Jones Foster shareholder Bill Smith is vice chair of the Corporate & Tax and Private Wealth, Wills, Trusts & Estates teams and concentrates his practice in the areas of estate planning, estate and trust administration, taxation, and transactional corporate law.
Utilizing a spectrum of simple to sophisticated strategies such as trust structures, Bill works with individual clients and families to create a customized plan for the current or future transfer of assets to minimize federal gift taxes, estate taxes, and generation-skipping transfer (GST) taxes.
Bill provides counsel to businesses, private foundations, and charities in matters that include business succession planning, transfers of business interests, LLC and S corporation creation, governance documents, mergers, and Treasury Regulation compliance. Also, he works with out-of-state attorneys on issues involving income tax, real property, state filing requirements, residency, charitable trust modifications, and ancillary probate administration.
Bill is involved in several community and industry organizations and is president of The Kiwanis Club of West Palm Beach Foundation. He is a past president of both the East Coast Estate Planning Council and The Kiwanis Club of West Palm Beach. He is currently a member of the Palm Beach Tax Institute and the Planned Giving Council of Palm Beach County.
Bill graduated from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, magna cum laude, where he was named to the Order of the Coif. After being admitted to The Florida Bar, he went on to earn his Master of Laws in Taxation degree (LL.M.) from the Graduate Tax Program at the University of Florida. Bill is also a graduate of the Florida Fellows Institute of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches’ Leadership West Palm Beach program.
