Find Lawyers in Houston, Texas for Tax Law
Practice Area Overview
The structure of a transaction can significantly affect its tax consequences, and very small changes in structure or in the underlying facts can have enormous tax significance. Tax lawyers design structures with those consequences in mind, while also taking into account the parties’ commercial goals, timing issues, and any other legal or accounting considerations. The tax treatment of some transactions — such as a “spin-off,” where a company distributes subsidiary stock to its shareholders — is highly complex, and tax lawyers may assist clients in obtaining confirmation of their transactions’ tax consequences from the IRS in the form of a private letter ruling.
Tax lawyers also review and negotiate the terms of the transaction, ensuring that the legal agreements implement the deal in a manner consistent with its intended structure. The agreements also govern the relationship between the parties. They may help the parties understand the intended tax treatment, identify certain tax exposures, and allocate responsibility between the parties for any taxes that may apply.
Tax lawyers also work with clients to determine the most tax efficient manner of carrying on ongoing business operations, taking into account federal, state, local, and international tax considerations.
On occasion, tax-related disputes arise between the parties to a transaction or with the IRS or another taxing authority. Tax lawyers may represent clients in administrative proceedings, private settlement negotiations, or litigation related to these controversies.
Tax lawyers are responsible for providing technical advice and analysis, but must fully understand the overall business transaction in order to do so. The best lawyers give advice in a way that is clear, thoughtful, and business-minded. Tax lawyers need to be closely involved in a transaction from the very beginning and throughout the transaction, in order to be able to give the best advice on an ongoing basis and to be able to modify the structure, if necessary, in response to any changes to the business terms of the transaction.
Stephen L. Gordon, Partner
Andrew W. Needham, Partner
Lauren Angelilli, Partner
Cravath, Swaine & Moore
Corporate Law & Commercial Litigation Legal Guide 2023
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Barry Adkins is a shareholder in the tax and tax transactional section. His practice involves advising private companies and their owners regarding general business planning, including asset protection, succession planning and compensation planning, as well as entity organization and governance. Barry has extensive experience representing professional service firms with an emphasis on healthcare, including structuring issues, joint venture arrangements, compensation planning, buy-in arrangeme...
Roger Aksamit serves as the Firm’s Houston Office Leader. In addition, he is a member of the Firm’s Strategic Lateral Hiring Committee and is involved with the Firm’s Diversity & Inclusion initiative. Roger specializes in energy and private equity taxation and counsels public, private equity, and closely held clients in mergers and acquisitions, financing, and joint venture transactions, as well as all other aspects of transactional tax matters and planning. He is Board ...
Lawrence M. Bass serves as the practice group leader in the firm's trusts and estates and employee benefit practice. Mr. Bass possesses more than 35 years of experience in counseling clients on a wide variety of matters including income, gift, estate and generation skipping transfer tax matters, material property rights, and business legal and tax matters. Mr. Bass focuses his practice primarily in the areas of estate planning and business planning for high net worth individuals including own...
Larry A. Campagna has established a reputation as an authoritative litigator in matters of business litigation and white collar criminal defense, as well as federal, state and local tax controversies. Over the past 30 years, he has resolved thousands of civil and criminal litigation matters, many of which involved sophisticated and complex legal issues that established precedent in courts at the federal, state and local levels. Highlights of Mr. Campagna’s career include: representing t...
David Cole is a tax partner in the Houston office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. David focuses his practice on tax disputes with trial experience in both federal and state courts. The tax matters David has litigated include disputes with taxing authorities and between private parties. The clients David represents include large and small partnerships, public and private partnerships, corporations, and high net worth individuals. His clients operate across an array of industries, including privat...
George Connelly is recognized as one of the leading federal tax litigators in the United States. His practice focuses on IRS audit, collection and criminal matters including civil and criminal tax litigation matters, for clients including individuals, companies and estates. In a distinguished career spanning decades, he has achieved over 60 reported opinions in tax cases, and has received numerous honors and awards from governmental bodies and professional organizations.Mr. Connelly gained pe...
Mark Dundon is a tax partner in the Houston office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Mark’s practice focuses on the tax aspects of complex mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures, restructurings and financing transactions, primarily in the energy industry. He has represented large and mid-cap private equity funds and their portfolio companies, as well as large public and private corporations.
Marc Grossberg's primary practice is representing clients in tax controversies at the examination, Internal Revenue Service appeal and trial and federal appeals levels, collection issues and pre-IRS examination compliance issues, including filing and foreign accounts and unique issues. Recent representations include bringing taxpayers "in from the cold," meaning assisting them in becoming compliant with the Internal Revenue Service before the Internal Revenue Service has discovered the non-co...
One of the nation’s leading tax controversy and planning attorneys, Richard Husseini brings to bear his 30 years of experience to successfully represent private and public companies and high-net-worth individuals in complex tax matters. He is described as “bright and thoughtful; a very good litigator” (Chambers USA 2022) and as “a national leader in tax disputes” whose “knowledge of the sector is very high” (Legal 500 US 2022). Richard is recognized b...
Peter A. Lowy, a shareholder in Chamberlain Hrdlicka’s Houston office, is best known for his tax controversy work and deep experience in the energy sector. He also advises corporations and other taxpayers in a broad spectrum of industries on tax compliance issues, tax planning, and risk management. He regularly works with the Internal Revenue Service and the Texas Comptroller’s office on a wide range of matters. Mr. Lowy also co-chairs Chamberlain Hrdlicka’s state and local ...
M&A attorney with 46+ years of experience counseling clients in buying, selling, merging and dividing businesses, business taxation, and business planning. Practice includes structuring, negotiating, managing and documenting all types of mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, leveraged buyouts, management buyouts, family business planning, tax-free reorganizations, corporate divisions, acquisitions and dispositions involving ESOPs, private equity transactions, partnership and limited liabil...
Juan F. Vasquez, Jr. serves as the Co-Chair of the Firm's Tax Controversy Section and concentrates his practice on federal, state and local tax controversy matters, including in connection with examinations, administrative appeals and trial. Mr. Vasquez also represents clients in administrative and policy matters before the IRS, various states, and local taxing authorities. He also represents clients in tax planning, ERISA and executive/deferred compensation, estate planning, and trust relate...
Tania Albuja is an associate attorney in the Tax Controversy and Litigation group in Houston. She received her J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center and her LL.M in Taxation from the Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to joining the firm, Tania served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Juan F. Vasquez of the United States Tax Court in Washington, D.C. Tania assists with a wide range of federal tax controversy and litigation matters at all stages before the Internal Revenue...
Mr. Farzaneh concentrates his practice primarily on assisting businesses with domestic and international tax planning and corporate matters, including entity structuring and governance, choice of entity (including partnerships, limited liability companies, S corporations and C corporations), finance, tax optimization, reorganizations, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, private equity sales and executive compensation, employee benefit matters, as well as assisting numerous clients with ...
Alissa Gipson is an Associate in the Tax Controversy, International Tax, State and Local Tax and Tax Planning sections in the Houston office. Ms. Gipson’s experience includes assisting clients with examinations and administrative appeals, state and local tax controversies, cross border civil and criminal tax matters, trust and estate matters, overseas tax effects, white-collar criminal defense and investigations, Affordable Care Act tax requirements and domestic and international tax pl...
Umair Karowadia is an associate attorney in the Tax Planning & Business Transactions group. He received his J.D. from Notre Dame Law School and LL.M. in Taxation from the New York University School of Law. Prior to joining the firm, Umair was an associate in KPMG's M&A Tax practice group.
As a business lawyer and CPA, Michael Overstreet assists businesses, individuals, and families with business transactions and tax planning. Raised in a small business himself, Michael is passionate about helping clients handle the various business and tax issues that come with owning, operating, and transferring a business. Michael works with owners, executives, tax directors, outside accountants and CPAs, and other advisors to design and tailor efficient solutions to corporate and tax proble...
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