A most common fact pattern presented to tax planners is where a partnership (or LLC) wants to sell property, some or all of the partners want to defer gains via Section 1031 but the partners don’t all want to stay together after the sale. This presentation will survey the issues this creates and techniques in current use to respond to the pattern such as “drops and swaps,” partnership divisions, “swaps and drops”, “synthetic” drops and swaps and PINs transactions. Knowledge of basic 1031 principles will be assumed.

Based in Sausalito, Lou Weller is Managing Partner of Weller Partners, LLP, a boutique law firm specializing in income tax planning for real estate transactions. Lou formerly served as National Director of Real Estate Transaction Planning at Deloitte Tax and is recognized as one of the leading national authorities on tax planning for real estate transactions, particularly in using like-kind exchanges and other means of deferring gains on real estate sales. Lou is a frequent speaker at tax institutes and conferences, is lead author of the treatise: Real Property Exchanges, 3rd Edition and has been widely published in the tax press, quoted on real estate tax subjects in national periodicals and newspapers and serves on the editorial boards of several national tax publications, including serving as editor of Real Estate topics for the Journal of Taxation. He has held leadership posts in the American Bar Association Taxation Section, the California State Bar Tax Section and the Taxation Section of the Bar of San Francisco, is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel and has been listed for more than 30 years in The Best Lawyers in America. He received a B.A. in political science from Yale University and concurrent J.D. and Masters in Public Policy degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

The Real Estate Law Section covers all areas of interest to real estate practitioners including acquisition; finance; leasing; eminent domain; and land use (including zoning, Coastal Commission, and CEQA compliance). The section is chaired by Howard N. Gould and Elizabeth Dryden. Find out more at bhba.org/sections-committees/real-estate-law/