Practice Areas

Our tax lawyers have helped business and nonprofit organizations plan their activities to minimize any federal excise taxes that might otherwise apply to them. Nearly all of our experience has involved excise taxes imposed as penalties on prohibited activities or excessive compensation related to employee benefit plans and tax-exempt organizations.

For example, both the Internal Revenue Code and Title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) impose penalty excise taxes on certain "prohibited transactions" of benefit plan fiduciaries and related parties, or an employer's failure to comply with other requirements, such as the health benefit continuation rules often called "COBRA." Similar penalty tax rules also govern conflict-of-interest transactions of private foundations and public charities.

We have represented plan sponsors, fiduciaries, third-party plan administrators and tax-exempt organizations in resolving disputes concerning excise taxes. In some cases, we have helped clients prepare the excise tax returns when a taxable transaction has been discovered, and the tax is not being disputed by the client.