Tax Law
It's often said that only two things in life are certain: death and taxes. Tax attorneys spend their time trying to ease the financial burdens associated with both. For individuals, tax attorneys use trusts, gifts, and various tax planning structures to reduce the burdens of income taxes and estate taxes, and they assist in devising investment strategies. For small businesses and corporations, tax attorneys also use various structures to ease the burdens of taxes, typically in the context of planning organization structure (e.g., partnership or corporation) and determining the tax consequences of financial decisions and transactions. Each financial decision made by a corporation, from financing of debt to depreciation of assets, must involve a consideration of the impacts of the tax code.
The basic idea of taxation is simple: imposing a financial obligation upon individuals and companies to finance the many services provided by government, including building schools and roads, securing national defense, and providing social services. But the variety of taxes we have-at the federal, state and municipal levels-and the wide range of activities that are taxed (as well as the wide range of activities that are exempt from taxation) make for a remarkably complex area of law. Tax lawyers help their clients navigate the highly technical statutes which make up our tax laws. Tax lawyers work in a wide variety of fields, several of which are described below.
Reproduced from The Official Guide to Legal Specialties with permission. (c) 2000 Thomson Reuters/West. For additional information on this publication please visit 
http://west.thomson.com/products/law-students. Copyright granted via e-mail by Donna Gies, September 16, 2008.