Stepping in to Serve

By Robert A. Sypolt, Incoming Queens Chapter President

Hello again, my dear friends.

I was delighted when our Board of Directors asked me to serve a second term as your Queens Chapter President. As you may recall, I was president in our fledgling second year of existence, only two short years ago. My, how quickly this time has passed!

Also, as you may recall, the emphasis of my first term was to engage our chapter membership. That year, our board was highly successful in our efforts, as we had almost 20% active membership participation. In only our second year of existence as a chapter, we competed impressively with most of the chapters that had been in existence for decades. The credit for our great success belongs solely to you, our chapter members!

As we are a much more mature chapter in our fifth year than we were in our second, my emphasis this year will be somewhat expanded and much more comprehensive in scope.

Though we will be continuing to offer you chapter-sponsored CPE at highly competitive prices (please see June’s offering, to the right), we will now also be making a major effort to engage the Queens business community through active participation in the Queens Chamber of Commerce and whatever other Queens organizations our board may aggressively select.

We will also be reaching out to the various ethnic business communities in Queens. As you may know, Queens is the most ethnically diverse county in the United States.

From the Asian-American community, we are honored to have Liren Wei, current President of the Chinese American Society of CPAs, joining our board. Also joining our board as treasurer is Brian Lee, CPA and former president of that society.

From the Indian-American community, we are highly honored to have Prabir K. Roy, CPA, joining our board. Prabir is a real powerhouse of a professional here in Queens, nationally and, indeed, internationally. He will be featured in our “Queens CPA in the Spotlight” column shortly.

Welcome aboard, gentlemen! We are anxious to learn just how we may better serve your respective business communities!

Please take note that our outreach efforts to the African-American and Hispanic communities continue. If you have any interest in active chapter service, please call me immediately to discuss the valuable opportunities that are available to you.

I’m happy to announce that we are hitting the ground running with our Chapter CPE offerings. This June, we are delighted to be offering you a three-hour seminar on Advanced Estate Planning, to be presented by the Merrill Lynch Global Private Client Group. Please mark your calendar now; the event will be on June 23 at St. John’s University, Bent Hall, Room 277B. The event will include a light meal at 6:30 p.m. and the seminar from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. (see the registration information to the right).

Just how advanced can this seminar be, you might ask? Well, when I contacted Rich Perry, of the Forest Hills office of Merrill Lynch, whom I had met at a Queens Chamber event around Christmas, and told him that I had a 43-year-old client that needed approximately $30,000,000 of life insurance to augment his current $15,000,000 of coverage to cover his estimated estate tax liability, Rich went into immediate action. Within a week, I had a plan on my desk that not only provided for the insurance coverage, but did it without using any of my client’s unified credit!

This technique combines the use of a Family Limited Partnership (“FLIP”), a Life Insurance Trust (“LIT”) and a Grantor Retained Annuity Trust (“GRAT”) to provide the necessary structure to avoid the unnecessary gift taxes. Other advanced techniques to be discussed in detail at the seminar include how to properly structure and fund defective trusts, dynasty trusts, grantor retained trusts, etc. If you have high-net-worth clients, don’t miss this seminar!

Enjoy the spring, and I hope to see you all soon.