William J. Wilkins, chief counsel for the IRS and assistant general counsel in the Treasury Department, lectured Sept. 28 to UF Law students, faculty and staff. (Photo by Cela Suter)

By Francie Weinberg
Student writer

The chief counsel for the Internal Revenue Service returned to UF Law Sept. 28 to present a lecture in which he encouraged students to embrace tax law.

William J. Wilkins, who also is assistant general counsel in the Treasury Department, presented  “How IRS Lawyers Contribute to Sound Tax Enforcement” as part of the Graduate Tax Program Enrichment Speaker Series to a full Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom.

Wilkins has worked in tax law since graduating with a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. In his lecture, he discussed the role of tax lawyers in the IRS and how they contribute to sound tax administration.

“The bulk of the work is taking care of tax court petitions,” Wilkins said. “This is essential to our mission, which includes providing for uniform, correct and impartial application of the tax laws.”

Lawyers’ three main jobs in the office of chief counsel are creating regulatory infrastructure, handling resolution of tax conflicts and providing legal advice to the commissioner and other IRS executives. Though Wilkins is the chief counsel, he works closely with each associate office and its members regardless of political affiliations.

“There are only two presidential appointees in the IRS: the chief counsel and the commissioner,” Wilkins said. “I think this speaks to the fact that the organization is really not political. There are a lot of buffers and circuit breakers in terms of any sort of political intervention in what we do.”

Wilkins also touched on a tougher, more controversial subject when he brought up the new tax regimes recently implemented by the IRS, including indoor tanning services, pharmaceutical companies and health insurance providers, which he addressed in the question-and-answer section of the lecture.

“When we write regulations, we want to be sure that we have done all the research to see if there are any prior Supreme Court cases that limit us,” he said. “We also do research, so when we say, ‘could we be accused of overturning a previous regulation?’ we know that we’re being careful.”

Regardless of the long days in the office and always being on-call, Wilkins said that benefits greatly outweigh the costs. He encouraged any students who are interested to jump at the opportunity to get involved in tax law.

“I have found tax law to be a great career choice,” he said. “It presents some of the most interesting and rewarding legal careers that are available. As you go through your career and you talk to people in the tax world, they very often say that those were some of the best years of their practice.”

Peer and lawyer/judge assessment scores place UF Law in the top 40 on both counts: 38th overall and 17th among publics in peer assessment, and 39th overall and 18th among publics in lawyer/judge assessment. Assessment scores are often regarded as the most accurate rankings categories, since they do not rely on self-reported financial and placement data that may be subject to manipulation and are unverifiable.

“Compared to last year, the college rose in both assessment scores and our internal calculations showed improvement in nearly all areas covered by the U.S. News rankings formula,” said UF Law Dean Robert Jerry. “I emphasize, however, that any improvements are due to our ongoing efforts to become an even better law school, and not in response to external rankings.”

“I reiterate each year my concerns about the validity of rankings, but I have also always said we ignore them at our peril,” said Jerry. “I am pleased that the U.S. News ranking reflects our longstanding status as the state’s premier law school.”

The University of Florida Levin College of Law was also ranked first in Florida, eighth overall and fourth among public schools by Super Lawyers in 2009 in the first national ranking of law schools to consider “output,” i.e. the caliber of a school’s graduates.

“Our school has been preparing its graduates for significant leadership roles for more than 100 years,” said Jerry. “Our 18,000-plus alumni include numerous leaders in law, business, government, public service and education at the state and national level. No other law school has produced as many presidents of the American Bar Association in the past four decades — five including 2010-11 president Steve Zack.”

UF Law graduates also are represented by the majority of The Florida Bar presidents, including its immediate past president, John G. White III, and president-elect, Mayanne Downs; four governors of Florida; and hundreds of state senators and representatives and Florida Cabinet members. Nine graduates became college presidents, including at UF. More than a dozen have served as deans of law schools. It ranked fourth among public law schools in 2008 (eighth overall) in the number of its graduates serving as federal district and circuit court judges; more than 250 graduates serve as state appellate and trial judges in Florida, and many serve in those roles in other states as well.

The school also boasts an impressive list of distinguished visitors to campus, including five Supreme Court Justices in the last five years. A series of major renovation and new construction projects in recent years has transformed the college’s physical space and placed it at the forefront of major law schools providing students with state-of-the-art facilities.

A major $25 million expansion and renovation project that concluded in 2005 made the UF Law library the largest in the Southeast and among the top 20 in the country, and added two “towers” with state-of-the-art classroom space. The first phase of construction on the 20,000 square-foot Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center was completed in time to host the October 2009 oral arguments for the First District Court of Appeals. The facility houses a fully functional trial and appellate courtroom with a 100-seat gallery, bench for seven judges, judge’s chambers, jury box, deliberation room and attorney’s tables. Construction on the second floor is expected to begin in fall 2010, with completion expected in spring 2011.

Wilkins began his presentation with a description of the Office of Chief Counsel, which turns out to be a large department in what is a very large agency. According to Wilkins, the Office of Chief Counsel has 2,564 employees. While that may seem like a lot, it is fairly small when one considers the task that they must perform.

If taxes are inevitable, it is just as inevitable that people and companies will do their best to get around paying them. To enforce the tax code in courts across the country, the Office of Chief Counsel must employ hundreds of attorneys and their support staff. On top of all of this, the Office of Chief Counsel also serves as the chief legal advisor to the IRS commissioner, and also gives tax advice to the Treasury and taxpayers. Like any area of law, the envelope is always being pushed, and Wilkins and his staff must be watchful of trends and address them as needed.

The global movement of money and how it impacts taxes is an important issue that the IRS is currently dealing with. Wilkins said that the IRS is moving toward more international arrangements, and touched on the cooperation between Switzerland and the United States in uncovering the crimes of the Swiss bank UBS. In February 2009, UBS handed over the names of 250 Americans who had been evading taxes by stashing money in offshore UBS accounts. Since then, the IRS and the Swiss government have been working out a deal to deliver the names of thousands of other tax evaders. “And this kind of process will become more routine and more regularized,” Wilkins said.

Not every international case will be of this size, of course, but Wilkins said that these cases are usually not just your average audit. “The typical case is to develop evidence for an investigation, usually a criminal one,” he said.

But the IRS does more these days than simply enforcing tax regulations.

“We’re pretty long past the point where we’re only a tax collector,” Wilkins said.

With many government programs, like the first-time homebuyer credit, being implemented through the IRS, Wilkins described the office as also being a program administrator.

That role is already coming center-stage, as the implementation of the newly passed health care reform law begins. The law imposes new penalties for large employers who don’t provide insurance, grants new benefits to small businesses that do, and a multitude of other provisions. It also includes more traditional taxes, like the 10 percent tax on tanning beds. “That’s going to be an interesting one to apply,” Wilkins told the laughing crowd.

Solomon is currently the director of Ernst & Young’s National Tax Department, a post he took up in 2009. For a decade before then, Solomon worked for the Treasury Department, most recently serving as the assistant secretary for tax policy.

The first subject of Solomon’s presentation, global trends in taxation, may seem puzzling to some. Why should one country care how others tax their citizens? Solomon answered that question at the outset, saying, “I submit that we have to recognize, now, that we are inextricably interconnected to the rest of the world.”

As Solomon presented these trends, such as the globalization of economies and international cooperation, he pointed out that these trends were in response to the problems that countries around the world are facing. As transactions become more complicated, governments must try to keep up, and as revenues shrink, enforcement rises.

Solomon said that in a world where a company can pack up and move its operations overseas, a country must acknowledge the impact that its tax code can have on such decisions. “We have to understand that our tax system is relevant to business decisions made in this country,” he said.

At the same time as countries change their tax codes to create attractive business environments, countries are also working with one another in the enforcement side of the equation. Countries are sharing information with one another, signing treaties, and even joint-auditing. Solomon said that the U.S. and UK are looking for a volunteer to be joint-audited and joked, “If you know a company that wants to be joint-audited by the UK and U.S., let me know.”

While these factors make tax legislation an important subject every year, Solomon pointed out that 2010 will be a particular important year. Solomon explained that there are many code provisions that expire every year, and must be reinserted in order to take effect. However, as Congress has stagnated under the load of the aforementioned controversies, many of these provisions have not been reinserted, with the estate tax being the one that has generated the most attention.

Even with all of this on the horizon, Solomon pointed out that “tax reform is not at the front of everybody’s mind.” With highly controversial subjects like health care, carbon emissions, and unemployment being debated every day, a technical subject like tax reform hasn’t seen a great deal of discussion.

Revenue neutrality has been a focal point for much of the discussion on tax reform that has taken place, but Solomon doubts that it will be much of an issue when tax reform is finally taken up by Congress. The reason, he explained, was that, at that point, the country is almost sure to need more revenue. But still, Solomon only offered one promise on the issue, that there would be individual winners and losers.

“It’s not going to be revenue neutral on an individual basis,” he said,” I can assure you of that.”

Tax lawyers likewise deal with ethical matters, but for them, tax season is January through December. With this in mind, the Graduate Tax program held a workshop on legal ethics for tax lawyers last Friday, hosting three prominent tax attorneys from around the state.

Michael Lampert, who runs his own firm in West Palm Beach, began by telling the assembled students how many organizations are looking over the shoulders of tax lawyers. “There are an awful lot of groups out there that tell us how to practice,” he said.

Not only are tax lawyers in Florida regulated by The Florida Bar and American Bar Association, but also by more specific regulations, like those described in Treasury Circular 230, which describes the specifics of appearing before the IRS. Since many tax attorneys are also certified public accountants, they are accordingly regulated by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Lampert said infringing one group’s rules can often get you in trouble with other groups, and that a punishment by The Florida Bar could impact a lawyer’s ability to practice tax law, whether the issue was tax related or not. “So if you rob a bank, but report the income, you’ll still be in trouble,” Lampert told the laughing crowd.

Lauren Detzel, a shareholder with Dean, Mead, Egerton, Bloodworth, Capouano & Bozarth in Orlando, spoke next. She began detailing the ethical dilemmas that tax attorney’s face, focusing on what she described as the biggest problem. “The hardest one to deal with,” she said, “the one that going to come up day after day, is the duty of loyalty.”

A layman may not understand why fulfilling the duty of loyalty poses such issue, but a lawyer who has dealt with conflicts of interests will understand. Detzel is certified as a wills, trusts, and estates lawyer, a field that presents many possible conflicts of interest, as relatives and their competing interests make matters difficult. As soon as a duty of confidentiality owed to one client impairs the duty of loyalty to another, a lawyer has a big problem. And at that point, the responsibility is on their lawyer.

“When a conflict arises, it is the lawyer’s responsibility to take care of it,” Detzel said. “Most of time, what is that going to involve? Withdrawing from representation.”

Lampart further discussed the duty of confidentiality, and then Samuel Ullman spoke about the duties of truthfulness and zealous representation. Ullman, a partner with Bilzin Sumberg Baena Price & Axelrod in Miami, said that those two duties often interact, and not always in a good way. “I have seen lawyers in pursuit of that zealous representation fudge the truth a little bit,” Ullman said.