News

Dinse is pleased to announce that Andrew Sullivan has joined the firm as an associate attorney.

Andrew is a member of the firm’s litigation group, and provides support and counseling in a variety of areas, including personal injury, insurance defense, medical malpractice, employment, and education, among others. Prior to joining the firm, he was a judicial law clerk for the Rutland Unit of the Vermont Superior Court. Andrew graduated from the University of Richmond School of Law, where he served as Copy Editor for the Richmond Journal of Law and Technology.

Dinse P.C. announces that eleven attorneys have been selected for inclusion on the 2018 New England Super Lawyers list in six different practice areas, and two attorneys have been selected for inclusion on the 2018 New England Rising Stars list.  Attorneys are identified as “Super Lawyers” based on extensive nomination and polling among New England attorneys aimed at identifying New England’s top attorneys in each class. Attorneys are identified as being “Rising Stars” based on extensive nomination and polling among New England attorneys who are asked to nominate the best attorneys who are 40 or under, or who have been practicing for 10 years or less.

The practice areas and the attorney(s) listed in each area for the 2018 New England Super Lawyers list are as follows:

• Business Litigation: Ritchie Berger, Karen McAndrew
• Business/Corporate Law: Jeffrey McMahan, Brian Murphy, Afi Ahmadi, David Gurtman
• Employment & Labor Law: Jeffrey Nolan
• Estate Planning & Probate: Mark Langan
• Health Care Law: Linda Cohen
• Real Estate Law: Molly Langan, Austin Hart

The practice areas and attorneys listed for the 2018 New England Rising Stars list is as follows:

• Civil Litigation: Defense: Andy MacIlwaine
• Civil Litigation: Plaintiff: Kendall Hoechst

By Ted Lawrence

Background

To encourage investment in low-income communities, the Tax Cut and Jobs Act created a new section of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 USC § 1400Z, that address investments made in “Qualified Opportunity Zones.”

What are Qualified Opportunity Zones?

Qualified Opportunity Zones are specific geographic areas that have been designated as such by the U.S. Treasury Department.  Earlier this year, the U.S. Treasury Secretary certified a number of Vermont towns and neighborhoods as Qualified Opportunity Zones.  The certified areas include Winooski, parts of Burlington and South Burlington, Vergennes, and Rutland.  Investing in a Qualified Opportunity Zone may provide significant tax benefits to an investor.

Benefits

Investment in a Qualified Opportunity Fund provides three potential tax advantages to the investor:

1. A deferral of tax on gains that are invested.
2. Partial forgiveness of tax due with respect to those gains.
3. A basis step-up on those gains.

In addition, investment in a Qualified Opportunity Fund allows investors to receive favorable tax treatment on real-estate investments without actually owning or managing the development of real property (unlike, for example, a 1031 exchange property).

Investment Process

Investment in a Qualified Opportunity Zone is made through a tiered structure.  There are three different types of entities and properties involved in the process:

• Qualified Opportunity Zone Funds;
• Qualified Opportunity Zone Businesses; and
• Qualified Opportunity Zone Business Property.

Qualified Opportunity Fund

A Qualified Opportunity Fund is the umbrella entity through which all investments in the Qualified Opportunity Zone program must be made.  A Qualified Opportunity Fund must:

• Hold at least 90 percent of its assets in “qualified opportunity zone property”—i.e., the stock or interests of a Qualified Opportunity Zone Business, or Qualified Opportunity Zone Business Property.
• Not make investments in another Qualified Opportunity Fund.
• Make certain tax filings.

Qualified Opportunity Zone Business

A Qualified Opportunity Zone Business is an entity that owns and operates “tangible property”—i.e., real estate or personal property—in a Qualified Opportunity Zone.  It is the entity that actually performs the development work in a Qualified Opportunity Zone.  A Qualified Opportunity Zone Business must meet the following requirements:

• “Substantially all” of the tangible property owned by the Business must be Qualified Opportunity Zone Business Property.
• Follow certain statutory standards detailed in other sections of the Internal Revenue Code.
• Not function as a “sin business”—e.g., owning golf courses, liquor stores, massage or hot tub parlors, or tanning salons.

Qualified Opportunity Zone Business Property

Qualified Opportunity Zone Business property is tangible property that is:

• Acquired by the Qualified Opportunity Fund or Business after December 31, 2017.
• “Originally acquired” (i.e., a new investment) or “substantially improved” (i.e., becomes more highly valued) by the Qualified Opportunity Fund or Business.

Unanswered Questions

There are a number of unanswered questions regarding investments in Qualified Opportunity Zones, including:

• Whether the deferral and forgiveness on “gains” invested in a Qualified Opportunity Fund refers to all gains or just capital
• The meaning of “substantially improve” in the context of Qualified Opportunity Zone Business Property.
• How the basis step-up on gains invested in a Qualified Opportunity Fund will be calculated.
• Whether Qualified Opportunity Funds and Qualified Opportunity Zone Businesses may organize as LLCs.

The U.S. Treasury and Internal Revenue Service are likely to issue further guidelines on investing in Qualified Opportunity Zones in the near future.  We will send a further update when such guidance is issued.

Dinse P.C. announces that thirteen of its attorneys were recently selected by their peers for inclusion in the The Best Lawyers in America® 2019 (Copyright 2012 by Woodward/White, Inc., of Aiken, S.C.) in twenty different practice areas. Since it was first published in 1983, Best Lawyers has become universally regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence. Because Best Lawyers is based on an exhaustive peer-review survey in which more than 36,000 leading attorneys cast almost 4.4 million votes on the legal abilities of other lawyers in their practice areas, and because lawyers are not required or allowed to pay a fee to be listed, inclusion in Best Lawyers is considered a singular honor. Corporate Counsel magazine has called Best Lawyers “the most respected referral list of attorneys in practice.”

The practice areas and the attorney(s) listed in each area are as follows:

• Commercial Litigation: Ritchie E. Berger, Karen McAndrew
• Corporate Compliance Law: David Gurtman
• Corporate Governance Law: Brian Murphy
• Corporate Law: Jeffrey J. McMahan, Brian R. Murphy
• Education Law: Jeffrey J. Nolan, Karen McAndrew
• Employee Benefits (ERISA) Law: Daniel R. Sharpe
• Employment Law – Management: Amy M. McLaughlin, Jeffrey J. Nolan, Karen McAndrew
• Immigration Law: Leigh Cole
• Litigation – Construction: Karen McAndrew
• Litigation – Intellectual Property: Shapleigh Smith, Jr., Karen McAndrew
• Litigation – Labor & Employment: Amy M. McLaughlin
• Medical Malpractice Law – Defendants: Ritchie E. Berger
• Mergers & Acquisitions Law: Brian R. Murphy
• Non-Profit / Charities Law: Brian R. Murphy
• Personal Injury Litigation – Defendants: Ritchie E. Berger, Karen McAndrew
• Product Liability Litigation – Defendants: Shapleigh Smith, Jr.
• Real Estate Law: Austin D. Hart, Molly Langan
• Tax Law: Mark A. Langan
• Technology Law: Jeffrey J. McMahan
• Trusts and Estates: Mark A. Langan

Dinse is pleased to announce that Maggie Platzer and Justin Barnard have been elected as Directors and Shareholders of the firm.

Maggie Platzer joined the firm in October 2011 after acting as Assistant General Counsel and Privacy Officer at Delta Dental of Massachusetts in Boston.  Her practice focuses primarily on employee health and retirement benefits, and healthcare compliance.  Maggie helps employers understand their compliance obligations when managing and reporting health coverage, self-insuring employee health benefits, and management of their 401(k), 403(b) or other retirement plans.  She also advises healthcare providers as to their compliance obligations under HIPAA and other privacy laws.

Justin Barnard joined the firm in July 2014 after serving as a lead litigator in the Maine Attorney General’s Office for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, and prior to that as a law clerk for the Honorable Kermit Lipez on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Justin’s practice focuses primarily on representing clients before federal and state trial courts, appeals courts, and administrative bodies. He has represented clients in a wide range of industries and contexts, from solar development to professional malpractice.