DPS Legal Counsel
Helping health professionals and entrepreneurs navigate the business of healthcare and the business of business
DPS Legal Counsel protects the business, regulatory, contract, transactional, intellectual property, compliance, and tax interests of health practices and small businesses from initial formation through founder retirement and practice/business succession
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Recent Blog Posts
The Coming Tax Reform – Is the Federal Estate Tax on the Chopping Block?
There has been talk recently that Congress is preparing to pivot from healthcare reform (which failed to materialize, at least to this point) to federal tax reform. One of the key planks of the Republican platform for tax reform is the elimination of the federal...
Limitation on Physician-Real Estate Limited Partner to Practice Outside Agreed Area Upheld
In the case of Edwards v. Urosite Partners, the Tennessee Court of Appeals was presented with an interesting fact situation involving a physician and a real estate investment limited partnership. Dr. Edwards was a partner in a medical group of urologists in the...
Massive HIPAA Settlement Shows Why Physicians and Other Providers Must Take Patient Privacy Seriously
On February 16, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a public notice that Memorial Healthcare System had paid HHS $5.5 million to settle potential violations of HIPAA's Privacy and Security Rules. Memorial Healthcare System is a nonprofit...
Taxpayers, Beware! The IRS is Turning Some Overdue Accounts Over to Collection Agencies . . . This Month!
The IRS announced today that it will begin later this month sending letters to some taxpayers with overdue tax accounts, informing them that their accounts are being turned over to a private collection agency. The program involving private collection agencies or PCA's...
Physicians and Ambulatory Surgery Centers – Passive or Nonpassive?
It is quite common that a physician chooses to acquire an ownership interest in an ambulatory surgery center. I have been involved in a number of transactions involving just this sort of thing. The reasons that doctors buy in to ambulatory surgery centers are varied....
Tennessee Joins Alabama and South Dakota in Adopting an Economic Nexus Sales Tax Rule
Tennessee joined Alabama and South Dakota in adopting a tax rule aimed in subjecting online retailers in Tennessee to the burden of collecting and paying over sales tax on sales to customers in the Volunteer State. Some people call these new state revenue rules...
The Titans may not have made the playoffs, but Tennessee is Number 1 in something
It's NFL playoff time. Congratulations to all the teams and the fans of the teams that made to this year's playoffs. Unfortunately, if you live in the Nashville area or elsewhere in the great state of Tennessee and are a Titans fan, the end of the season has been...
The Home Office Deduction
Entrepreneurs are the new pioneers. They are creative, intrepid and fast-moving. Most businesses in the United States are small businesses, and the self-employed entrepreneur is the new normal in our economy. It is not surprising, then, that more and more business...
FREE Health Law Webinar – SEND YOUR QUESTIONS!
Dan Smith of DPS Legal Counsel will host a free webinar on Health Law issues in late October or early November. To view the webinar, please request the webinar password by commenting on this post. Also, inlcude in your comment any questions you would like to see...
IRS Collections, Private Collection Agencies, and the EXPIRE Act of 2014
Senate Bill 2260 is entitled the "Expiring Provisions Improvement, Reform, and Efficiency Act of 2014" or more succintly the "EXPIRE Act of 2014." At present, the website govtrack.us gives the Senate Bill 2260 a 28% chance of being enacted into law. The status of...