David B. Shiner

Principal David Shiner is a business and tax attorney focusing his practice in taxation, estate planning and corporate law. He leads the firm's Tax & Employee Benefits Practice Group.

A certified public accountant with a master of laws in taxation, David is uniquely qualified to counsel his clients on structuring transactions, such as domestic and foreign asset protection trusts, to reduce the risk of exposure to potential creditors, as well as minimizing exposure to federal and state estate taxes, such as by using grantor trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts (GRAT), qualified personal residence trusts (QPRT), irrevocable life insurance trusts (ILIT), charitable lead annuity trusts (CLT) and charitable remainder trusts (CRT).

David also battles the IRS both in administrative proceedings and in the U.S. Tax Court in gift, estate and income tax matters where hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars of taxes are at issue. He has also obtained Private Letter Rulings (PLR) from the IRS to secure certainty over complex transactions.

Some of his recent cases include the following:

• Smiley v. Commissioner, Docket No. 29644-12, whether the purchaser of an overfunded pension plan must recognize taxable income and is subject to fraud penalties. (Trial March 2022)
• Waldron v. Commissioner, Docket No. 14285-21P, whether the IRS properly certified a Seriously Delinquent Federal Tax Debt to the State Department. (Certification Reversed Sept 2021)
• Liefer v. Commissioner, Docket No. 637-17, whether a defined value clause is valid for gift tax purposes to fix the value of a limited partnership interest gift. (Settled April 2019.)
• Kravitz v. Commissioner, Docket No. 8651-15. Successfully obtained a no tax-due decision where the IRS issued a deficiency against four S corporation shareholders tax of over $6 million alleging inadequate basis to deduct losses (January 2019).
• Goldstein v. Commissioner, Docket No. 361-18W. Whistleblower case to obtain recovery and information from IRS. (Settled August 2018.)
• Newberg v. Commissioner, Docket No. 3778-16. Obtained innocent spouse relief for husband where wife was convicted for tax fraud in connection with embezzlement. (March 2017.)

David’s practice also includes providing counsel on a wide range of matters for his corporate clients such as entity formation, business succession planning, employee benefits, mergers and acquisitions, corporate reorganizations and tax-deferred exchanges.

He currently serves as chair of the Finance Committee and was formerly a member of the Business Development & Marketing Committee.