Stites & Harbison, PLLC

Bond Financing & Tax Incremental Financing.  Like any business looking to grow, health care facilities of various types require, at times, assistance with commercial real estate and public debt financing.  Over the past 30 years, the firm has represented every major commercial bank in Kentucky and Tennessee, many Georgia-based and regional banks, and a number of insurance companies. Our attorneys have handled financing transactions, ranging from small-ticket lease programs and small business loans to sophisticated, complex structured financing transactions such as syndicated credit facilities, synthetic lease transactions, securitizations, tax-exempt bond financing, tax increment financing, tax credit financing and other creative financing arrangements.

Our experience also includes leveraged equipment financing, vendor financing programs, project financing, conduit lending, mortgage warehouse lending, leveraged acquisition lending, leveraged employee stock ownership plan loans and a variety of asset-based loan transactions with collateral ranging from traditional accounts receivable and inventory to more specialized property like hospital and nursing home assets, health care complexes, and medical centers.

Mergers, Acquisitions, Joint Ventures and other Affiliations.  We provide a full range of merger and acquisition (M&A) services to our health care clients. Whether a health care business is acquiring, or being acquired by, another business, our attorneys assist in determining the most beneficial structure for the M&A transaction from a corporate, financing, tax, liability, antitrust, regulatory and (in the case of a closely held business) estate planning perspective. Our experience in negotiating and documenting M&A transactions is extensive. In addition, the broad range of expertise within the firm enables us to assist and expedite virtually any regulatory aspects of the M&A transaction itself or the businesses involved, including, for example, obtaining the necessary health care licenses, permits and registrations.

Tax.  The attorneys of Stites & Harbison assist both for-profit and not-for--profit health care clients with tax planning and litigation on the federal, state and local levels.  The firm's tax practitioners include a former United States Tax Court law clerk and a former attorney for the Internal Revenue Service's Office of Chief Counsel (Tax Court).

The firm helps clients structure corporate reorganizations, redemption transactions, spinoffs, splitoffs, liquidations and tax free exchanges. We also represent clients before the Internal Revenue Service Appeals Office, the United States Tax Court, the U.S. District Courts and federal appellate courts on federal income tax matters.

We represent a number of large multi-state, multi-national corporations in complex SALT matters, and successfully represent many other businesses and individuals as well. We appear before the Kentucky Department of Revenue, Board of Tax Appeals and all levels of the courts regarding state income and license taxes, sales and use taxes, and property taxes. Our State and Local Tax (SALT) attorneys are the "go-to" people for SALT controversies in Kentucky.

Several members of the tax practice group have master-of-law degrees in taxation. The firm is the Kentucky member of the American Property Tax Counsel ("APTC"), a national affiliation of law firms with a property tax practice. Membership in APTC is limited to the preeminent property tax law firm in each state.