Michael A. Zimmerman is counsel to the Firm and chairs the Firm’s Trusts, Estates and Taxation Practice Group. Mr. Zimmerman began his legal career in 1974 as a Tax and Trial Attorney in the Honors Program at the Office of Chief Counsel, Internal Revenue Service in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Zimmerman represents a wide range of individuals and corporations in areas that include individual and corporate tax planning; sophisticated estate planning involving large estates; the drafting of wills, trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts; qualified personal residence trusts and similar estate planning documents. He also represents individuals and corporations before the United States Tax Court, the Internal Revenue Service, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, Surrogate’s Courts and other courts and governmental agencies.
Mr. Zimmerman is also involved in Employee Stock Option Plan (“ESOP”) transactions in which business owners sell their closely held business interests to an ESOP to allow them to obtain liquidity for their closely held stock, partnership or LLC interests.
Mr. Zimmerman also does a substantial amount of work in the area of international taxation, creating asset protection trusts, both domestic and offshore, which protect an individual’s assets. Mr. Zimmerman also engages in foreign and international tax planning for United States citizens in numerous jurisdictions outside the United States as well as representing foreign individuals and citizens engaged in United States businesses.
While at the University of South Carolina Law School, Mr. Zimmerman was admitted to the Honorary Order of Wig and Robe for excellence in scholastic studies and was a member of the South Carolina Law Review. Mr. Zimmerman was a Tax and Trial Attorney in the Office of Chief Counsel, Internal Revenue Service from 1974 to 1977 and he has a Master of Laws in Taxation degree from New York University School of Law. He was appointed an Associate Village Justice in Kings Point, Great Neck, New York, in 2014.