Donovan Legal PLLC offers four structured engagement levels — Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and Reserve — organized around the real estate life cycle. Each level provides integrated tax counsel, transactional support, and audit defense across the acquisition, ownership, and disposition of investment real estate. Each level is individually scoped; fees are discussed during a confidential consultation.
Any transaction the firm structures and issues a written tax opinion on is defended by the firm through IRS or state examination and administrative appeals at no additional engagement charge. The same firm that designs the position reads the workpapers, signs the return, and defends the position if examined. One file, one team, end to end.
Each engagement level provides services across all three phases of the real estate life cycle — acquisition, ownership, and disposition. The difference between levels is the depth of service in each phase, the number of transactions covered, and the access the principal client maintains with the firm.
Clears the practice floor and is entering real estate. Real estate is an investment they are adding, not an industry they are in. The high-earning household doing its first or second short-term rental; the business owner who wants to start.
Real estate has become a major, deliberate wealth vehicle — multiple properties, actively expanding — but the client has a primary profession that is not real estate. The surgeon with eight rental properties; the business owner with a growing short-term rental portfolio on the side. Real estate is the serious side pursuit, not the profession.
Real estate has moved to the center of the client’s economic life — and the tax position now turns on hours. The client pursuing or holding Real Estate Professional Status; the active short-term-rental operator running cost-segregation and material-participation strategies that live or die on contemporaneous documentation. More than a serious side pursuit — approaching their primary activity — and equipped with the full analytical and documentation toolset of the principal tier.
Real estate is the client’s industry — their primary economic identity. Developers and builders; real estate sponsors and syndicators; full-time investors; operators with substantial portfolios; principals whose K-1s are dominated by real estate. They live in acquisition-ownership-disposition cycles continuously. By hand-selected application; not available to the general public.
Reserve is limited to 100 members, hand-selected by the firm. Each member receives a numbered black card (001–100) bearing the member’s identifier and a summary of benefits. The card is issued in a leather holder and provides priority access to the firm and to curated member benefits.
Beyond the engagement services discussed in consultation, Reserve membership includes access to the firm’s full real estate analyzer with the proprietary Donovan Legal Tax Strategy (not available at any other level or to the public), and the annual Reserve gathering — a small private dinner of members hosted by the firm.
Membership is offered by invitation following a confidential consultation. The firm reserves the right to decline applications without explanation. An advisory board comprised of the firm and selected members governs admissions and benefits as membership matures.
Written tax opinions on planned positions and transactions, including reasonable basis, substantial authority, more-likely-than-not, and should-level opinions on federal, state, and international tax matters, real estate transactions (§ 1031 qualifying property, FIRPTA exemption, partnership classification), and structural questions (entity classification, anti-deferral, foreign trust classification). Opinion fees are scoped by complexity and authority level and are engaged separately from the annual engagement. Opinions issued by the firm trigger the Donovan-Structured, Donovan-Defended audit protection across all engagement levels.
Tax and tax-driven structuring nationwide. The firm advises on federal, state, and international tax matters for clients anywhere in the United States, and structures transactions using entities formed in any U.S. or qualifying foreign jurisdiction — Delaware corporations and partnerships, Wyoming and Nevada LLCs, South Dakota and Nevada trusts, Florida and Massachusetts vehicles, and offshore structures for cross-border matters.
Florida and Massachusetts real estate transactional work is handled directly by the firm. Real estate closings and state-specific transactional work in other jurisdictions are coordinated with local counsel, with the firm leading the tax and structural design.
To discuss a tax planning, tax compliance, tax controversy, or real estate engagement, contact the firm directly.
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