Jon Karp

Jon represents mid-sized, closely held businesses and their owners in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, distribution, retail sales and professional services, and high net worth individuals. He also handles estate planning and post mortem administration for clients.

Jon has more than 30 years of experience as a CPA, as well as an attorney, practicing in the areas of income tax planning, business succession planning, and estate and gift taxation for closely held businesses and professional firms and their owners.

Jon serves as outside general counsel for his clients from the time they organize, counsels them in connection with their ongoing operations and assists them in planning for the future of their companies, whether it be a sale, merger, or transition to family members or key employees.

He also represents professionals such as accountants, attorneys, and medical professionals in the general operation of their businesses, including the preparation of shareholder buy-sell agreements, partnership agreements, and contracts and agreements needed to add partners or transition them out. He also counsels these clients when they are selling or merging their practices, or acquiring other practices.

For all of these clients and high-net-worth individuals, Jon assists with estate planning and, for business owners, helps create holistic succession plans that balance competing or sensitive family interests. Together, Jon and his clients create strategies that allow owners to transfer ownership of the business to involved family members and distribute other assets to family members outside the business. This planning is designed to avoid expensive and divisive disputes between family members and preserve the legacy of the company for successive generations.

Jon has been a frequent presenter on estate planning, succession planning and business related tax topics. Jon has co-chaired and spoken at annual conferences of the California CPA Education Foundation, at the AICPA National Tax Conference, numerous committees of the California Society of Certified Public Accountants, and in private presentations for various accounting firms, legal groups, and trade associations.

He has served as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern California (USC) in the Master of Business in Taxation Program and has guest lectured at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Law School.