Professional Services Firms

Your industry is our industry.

Miller Kaplan has extensive experience and a special affinity for the needs of our professional services firm clients. We are particularly proud of the diverse range of professionals and partnerships we regularly work with and the long-held trust our colleagues place in our firm. Our clients include:

• Lawyers and Law Firms
• Architects
• Engineers
• Dentists
• Doctors and Doctors Groups

Our services include tax preparation and compliance as well as tax planning and strategies for wealth management. We offer expert tax controversy and tax policy support for our clients and their industry groups. We offer a wide range of accounting support for routine functions as well as special projects, including reviews of internal controls and operations.

Strategies in Financial Planning and Partnership Management

When advising on wealth management issues for individual professionals, we provide insights and strategies into balancing professional and personal wealth accrual goals.

In addition, our partners offer consulting services to help manage partnership issues. These may include planning for firm growth and partnership succession, mitigating the risks of dissolution, as well as establishing and maintaining partner compensation systems. The overriding goal is to create the financial infrastructure, and financial peace of mind, to maximize business efficiency and minimize risks and disruptions. This allows clients to devote their attention to serving their own clients and furthering their professional achievements.

Law Firms & Legal Services Firms

With exceptional tax attorneys and accountants on staff, Miller Kaplan can leverage many years of experience relevant to the “business of law.” We provide all the tax, accounting, and consulting services required by a law firm and its partners.

Our services have included sole proprietorship, partnership and corporation income and other tax returns, assisting the CFO or Controller in calculating partner distributions, providing consulting and compliance work for retirement and other benefit plans, and providing partners with seamless tax compliance and consulting services. We support the internal accounting functions within law firms and can provide assistance or fully out-sourced information return reporting and payroll compliance services. We have sought rulings from the National Office of the Internal Revenue Service on tax issues related to law firm structure, legal fees, and costs. We have helped law firms form and dissolve. We have also authored articles and presented CLEs to lawyers and law firms on subjects ranging from structuring attorney’s fees to the ethics of billing and supervising the work of others.

Law firm clients may choose to retain us for select services or for the provision of an integrated package of services, including:

• Entity choice consulting and collaboration with firm counsel in vetting partnership and other
  documents
• Pension plan audits, compliance, consulting, and document review
• Partner compensation planning and calculations
• Support to the CFO or Controller
• Information return reporting and withholding compliance, including but not limited to FATCA
  compliance
• Partner and other senior employee income tax compliance and planning
• Consulting on firm acquisition, severance, and related packages
• Consulting on transactions and litigation for the benefit of the law firm’s clients
• Consulting on settlements and judgments and the tax consequences to the firm and its clients
• Expert witness and litigation support
• Receivership and Bankruptcy Trustee support

With our national expertise in the taxation of settlements, judgments, and the funds of money established to resolve claims, we bring an in-depth understanding of the issues faced by firms engaged in complex litigation. We also understand the needs of firms with multiple offices in different states and foreign tax jurisdictions and have experience serving both plaintiff and defense counsel.

We have long-standing and positive relationships with lawyers and the legal community throughout the nation and know what it takes to successfully serve our legal industry clients.

Our partners have served as expert witnesses in a variety of financial and legal disciplines and one of our partners has served as a board member of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, CA. Our tax attorneys include a partner who also has years of civil and criminal litigation experience.

We have also authored articles for the American Bar Association, spoken at the American Bar Association and other bar association CLE events and conferences, and two of our partners were acknowledged contributors to the National Consumer Law Center’s Consumer Class Actions treatise.