Our practice

We have a broad tax practice that serves our large corporate clients, most of which are insurance companies, their corporate affiliates, their customers and clients, and their employees and marketing agents. In addition, we represent state insurance departments in various tax matters, including insolvencies, demutualizations and non-profit conversions. As leading experts in the highly-specialized field of the federal taxation of insurance companies and their products, we are often engaged to litigate or resolve administratively industry-wide issues, to secure regulations or rulings from the Treasury Department and the National Office of the IRS, to represent a company in an acquisition or sale transaction, and to advise on tax reserves and tax accruals. We provide efficient service to our insurance clients because of our expertise in specialized insurance tax issues and our extensive knowledge of the industry, including the unique regulatory, actuarial and accounting rules applicable to insurers.

Additionally, we routinely provide counsel on federal tax matters affecting insurance companies and their customers on issues involving insurance and financial products, corporate transactions, reinsurance, reserves, insolvencies of insurance companies, tax accounting, tax contingency reserves, foreign tax matters, tax hedges and derivatives, deferred and executive compensation, information reporting and withholding, and tax-exempt organizations. Our projects entail litigation, tax controversies, tax planning and consulting, issuance of tax opinions, and expert testimony. In all matters, our goal is to provide accurate, cost-effective and responsive service to our clients.

Additional Services:

Tax Issues Monitoring Service

We offer a monitoring service with respect to federal income tax issues to provide companies with up-to-date information on any new developments. Additionally, we offer monitoring updates on selected tax issues facing life insurance companies and separately on selected tax issues arising for property/casualty and health insurance companies. Our clients can choose to receive one or both monitoring service updates. The monitoring service includes a quarterly conference call/meeting and quarterly reports which summarize any developments on the selected list of issues.  An annual fee is charged, the amount depending on whether our clients choose one or both services. We also available to monitor specific federal income tax issues that are not selected for the general monitoring service, as requested by our client.

For additional information on the monitoring service, please contact Kenan Mullis or Lori Jones at 202-331-8585.

We frequently are engaged to work with accounting firms and other law firms to provide technical litigation support, insurance tax expertise or expert testimony. We also provide an independent second look to the advice of in-house tax personnel, public accounting or other law firm consultants. Our attorneys have a well-earned reputation for their integrity and their ability to work well with government personnel. This is partly attributable to the fact that each of our partners is a former government attorney who understands how tax agencies operate and who maintains close working relationships with former colleagues. See this well-earned reputation in action by reading our publications on our practice issues.