For most business owners, the company is the largest asset they will ever own. It is their income. It is their retirement. It is what they hope to pass down. Matt Von Schuch works with those owners on both aspects of that reality. He handles the transaction that moves the business to the next owner or generation. He handles the tax and estate planning that creates the owner’s financial legacy. Most lawyers do one side or the other. Matt’s practice covers both, the deal and the plan, which is what the owner whose operating business is also the estate needs.
His practice runs in four connected lanes:
Corporate and M&A. General corporate counseling across a range of industries, buy-and sell-side M&A, financings, and entity formations and structuring for operating companies.
Business succession. Management buyouts and intergenerational transfers for agricultural enterprises, farms, professional practices, contractors, and family businesses.
Estate planning and wealth transfer. Estate planning for families of all net worths, up through taxable estates, revocable trusts, Lifetime Access Trusts, dynasty trusts, § 6166 deferral, and family-office representation.
Tax. Planning and structuring across the transactions and estates he handles, drawing on his time as a federal tax trial lawyer and a CPA-firm tax principal.
Before practicing on both sides of this work, Matt sat on the accountant’s side of the table. He spent time as a principal in the tax department of a regional CPA firm. For succession matters, the owner’s CPA is often the closest co-advisor. Matt speaks the accountant’s language because he did the job. He is a former Virginia CPA; the license is inactive.
Earlier in his career, Matt tried tax cases for the United States as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice, Tax Division. He was second chair in the first sale-in/lease-out tax-shelter case tried in the country, and on the trial team for another tax shelter case that went to a two-week jury trial. He received the U.S. Attorney General’s John Marshall Award for Trial of Litigation. He practices from Flora Pettit PC’s Harrisonburg office.