Tax & Benefits
Davis Graham & Stubbs LLP was founded shortly after Congress first enacted the income tax and has provided comprehensive tax planning and compliance advice to individuals and all types of businesses ever since. Our tax attorneys work closely with our transaction attorneys to develop and implement plans and structures that allow clients to achieve their business objectives while minimizing the impact of federal, international, state, and local taxes. We also represent clients in tax audits, administrative appeals and proceedings, and tax litigation in both federal and state courts.
Transactions
Davis Graham tax attorneys work with our M&A, private equity, finance, and corporate colleagues to provide our clients with sophisticated tax advice on the full spectrum of business transactions. Our clients are engaged in a variety of industries, including natural resources, technology, construction, health care, private equity, hospitality, and aerospace, and include corporations, partnerships, individuals, trusts and estates. Our transaction tax team understands the nuances of how tax issues impact every facet of a deal and provides creative, practical, commercial-oriented solutions. We are accomplished at designing and implementing innovative tax strategies across a broad range of transactions, including:
- Mergers, acquisitions and dispositions (taxable and tax-free)
- Private equity transactions
- Financings (equity and debt)
- Cross-border transactions
- Partnerships and joint ventures
- Working interests, royalties, production payments and mineral streams
- Bankruptcy and insolvency workouts
- Capital markets transactions
- Investment fund formation and structuring
- Up-Cs
- SPACs, IPOs and de-SPAC transactions
- Tax-free spin-offs, split-offs and split-ups
Private Equity
We advise private equity funds and their portfolio companies on all U.S. and cross-border aspects of taxation. Our attorneys advise clients at each stage of a fund’s life cycle: formation, acquisition planning, portfolio company tax planning, and exit planning and implementation. We draw on our experience with a wide variety of fund structures (including U.S. funds, offshore funds, and alternative investment vehicles such as parallel, blocker, and feeder structures) to recommend appropriate vehicles for particular investment strategies and investor profiles.
International
We advise clients on the tax consequences of a variety of cross-border transactions, including acquisitions, dispositions, financings, joint ventures, and the structuring and restructuring of international groups. We have designed and implemented tax-efficient structures for our U.S.-based multinational clients to operate globally and advised on holding company and financing company structures, anti-deferral regimes (such as subpart F income, GILTI and similar rules), foreign branches and subsidiaries, foreign tax credits, tax treaties, and repatriation strategies. We also advise foreign clients on the tax aspects of inbound investments in U.S. enterprises and assets, including investments in U.S. real property and natural resources.
Natural Resources
As a leading natural resources firm, our tax attorneys have vast experience in the structuring of oil and gas and other mineral ventures involving both operating companies, financial investors and management teams. We also regularly assist in structuring acquisitions and dispositions of interests in natural resources. Our clients range from small independent mining and oil and gas companies to large multinationals. We seek to achieve maximum tax efficiency in complex and innovative financing transactions, including those involving mineral streaming and volumetric production payments.
State & Local Tax
Davis Graham has an extensive practice involving state and local income, sales and use, severance, property, and other taxes. We advise clients with respect to these non-federal tax issues, ranging from state tax apportionment issues to local use tax definitions and exemptions. Colorado allows “home rule,” under which more than 50 local jurisdictions have their own sales and use taxing authority and, subject to certain state legislative limitations, their own sales and use tax laws. We provide advice to Colorado and non-Colorado clients in planning for activities where home-rule taxation applies and represent clients in controversies involving state and local taxing jurisdictions.
Tax Controversy
We have represented clients in disputes with taxing authorities at all levels. Many of those disputes were successfully resolved at the administrative level, but we also have represented clients in the federal and state courts in tax matters. The disputes cover a broad range of issues, including use tax on equipment, methods of accounting for inventory sales, tax-advantaged loss transactions, valuation issues, and many others.
Exempt Organizations
We have assisted clients in the structuring and on-going operation of numerous public charities and private foundations and other 501(c) tax-exempt organizations. Our work generally also includes assisting them in their exemption application process.