La Presa Partners LLC · Los Angeles

Tax strategy for investment managers, family offices, and complex transactions.

A quantitative practice for people whose decisions move the number. We connect technical tax analysis to the dollars, timing, and trade-offs that drive the decision, and where the answer turns on economics we pair the advice with a model that makes the consequences clear.

Discuss a matter

Joan Blaeu, Nova et Accuratissima Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula, Amsterdam, 1664 (Library of Congress)

Who is behind the advice

Experience from inside the investment business.

La Presa is led by Carlos A. Schmidt, MBT, MBA, CPA, former Partner and Global Head of Tax at Ares Management, where he built the tax function from three people to more than forty and structured the firm's IPO, its Up-C and tax receivable agreement, and its conversion to a C corporation. Before Ares he was a tax partner at Ernst & Young and at Deloitte's National Tax Office and Tax Director at Highbridge Capital Management. You work directly with the adviser responsible for your analysis.

Full biography

Selected work at La Presa

Trimontium

Tax adviser on a $325 million capital solution for Authentic Restaurant Brands, a Garnett Station Partners portfolio company (September 2026).

Client names appear with permission. Other matters are described without names on the About page.

Who we serve

Three kinds of client. One kind of problem.

Fund sponsors negotiating a continuation vehicle. Family offices deciding how to hold a stake. Individuals with more at risk in a single tax year than most firms see in a decade. Different seats, same question: what does this structure cost after tax, and can someone show me?

We can. We build the model alongside the memo, and the two agree before either leaves the building: basis, liabilities, allocations, rates, timing, and the judgment calls that sit on top of them.

When a matter has six advisers on it, we run the play; we do not replace the team. Counsel, accountants, and bankers keep their roles, the tax analysis and the transaction economics stay aligned, and we bring the creative structure when the obvious one does not work.

Our services

What we do

Structuring, transactions, and the numbers behind them.

Fund & blocker structures

Feeders, parallels, SMAs, and leveraged blockers, with the ECI, withholding, and §163(j) arithmetic run rather than assumed.

Transactions & TRAs

Manager M&A, continuation funds, Up-C IPOs, and tax receivable agreements, with the gain computed before anyone signs.

Models & tax operations

After-tax return comparisons, waterfalls, and basis roll-forwards built to committee standard, and the tax metrics a CFO should watch.

Opinions, family office, renewable energy, and controversy: all seven services

A house rule

A position we cannot model is a position we do not yet understand.

Insights

News & insights

September 2026

Airport art · Transport history · Percent-for-art programs · VARA

Look Up

Our first client note with nothing to do with your K-1. A history of art in transit, from the Doge of Venice's gilded ceremonial barge to the 32-foot fiberglass horse with glowing red eyes that guards Denver International (residents call him Blucifer; he has never lived it down). Along the way: stagecoach doors painted like small traveling galleries, a Calder mobile that survived a commissioner who thought it belonged in a museum instead of an airport (he was half right — the airport became one), and a Frank Stella painting bought for $25,000 that is now worth roughly $8 million, which is either the best art advice or the best financial advice we have ever accidentally given. One question follows the whole story: who paid for the art, and what did they think they were buying?

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September 2026

Wealth tax · Taxpayer mobility · Proposition 40 · §877A · Expatriation

The Closed-System Fallacy

HMRC has put a named compliance manager on every billionaire it has identified with a UK tax connection, filer or not, and on November 3 Californians vote on a one-time 5% tax on billionaire net worth keyed to a residency date already behind us. The mobility data carry real labels, not the ones usually quoted, and the reference dates deserve attention while a proposal is still a proposal.

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September 2026

Pass-through entity tax · SALT cap · Investment partnerships · Carried interest · §164

No Trade or Business Required

Investment funds and carried-interest vehicles can elect the pass-through entity tax, deduct it, and defend it. A state income tax is a §164 item, not a §212 expense, and nothing in §164, §703, the regulations, or Notice 2020-75 asks whether the partnership is in a trade or business. Two worked cases, a state-by-state eligibility table, and five questions to settle before you sign. A technical companion carries the reporting walkthrough, the allocation exhibits, and the answers to the objections.

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