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Thomas D. Sykes is a partner in the law firm of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, resident in its Chicago office. He is a member of the Firm's Tax Department, where he focuses his practice largely on tax compliance and controversies, including tax litigation in all forums.
Tom brings to his practice three key elements: technical tax experience, gained over the last 24 years; extraordinary first-chair, in-court experience; and an extended period of federal government service in Washington, D.C., where he represented the IRS in tax disputes across the nation. This uncommon background permits Tom to assess, expeditiously, the legal hazards faced by a taxpayer involved in a dispute with the IRS; to plot a strategy for settlement that comprehends the workings of both the IRS and the Department of Justice; and to pursue and resolve efficiently administrative proceedings and any litigation that becomes necessary.
In recent years, Tom's most notable in-court representations include:
Primary responsibility for obtaining a full concession from the IRS in a Tax Court case of an issue worth $75 to $100 million to the taxpayer, a large insurance company (2001);
First-chair representation in a tax-refund suit in U.S. district court in Nashville in which the IRS and the Department of Justice fully conceded all issues in the case, which involved $15 million in tax, penalties, and interest (2005);
Primary responsibility for handling a Tax Court case in which the IRS agreed to reduce tax and penalty deficiencies to less than $6,000 from $839,000 (2006);
First-chair representation of one of the nation's most prestigious universities in a multi-million dollar tax refund suit pending in U.S. district court in Chicago (2006);
First-chair representation of a partner in U.S. district court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in a case under the unified partnership audit and litigation procedures of the Internal Revenue Code (2004 to present); and
First-chair representation of one of the nation's most prestigious hospitals in a multi-million dollar refund suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, after having successfully represented that hospital in the U.S. district court below (2004 to present).
In addition to his in-court practice, Tom represents taxpayers before the IRS's Examination, Collection, and Appeals Divisions, and before the IRS National Office (where he currently represents 14 mutual funds seeking letter rulings). He counsels taxpayers on reporting and penalty matters. He has been deeply involved in litigation that seeks to recover refunds of FICA tax paid on stipends paid to medical residents.
Tom had a highly visible role in bringing about the IRS's unprecedented nationwide concession, in May 2006, that $13 billion in tax refunds are due to 150 to 180 million individual, business, and non-profit taxpayers who had overpaid excise tax on long-distance and cellular phone service.
Tom has been quoted or mentioned regarding various tax issues of the day in The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, Tax Notes, Tax Notes Today, the Daily Tax Report, the International Herald Tribune, The Kansas City Star, Financial Advisor Magazine, TheLedger.com, The Trusted Professional, the Chicago Lawyer, Bloomberg.com, Accountingweb.com., and CNNMoney.com.
Before returning to the Midwest to join the Firm as a partner in 2002, Tom practiced tax law in Washington, D.C. for almost 18 years, both inside the federal government and in private practice. In 1998, after 14 years with the U.S. Department of Justice's Tax Division, he joined a D.C. law firm as a partner, where he represented insurance companies before the Internal Revenue Service, the Court of Federal Claims, U.S. district courts, and the Tax Court.
While with the Justice Department's Tax Division, Tom served as a senior-level trial lawyer and supervisor. He litigated, or directly supervised the litigation of, approximately 175 tax cases in the Court of Federal Claims and in U.S. district courts. While with the Tax Division, he handled some of the IRS's most important and highly visible tax cases, including proceedings in the U.S. district court in United States v. Irvine, a gift-tax case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. His personal case load at times directly controlled almost $1 billion in tax and interest, and included disputes over valuations of real estate, closely-held stock, and intangible assets. A four-time recipient of Outstanding Attorney awards from the Tax Division (1986, 1988, 1991, and 1997), he was an Assistant Chief of its Court of Federal Claims Section when he left the Tax Division for private practice in 1998.
Before joining the Tax Division in 1984, Tom was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Madison, Wisconsin, where he handled dozens of federal criminal prosecutions, including a criminal tax case that he tried to a verdict and handled on appeal. Before becoming a federal prosecutor in 1982, he was, in 1980 at the age of 25, the youngest District Attorney in the State of Wisconsin.
Over the course of his 28-year legal career, Tom's in-court experience includes:
Trying, as lead counsel, over twenty cases to a jury and many scores of cases to a court;
Briefing and arguing 10 cases in U.S. courts of appeals;
Litigating in 24 jurisdictions, almost always as lead counsel;
Identification as counsel in over 50 reported federal court opinions; and
Teaching trial advocacy to U.S. Department of Justice lawyers at the Attorney General's Advocacy Institute, in Washington, D.C.
Tom has published quite frequently on tax issues of the day. In recent years, he has published pieces addressing: the patenting of tax strategies; the "for everyone or no one" rule respecting the foreign tax credit; the federal excise tax on long-distance service; the loss-disallowance rules; and corporate-owned life insurance. Over the years, his writings have appeared in the Journal of Taxation of Global Transactions, the Legal Times, Tax Notes, The Insurance Tax Review, International Tax Notes, The Tax Executive, and the Ohio State Law Journal (student contribution). His writings have been noted in at least three preeminent tax treatises. Working under commission from the Bureau of National Affairs (BNA), a leading legal publishing house, Tom revised Tax Management Portfolio No. 524, Deductibility of Bribes, Kickbacks, Illegal Payments, Fines, and Penalties. In 2005, at BNA's request, he revised the chapter of BNA's Tax Practice Series that addresses IRS audits, assessments, and appeals. He is currently revising Tax Management Portfolio No. 523-2d, pertaining to the deductibility of legal and accounting fees.
Tom is a member of the bars of Illinois, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, and of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Tax Court, the Court of Federal Claims, and the Courts of Appeals for the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits. He served on the Board of Governors of the Court of Federal Claims Bar Association from 2001 through 2003, and has been listed in Who's Who in American Law. He was designated by his peers as an Illinois Super Lawyer in Tax in 2005 and 2007. He is identified as one of the leading lawyers in the United States in the tax controversy field by The Legal 500's survey for 2007.
Education
Ohio State University College of Law, J.D., 1979
University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1976 |
