Dinse Knapp McAndrew | Mark A. Langan

Mark A. Langan

Telephone: 802-859-7023

Areas of Practice Concentration:

Estate Planning and Business Succession; Tax Planning and Litigation for Businesses and Individuals

Description of Practice:

Mr. Langan is a tax attorney counseling individuals and businesses. He advises clients on the selection of the proper entity for businesses whether corporations, partnerships, limited liability companies, limited partnership associations, and other newly created entities to hold business. A large part of his practice is in estate planning and business succession for closely held companies. Mr. Langan's practice involves the restructuring of estates and companies to reduce estate, gift, and income taxes at the federal and state levels and to provide creditor protection for clients in high risk occupations. He has been involved with the formation of many family limited liability companies under the laws of favorable states such as New Hampshire and Delaware. Mr. Langan's practice involves business succession and estate tax planning with recapitalizations of corporations, key man insurance and split dollar insurance planning, and buy-sell agreements. A large portion of his practice involves the formation of credit shelter trusts, QTIP trusts, generation skipping trusts, qualified domestic trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, irrevocable life insurance trusts, charitable remainder trusts, college education trusts, charitable remainder trusts, Medicaid trusts, SSI trusts, creditor protection trusts (including Alaska and Delaware trusts) and trusts to hold family camps and compounds. Mr. Langan has also formed many tax-exempt organizations such as private foundations, public charities and business leagues.

His work includes tax planning for business reorganizations including mergers, consolidations and recapitalizations, and tax planning for partnerships including formation, distributions and dissolutions. Mr. Langan also advises individual clients with respect to their income tax issues from planning to representing taxpayers before the Internal Revenue Service in audits, collections and appeals before the Service, U.S. Tax Court or United States District Court. His practice also involves state tax issues and representing taxpayers before the departments of revenue in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Mr. Langan clerked at the U.S. Department of Justice where he worked on criminal tax cases. He previously practiced law with the law firm of Wiggin & Nourie in Manchester, New Hampshire, from 1981-1996, where he became the head of the trust and estate department of the firm in 1986 and a partner of the firm from 1988. He served as the chairman of the tax section of the New Hampshire Bar Association in 1992. Mr. Langan was successful in having the New Hampshire Supreme Court hold that the real estate transfer tax did not apply in corporate liquidations; Appeal of Lorden, 132 N.H. 594, 594 A.2d 1303 (1991); and he organized the amicus curiae group in Polly’s Properties, LLC v. Vermont Department of Taxes, Docket No. 2009-124, in which the Supreme Court rejected the Department of Taxes position with respect to the transfer tax exemption associated with the formation of corporations, partnerships and limited liability companies.

He has represented many estates and individuals through tax audits and, in some cases, appeals through the court system. He is licensed to practice before Vermont and New Hampshire courts, the U.S. Tax Court and U.S. District Courts in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Mr. Langan was the Chairman of the joint study committee of the Vermont Bar Association and Vermont Banker’s Association that drafted the Uniform Trust Code for Vermont. He was also a member of the joint study committee that drafted the Revised Uniform Principal and Income Act for Vermont. He testified before the Senate and House Committees for the passage of both Uniform Acts.

He is a frequent public speaker on tax issues in Vermont and New Hampshire for their bar associations and the National Business Institute. He has been a contributor to the New Hampshire Bar Journal on current tax topics. Mr. Langan was an instructor at the University of New Hampshire in the undergraduate school on the law including business law, contracts and tax law and an instructor at Champlain College on trusts and estates and Merrimack Community College on business law.

Education:

Georgetown University Law Center LL.M. in Taxation, 1984
St. Mary's University J.D. 1980
University of California at Berkeley B.A. 1975

Professional Affiliations:

Vermont Bar Association
New Hampshire Bar Association - Tax Section
American Bar Association - Tax Section and Real Estate Probate and Trust Section
Texas Bar Association
Fellow of The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel
Named to New England Super Lawyers (2007-2010)
Member, Joint Study Committee of Vermont Bar Association and Vermont Bankers Association of Uniform Principal and Income Act (2009-2010)
Best Lawyers (2005-2011)

Other Activities: