Richard B. Comiter is a founding partner and senior counsel at Comiter Singer, a Florida regional tax law firm. The focus of his practice is on income, estate, and gift tax planning and assisting business owners and high-net-worth individuals on how to most effectively pass their ownership interests from one generation to the next. A longtime Forum attendee, he sat down to talk about how the Forum provides easy-to-understand flow-through entity taxation concepts, good humor, and familiar faces that keeps him coming back.

You’ve attended the Forum more than 25 times. What value do you find in the programming?
I represent a lot of closely held businesses, so I need to understand the latest developments in partnership taxation and other types of pass-through entities involved in succession planning. The Forum is not a typical seminar, where presenters provide you with a summary the law in each topic. Instead, Chuck and Michael select developments in the tax law that are important to our practices, or where there have been changes, and create examples and hypotheticals applying these tax law changes and developments to specific factual scenarios. These real-life scenarios are very relevant to my practice. They actually work with the numbers and walk you through how the change in the tax law works. Normally in a tax law seminar, presenters just tell you what it is, not how to compute it. That’s what makes the Partnership Tax Forum such a unique and effective program.

What keeps you coming back after all these years?
It’s different every year, based on what is new in the pass-through entity world. It never gets dull. And the team is funny and smart. Chuck keeps on top of everything, and Michael’s very sharp with his dry sense of humor. But they don’t try to confuse you—they make the presentation in understandable language and wit. They also keep track of everybody who comes to the Tax Forum and give out special diploma awards based upon the number of years you have attended. I’ve been going to the Tax Forum so long that I have attended a program with my son.

How have you used what you learned at the Forum?
First, they give you a workbook of all the examples that you can refer to during the presentation, and they also give you their detailed treatise on pass-through entity tax law. The team will respond to your questions during their presentation and will continue to be very receptive to questions anytime during the remainder of the program. If you give them a call after the Forum ends, they’ll continue to be very responsive to your questions. Simply stated, they are a great resource. For example, they’ve taken me through alternative ways to use Section 704(b) in a tax efficient manner.