Professionals

Geoff Schultz is a partner in the tax section of Houston-based Porter Hedges. Geoff has significant experience in a wide variety of tax and general corporate matters, and has represented a diverse range of public and private clients, including clients in the oil and gas, real estate, construction, private equity, financial, chemical and software industries. Geoff has counseled clients in matters such as:

• Business start-ups – choice of entity tax and business considerations.
• Mergers and acquisitions – tax planning and compliance with respect to a wide variety of business combinations.
• Investments and key employee admissions – structuring investments in, and admission of key employees to, ongoing businesses.
• Company agreements – drafting limited liability company and partnership agreements, including tailoring complex tax allocation provisions to achieve desired economic results and crafting “tax partnership” provisions for oil and gas ventures.
• Compensation matters – planning optimal compensation methods from both employer and employee perspectives, as well as designing plans and awards of restricted stock and membership interests, “profits” interests, incentive stock options, nonstatutory stock options, phantom stock plans and other compensation arrangements.
• Transaction exit strategies – planning same through the use of devices such as public offerings, recapitalization transactions, buy-sell agreements and redemption agreements.
• U.S. cross-border transactions – planning in respect of both U.S. inbound and outbound investments and other transactions.
• Alternative energy – planning and compliance in connection with maximizing cash grants under Section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and tax credits under Internal Revenue Code sections 45 and 45J with respect to various alternative energy sources, including wind energy, landfill gas, biomass and nuclear facilities.
• Like-kind exchanges – planning and implementing tax deferred like-kind exchanges under Internal Revenue Code section 1031.

• American Bar Association
• State Bar of Texas
• Houston Bar Association