Practical Estate Planning Under Circular 230 is the latest in Howard Zaritsky's series of practical estate planning titles offering analytical and practical guidance on new developments in the field.

This guide is written for estate planners because Circular 230 affects all attorneys, accountants, and enrolled agents. Violation of these rules carries serious potential penalties, including fines, censure and even suspension or permanent expulsion from practicing before the IRS. These rules govern all written tax advice provided to a client -- from the briefest text message to the longest formal document.

Circular 230’s most heavily questioned provisions concern “covered opinions”. A covered opinion must:

• Identify all relevant facts;
• Evaluate all significant federal tax issues (unless the opinion is expressly
  limited in scope to certain issues);
• Discuss all relevant law (including judicial doctrines);
• Apply the law to the facts;
• Provide a conclusion regarding each significant federal tax issue; and
• Provide an overall conclusion.

Some practitioners suggest that including a written disclosure in each document will easily avoid any Circular 230 liability. We suggest that the Service may find this insufficient and, more importantly, it will create more problems for the practitioner than it solves. Few clients will be satisfied to read that they cannot rely on their estate planner’s written advice, and such disclosures may be difficult to explain to a jury if the advice is later questioned.

This book is written to assist you in dealing with Circular 230, and, in particular, to accomplish two goals:

• Identifying the transactions that require a covered opinion, and
• Writing a covered opinion that’s orderly, efficient, accurate and economical.

To accomplish this, the book has been organized into three chapters.

The first chapter lays out Circular 230 and its requirements, to the extent they apply to estate planners. Included are discussion and analysis of much of Circular 230 that involves issues other than written tax advice, putting the discussion of written tax advice in its proper context.

The second chapter covers one of the more difficult issues in writing a covered opinion. It provides explanations and practical application of the broad judicial doctrines that may need to be included in a covered opinion. The application of these broad judicial doctrines to specific transactions can be difficult, and these sample explanations should greatly facilitate compliance with this particular requirement of circular 230.

The third and final chapter provides full text of sample covered opinions for the common estate planning transactions that may require a covered opinion. This chapter also discusses common estate planning transactions, and provides guidance on which transactions require a covered opinion.