Sean A. Smestad*

Sean assists clients with a range of tax and transactional matters, including mergers and acquisitions, tax restructuring, tax-free reorganizations, debt and equity financing, repatriation planning, REIT formations and acquisitions, real estate transactions, and more. He has significant experience drafting and negotiating the tax aspects of contracts such as purchase agreements, including representations and warranties, forward-looking covenants, tax allocation provisions, and joint venture agreements between U.S. and foreign parties.

Before joining Michael Best, Sean was a tax associate in the New York office of a major multinational law firm. Previously, Sean was also a senior associate at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP where he assisted with large corporate restructuring projects and made substantial contributions to memoranda and other communications related to international taxation. Additionally, Sean supported clients by developing financial models to understand the basis of their wholly owned controlled foreign corporations, and performed due diligence on IRS filings.

While pursuing his law degree, Sean served as a student attorney at the Ronald M. Mankoff Tax Clinic at the University of Minnesota. He represented low-income taxpayers with tax controversy cases and performed community outreach on behalf of the clinic.

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