For companies nothing to change in taxation.

I also took real estate courses afterwards at NYU, including Real Estate Taxation.Unfortunately real estate taxation changes constantly, and unless you're in the business, you do the most conservative things, thus short changing yourself.

This is because all increases in the value of the retirement account will be subject to taxation later.  

Be sure your CPA has expertise in the area of Trusts/Estate taxation.

If there is a pressing situation that requires you to sell to get the cash in your lifetime then it is doubtful that you will squawk at having to pay tax at that time.But if your tax is in the $120K range and you get to invest that for a net return including of depreciation benefit for say 8% then after 10 years you will have more than doubled that tax in return and compounded interest. 

we worked through the old owner and tried to get to the kids when ever possible.. all leads were leads until the logs were on the ground.. a few things we did to speed things up  were as posted above and pretty obviouswe set up 1031s  but hard to sell to an 80 year old who could not fathom how that could be legal.and a few did charitable remainder trusts  probably even more complicated and the ones' where we bought those deals I would say the sellers were pretty savvy folks not your typical tree farmer. so as many have stated whats the sellers best interest and your best interest is many times vis a vi taxation not aligned in any manner.

And since you have some 30 years for your money to grow being sheltered from taxation you may want to consider converting some of it into Roth IRA or 401k and investing tax free.

.- Accountant (yes, I'm a CPA but unfortunately my experience has nothing to do with small business set up/taxation issues), it would be great to be able to sit down with someone to figure out how to best structure everything for my situation.  

However, it doesn't indicate that the professional is well versed in taxation as it relates to Real Estate.I would question the EA how many clients and what percentage of his clients are real estate investors.You may also want to ask him/her for a referral from one of his real estate investing clients.In the chance that he/she does not work out - there are tax professionals here on BP that may be able to help.

I think California trust taxation is driven by residence of the trustee/s, residence of the beneficiaries, and whether or not the trust distributes it's income and to whom.There may be some planning opportunities around those variables.