Brian Donnelly advises clients on partnership and corporate tax law matters. His work focuses on tax and business issues affecting real estate development projects and transactions. Brian previously served as Farella’s managing partner for eight years.

Much of Brian’s work involves real estate, typically in the role of counseling clients on transaction structure and strategy. He represents, among other clientele, large commercial and residential developers and homebuilders and assists them in negotiating and documenting agreements with capital investors in these projects. In this context, he helps fund projects, formulates tax-advantaged deal structures, negotiates and structures incentive compensation, and is involved in other related tasks for these real estate projects.

For the last 25 years, he has assisted real estate developers in obtaining federal historic tax credits.

Brian works extensively with partnerships, S corporations, joint ventures, limited liability companies, and high-net-worth individuals, as well as with other members of the firm, on a variety of transactional and property tax matters. He has worked with many business owners when they are ready to sell their business or transition ownership to the next generation or to key employees.

As a practitioner, Brian offers his clients a unique combination of highly sophisticated technical guidance and a collaborative approach. In addition to being an attorney, he is a CPA and has an LL.M in taxation. He utilizes his technical qualifications and extensive experience as a CPA and attorney to work collaboratively with his clients’ advisers, particularly other CPAs and wealth advisers.

Brian has learned that simply engineering a tax-efficient transaction is not enough. He uses his creativity, responsiveness, and emotional intelligence to understand his clients’ objectives and help them achieve their ultimate goals.