is both cost effective and able to competently unify important expertise. Because tax policy is grounded in economic and financial principles, an accountant may need to work together with a lawyer. Hence clients are often urged to hire both a global accounting firm and a law firm together. But this may be prohibitively expensive for small businesses and clients. These clients need an alternative.

The Solution:

GL offers a viable alternative. He can prioritize the objectives, conduct the relevant financial analysis and develop compliant structures. Attorney Galaniuk is able to offer this added value with reduced expense and administration to clients due to his unique 10 years of experience as a finance professional. During this time he regularly analyzed business acquisitions and financial statements and modeled capital structures and cash flow scenarios that integrated dedicated tax structure reports. His degree in finance underpins this practical expertise.

The Issues:

Double taxation avoidance. GL is skilled at assisting clients avoid double taxation. Double taxation may occur on at least two levels: (I) when both USA and Germany tax the same profits/income, and (II) when one jurisdiction taxes income on an entity level (corporate profits) and then again at the shareholder level when the profits are distributed. The double taxation treaty (USA/Germany), principles of limited tax obligation status, partnership transparency principles, and certain national tax laws, for example, may often provide a sound basis to avoid double taxation. Indeed, often standard models and structures have been developed against the backdrop of the provisions of the German American double taxation treaty (oriented around the OECD Model Tax Convention).

Capitalization and financing. GL helps develop tax efficient capital structures and helps steer around tax pitfalls, such as exclusion of interest deductibility, constructive dividends and constructive contributions and gift and inheritance tax pitfalls.

Transfer pricing / Intercompany agreements. GL (I) assists clients’ internal teams in developing documentation and compliance policies to best meet regulatory requirements in this audit intensive area, and (II) drafts commercial intercompany agreements designed inter alia to meet the arm’s length dealing standard (tax law), corporate benefit doctrine (fiduciary/agency law) and to avoid an undervalue transaction (insolvency law).

Reporting / Compliance requirements. GL identifies client’s reporting and compliance requirements on corporate, partnership and personal income taxation levels.