Stephan Viskorf

Dr Stephan Viskorf is a partner at POELLATH in Munich. Together with Christoph Philipp, Stephan is head of the Munich Private Clients team.

The team specializes in providing holistic advice to high-net-worth individuals, especially family entrepreneurs and their mostly complex international asset structures. “Our clients can expect advice that comprehensively considers not only all legal aspects but - as our experience shows - also all personal aspects that family life itself, and the life of an entrepreneurial family in particular, entails.”

The Private Clients team therefore brings together specialists from the fields of corporate law, inheritance and family law and, above all, tax law in order to quickly and efficiently grasp all the individual needs of the clients and to be able to provide them with highly qualified advice.

Stephan has been working in the Private Clients area for 20 years. He is known for creative and pragmatic solutions to complex tax issues.

He advises owners of family owned businesses and HNWI on issues of domestic and international estate and succession planning. He has significant experience in different legal systems and the difficulties that can arise when they do not match. Stephan works with many foreign clients either with German assets or with the intention to move (temporally) to Germany in order to avoid pitfalls like German tax residency and the multiple taxation of beneficiaries of foreign trusts due to German gift and income tax. He also advises settlors by setting up German foundations - tax-exempt organizations as well as private foundations.

He is well recognized by independent rankings as a leading advisor in his areas of expertise.

Stephan has been lecturing at the University of Muenster's Institute of Tax Law since 2009. He is the founder and managing director of the “Münchner Unternehmenssteuerforum” (Munich Corporate Tax Forum), editor of the Handbook “Familienunternehmen in der Nachfolgeplanung” (Family Businesses in Succession Planning) and author of various commentaries, particularly on the relevant regulations regarding the valuation and tax exemption for business assets in the German Inheritance and Gift Tax Act (ErbStG), as well as in the German Valuation Act (BewG).

Stephan studied in Muenster and London (Institute of Advanced Legal Studies) and was admitted to the bar in 2002 and as a tax advisor in 2005. He was an associate at a major tax consultancy and audit company, before he joined POELLATH in 2007.