Beth Shapiro Kaufman is a member in Caplin & Drysdale’s Washington, D.C. office. She rejoined the firm’s private client group in 2001 after working for over six years in the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy. Serving first as Attorney Advisor and then as Associate Tax Legislative Counsel, Ms. Kaufman had principal responsibility for all tax policy matters affecting trusts and estates, including estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes, as well as income taxation of trusts and estates.
At Caplin & Drysdale, Ms. Kaufman assists wealthy individuals with their estate planning. She also advises lawyers and other professionals on complex issues regarding estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes. She is frequently retained by counsel to assist in estate and gift tax audits and to advocate a taxpayer’s position before the Internal Revenue Service. Ms. Kaufman has been particularly active in obtaining section 9100 relief for failed generation-skipping transfer tax exemption allocations.
While with the government, Ms. Kaufman was the primary Treasury representative involved in the legislative and regulatory developments affecting the taxation of trusts and estates. Legislative projects included the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 and the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. Regulatory projects included regulations on qualified domestic trusts, generation-skipping transfer tax, charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, adequate disclosure for gift tax purposes, separate share, definition of foreign and domestic trusts, and valuation tables.
Ms. Kaufman is a frequent lecturer on topics related to estate planning. She has spoken before numerous professional groups, including the University of Miami Philip E. Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning, the Federal Tax Institute of New England, ALI-ABA, the ABA Tax and Real Property, Probate and Trust Sections, the AICPA Estate and Gift Tax Committee, and the American Bankers’ Association. Ms. Kaufman is a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel. In the fall of 2002, she taught a course in income taxation of trusts and estates as part of the NYU Institute at the Internal Revenue Service. Ms. Kaufman is listed in
The Best Lawyers in America and
Washington DC Super Lawyers, and was named one of the best lawyers in Washington by
Washingtonian magazine. She was also named Top Lawyer of Washington in the Trusts & Estates category by the
Washington Business Journal in 2008.