ATTORNEYS

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Jon Van Loo advises individuals, businesses, and nonprofit organizations on a broad range of tax matters. Jon’s business tax experience includes mergers & acquisitions, investment funds, and the withholding and reporting aspects of inbound and outbound financial transactions. Jon received his law degree from Northwestern University Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude, served as the Senior Articles Editor for the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, and won the Raoul Berger Prize for the best senior research paper.

At Wood LLP, Jon has had extensive experience drafting, advising and regulating the affairs of qualified settlement funds (QSFs). He has formed, modified and advised QSFs, including rendering tax opinions, and drafting and modifying unique structure and funding documentation. He has worked with plaintiffs, defendants and their counsel on tax and administrative issues arising in class actions and other multi-party complex litigation.

Outside the field of QSFs, Jon regularly undertakes a principle role drafting tax opinions, and has handled numerous large tax issues arising out of litigation settlements and judgments.  Jon has rendered tax advice relating to structured financings, legal fee structures, income characterization, deductibility, capitalization and other tax issues. He has also handled a number of voluntary disclosures under recent IRS programs.

Prior to joining Wood LLP, Jon practiced in the U.S. tax department of Linklaters LLP both in London and in New York for over four years. Jon advised on a wide variety of U.S. tax matters while at Linklaters, including mergers & acquisitions, tax-free spin-offs, advising fund managers and investors on fund formation and investments (including FIRPTA), and advising issuers and underwriters on financial products and securities offerings (including equity, debt, loan agreements, securitizations, swaps and structured products). His time at Linklaters included a client secondment as tax counsel to an investment fund manager in London. As the author of the tax discussion in the PRI Primer, a publication of the PRI Makers network, Jon also has experience in advising on “program-related investments” for private foundations.

Before attending law school, Jon was a graduate student in political science at the University of California, Davis, where he earned a master’s degree, and at Duke University, where he engaged in Ph.D. studies as a James B. Duke fellow and attained all but dissertation status.