Richard is special counsel in the private client and tax team.
He is familiar with the taxation of partnerships, LLCs, corporations and trusts from both an income and an estate tax perspective, along with knowing how to incorporate them into international structures, he is one of our renaissance lawyers who ties together many aspects of our tax practice for individuals and wealthy families.
Richard recently helped a real estate developer transfer minority interests in closely-held entities to trusts to minimize both state income tax and federal estate taxes; a hedge fund manager form a private trust company to administer both personal and charitable assets; a wealthy entrepreneur to create an insurance dedicated fund as part of US pre-immigration planning; and an investment professional to expatriate while minimizing his exit tax.
Richard has been recognized as a 2025 Lawyer of the Year by Best Lawyers® for Tax Law.
When he is not using private placement insurance and annuity structures to confound the IRS, he is busy confounding opponents decades his junior by blowing up their tanks in late night games of Battlefield on his son's Xbox. He is one of the few lawyers in our firm who has read every page of the US FATCA regulations (both the Chapter 3 and 4 portions), as well as the OECD CRS Standards, Commentary and Implementation Handbook, and stands ready to explain all the new international transparency and automatic exchange of information regimes without putting the audience to sleep.
A tax lawyer who speaks plain English (well American), Richard would be happy to discuss arcane points of international compensation planning and the use of bilateral tax treaties to minimize US tax on investment income, but he would rather delve into which type of bitters to add to his next recipe for raspberry jam.
Richard is our resident tax guru. No, really, he has had the e-mail address taxguru@aol.com@aol.com since 1992. But please use his Withers e-mail for work related communication since the spam filter on the other address is quite savage these days and we wouldn't want urgent information to be overlooked.
Recent recognition
