Transactional Tax Attorney

Company Description

Belcher, Smolen & Van Loo LLP is a corporate boutique law firm based in San Francisco serving clients across the United States and in key global locations. We focus on technology and life sciences companies (and their investors), including M&A as well as advising cryptocurrency and digital asset companies on a variety of innovative and novel transactions. Many of our clients are private, venture-backed companies—where tax advice needs to be practical, fast, tailored and deal-oriented.

You will have meaningful responsibility and regular interaction with sophisticated counter parties and counsel. We work remotely with reasonable expectations. We value long-term attorney development, responsiveness, clear writing, and comfort working on multiple moving deals.

You will serve as a transactional tax attorney supporting M&A and other strategic transactions for private-company and growth-stage clients, with responsibilities that commonly include:

• Draft and negotiate tax provisions in purchase agreements, merger agreements, operating agreements and related ancillary documents.
• Support crypto/digital asset and other novel transactional matters as they arise (including questions involving crypto compensation, token-related structures, and cross-border considerations).
• Provide deal-oriented analysis on tax structuring questions for asset and stock transactions, tax-free reorganizations, and other common M&A tax issues.
• Advise on transaction-adjacent compensation and employment-tax issues that frequently arise in exits (including 280G and 409A considerations in M&A contexts).

• Must have JD or LLM with excellent academic credentials and admission to bar (preferably CA or NY).
• Minimum of two years of transactional tax experience in a law firm, including drafting the tax aspects of purchase agreements in M&A transactions.
• Experience collaborating with other professionals and lawyers on complex transactions.
• Sound judgment, professional demeanor and the ability to juggle multiple transactions or projects.
• Ability to work independently and remotely.
• Strong writing and communication skills.
• Interest in working in a boutique law firm setting.

• Experience with cryptocurrency / digital asset tax issues.
• International and cross-border transactional tax experience.
• Partnership tax experience; comfort drafting and negotiating partnership and LLC agreements.
• Familiarity with 409A and 280G issues arising in private-company M&A.
• Prior experience supporting technology, life sciences, financial services, or venture-backed clients.
• Location in the San Francisco Bay Area.