We litigate in the United States Tax Court
We will work to eliminate – or significantly reduce penalties – proposed and assessed by IRS, including penalties for failure to file tax returns or reports of foreign financial bank accounts, failure to pay overdue tax liabilities, significant understatements of income or overstatements of deductions, negligence, fraud, negligent disregard, or failure to report, withhold and pay over.
We frequently assist clients with IRS examinations
when the issues are complex. We can take the lead
in managing the interactions with the IRS, as easily
when necessary provide simple sideline advice.
When a taxpayer cannot resolve a disputed issue with the IRS examination team, we guide the taxpayer through the strategic decision of whether and when to take the issue to IRS Appeals. We draft submissions to the appeals officers that include everything that would need to go into a memorandum finding in our favor – including effective explanations of the litigation risk faced by the IRS.
We handle all types of income tax disputes faced by individuals, partnerships, corporations, and fiduciaries. We will litigate many of the issues commonly faced by each type of taxpayer, and partner with transactional tax attorneys or accountants whenever the technical tax issues call for more specialized knowledge.
We assist taxpayers and their advisors in evaluating litigation risk when preparing a return, navigating estate and gift tax audits, advocating IRS appeals, and litigating both in tax court, and in the refund litigation forums. We understand complex valuation issues; including how to work effectively with valuation experts, as well as how to present valuation evidence at trial. We work hand in hand with trust and estate counsel to ensure that we make the most effective legal and factual arguments to support the taxpayer’s position.
We represent myriad clients in excise tax disputes not only with IRS, but also with other agencies, such as TTB. We are very familiar with constructive pricing
rules and their application in computing excise tax on sales to related parties.
High net worth individuals, families, their trusts and estates, and their closely held companies face unique tax issues and increased IRS scrutiny. We assist taxpayers in the enterprise examinations conducted by the IRS Global High Wealth industry group. We will litigate all of the hot-button issues faced by high net worth taxpayers. We also know how to overcome the challenges in gathering helpful evidence from individuals, advisors, and family offices.
We represent individuals and estates in the IRS’s Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program, the Streamlined Foreign Compliance Procedures, Streamlined Domestic Offshore Compliance Procedures, and Delinquent Filing Procedures. We guide our clients who made errors in reporting foreign bank accounts or other foreign income to the IRS.
From there we select the program that is right for them and opt out and choose a different path if necessary. We know individual reporting requirements related to foreign financial assets inside and out. In addition, we will represent individuals who have been unable to complete a voluntary disclosure due to a pending examination or other prohibition.
We will defend the validity and use of tax credits, including federal or state low-income housing tax credits, historic tax credits, and alternative fuel tax credits.
We’ll handle disputes with the IRS involving employment taxes, executive compensation, and employee plans. We will resolve cases involving worker classification, penalties for failure to report and withhold, cash payroll, challenges to the deductibility of executive compensation as a reasonable and
necessary expense, and attempted disqualification of employee plans.
Not every tax controversy practitioner tries cases.
When taxpayers have been unable to reach an
acceptable settlement through their other advisors,
either the taxpayers or those other advisors can ask
us to step in as trial counsel.
