Attorney Profiles

Experience:
Jonathan Samel has successfully combined his wide practical experience in business law, estates, real-estate law and financing, developed over the past 25 years, with a detailed technical knowledge of tax law. His practice focuses on structuring and implementing business transactions and tax planning for closely held businesses and individuals. Jon strives to provide his clients with creative and practical solutions which assist them in reaching their financial goals and which achieve tax savings.

Areas of Concentration:
Business Law
Jon assists clients with all legal and tax aspects of the formation and operation of various business entities, including proprietorships, partnerships, corporations, limited liability companies and joint ventures. He strives understand each client’s business so that he can serve as an effective and knowledgeable counselor who adds value to the business.

Jon also has substantial experience in negotiating and completing the purchase and sale of businesses, including asset purchases and sales, stock purchases and sales, corporate reorganizations and other similar arrangements.

Recently, Jon guided a client through the sale of his family business. This multi-million dollar transaction involved a sale of business assets, a real estate sale, seller financing, a consulting arrangement, non-competitive covenants and the resolution of a number of significant financial, tax and environmental issues.

In another recent case, Jon assisted a large real estate developer with negotiating, structuring and then closing the buy out of his partner through the purchase of stock and partnership interests.

Family Business Planning
Jon has helped dozens of successful family businesses with the difficult and complex issues of succession -- passing the business on from the older generation to the younger generation. He understands that it is important that the planning process not become an expensive arena for the resolution of emotional conflicts among family members, and that it is also important to maximize the chances that the transition of the business to the next generation will foster healthier family relationships.

He recently worked with a couple who own a large real-estate investment business and who have decided to pass this business on to their two sons who presently work with them. Jon devised and put in place an innovative plan which combined the use of family limited partnerships with trusts and wills. The plan has put the family in a position where they can save in excess of $3 million of taxes.

In another case, Jon coordinated the transfer of a substantial family manufacturing business from three second-generation owners to six third-generation owners. This transfer involved a stock sale, two real-estate transfers, consulting agreements, financing arrangements, a new buy-sell agreement, life-insurance trusts and the updating of each owner's personal estate plan.

Estate Planning
Estate planning involves the conservation and preservation of assets which a person has accumulated over the course of a lifetime. Jon focuses on his clients' legitimate concerns that their assets will be dissipated as a result of high taxes, creditor problems, expenses of long-term care, family disputes or other circumstances.

In a recent case, Jon met with an elderly widow who had recently developed health problems and who was worried that she would lose her home and her other property if she had to move to a long-term care facility. Jon assisted her and her children in putting a plan in place designed to preserve her assets and at the same time give her assurance that she would continue to have full control of and access to the assets.

Jon is a specialist in the area of estate and gift taxation. These taxes can be devastating to a family when assets are passed from the older generation to the younger generation. Jon is an expert in drafting wills, trusts and other agreements which are designed to minimize the effect of these taxes.

Jon represents a family that owns and operates automobile dealerships and a real estate development business. He structured and implemented a plan whereby substantial ownership interests in real estate were transferred from the older generation to the younger generation on a tax free basis using a combination of gifts and sales to various trusts. The projected estate tax savings for the family exceeds $5 million.

Tax Planning
The tax laws are constantly changing on an annual basis. Jon has devoted himself to staying on top of these changes and using these laws for his clients' maximum advantage.

For example, Jon represents a family which owns 100 acres of valuable farmland. They decided to grant a conservation easement to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on most of the property. It was projected that the family would face almost $400,000 of capital-gain tax as a result of granting this easement. Jon was able to significantly reduce this tax by structuring the transaction so that the family members obtained significant charitable income tax deductions and acquired two new properties through tax-deferred exchanges.

Automobile Dealership Law
Jon is a member of the Automobile Dealership Group of Hamburg, Rubin, Mullin, Maxwell & Lupin, which focuses on the areas of acquisition and sale of dealerships, franchise litigation, succession planning, tax and estate planning, real estate law, environmental issues, employee relations and other regulatory issues affecting automobile dealers.

Professional and Civic Activities:
Jon is a partner of Hamburg, Rubin, Mullin, Maxwell & Lupin and has been practicing at the firm since 1989.

Jon is a member and past chairman of the Corporation Banking and Business Law Committee of the Montgomery Bar Association. He is also a member of the Probate, Estates and Trusts Committee of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, and of the Montgomery County Estate Planning Council. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Delaware Valley Family Business Center.

Jon has been the author of a monthly column on estate planning and retirement planning in The Legal Intelligencer, which is the daily law journal for attorneys in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties, and he is also a frequent speaker on these subjects.

EDUCATION

Jon received a B.A. from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York in 1974, a J.D. degree from Temple University in 1978 and a Master's degree in tax law from Temple University in 1990.