Is the IRS Whistleblower program a waste of time? Maybe, depending on your potential case and how it is handled. On this week’s podcast, Eric is joined by Bryan Skarlatos from Kostelanetz LLP, a true heavyweight in tax controversy. They bring their extensive experiences to the discussion and offer insights into what they think works, what doesn’t, and why whistleblower cases often take years to resolve. If you’re considering becoming a whistleblower or dealing with one, this episode delivers the hard truths you need.
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Is The IRS Whistleblower Office A Waste Of Time? With Bryan Skarlatos
Is the IRS Whistleblower Program a complete waste of time? Maybe. I’ve had some great experiences with the Whistleblower Program, and I’ve had cases where I don’t know what the heck happened. In this episode, I’ve invited Bryan Skarlatos, who is the Managing Partner at Kostelanetz LLP in New York. They have offices in New York and Washington. Bryan has practiced longer than I. He is at the top of our profession, someone that I have looked up to. I’ve tried to do a lot of things that he’s done. Having him on the program is a great honor.
He has also had some interesting situations and experiences with the Whistleblower Office. What we are going to do in this episode is break down for you what we think work, what doesn’t work, when is this a complete waste of time, and when should you maybe consider bringing that whistleblower case and what you need to know about it before you hit send on that form 211. Let’s go meet Bryan and get into it.
I’m joined by Bryan Skarlatos. Bryan is at Kostelanetz in New York. I have a long history with Bryan. I don’t know if I’ve ever told Bryan this. When I started my practice, the advice I was given was to look at the people who are doing what you want to do and do what they do. For me, that was Bryan, Chuck Rettig, and Steve Tasher. The NYU tax controversy form that Bryan founded, I copied. I’ve been following Bryan from the back row for quite a while.
It’s been great that over the last several years, you and I have worked together and gotten to know each other better. If you aren’t familiar with Kostelanetz, they’re probably one of the premier firms that do controversy work in the country. They do it much larger and, frankly, in a much bigger market than we do. You’re doing international and criminal. You can Google Bryan and he comes up in a lot of famous cases. It’s great of you to take the time to do this.
Thank you. The world turns. I watch what you do and learn from you. That’s the way the world works.
Is It Worth Bringing A Whistleblower Case?
It’s a lot smaller than you thought. One of the things I wanted to talk about is the IRS Whistleblower Program. I have vented to you. I’ve heard your stories. You’ve ended up litigating a bunch of these. We get people who call us all the time. I’m sure you do, too. It’s always like, “Should I bring a whistleblower case?” The bigger question for us is, is it worth even bringing a whistleblower case? If so, what circumstances would you look for before you decided to take a case? I have very strong feelings about this, and we can get into that. Quickly, what are your thoughts?
I have some strong feelings about it, too. You’ve asked two questions. Is it even worth bringing a case? If so, under what circumstances would you bring a case? Why don’t I jump in and explain a little bit what I do? I do have a whistleblower practice or I have had a whistleblower practice. The IRS Whistleblower statute was enacted in 2006. We’re coming up on twenty years.
It was enacted by Senator Grassley. I know because I’ve been into legislative history. I’ve testified at the IRS on this and I’ve represented Senator Grassley as an amicus, an appeal of a whistleblower case. I know that he did it with the best intentions to make it like the False Claims Act, the FCA. I’ve been doing this for a long time. The whistleblower practice is a small part of my practice. The largest part of what I do is representing taxpayers against the IRS. In many of those cases, some of them are whistleblowers on the other side. I have to deal with representing the taxpayer when somebody’s blowing the whistle against the taxpayer.
My knowledge of the Whistleblower Program and what works, what doesn’t, and how the IRS reacts to it has helped me in representing the taxpayers on that side. That is the much larger part of my practice. I believe in the Whistleblower Program. It can be an important part of IRS enforcement because it’s tough for the IRS to figure out all the non-compliance that may be out there.
If you think about it, the IRS has a lot of power. Nobody wants the harsh spotlight of the government shown on them. The IRS doesn’t know your financial affairs or my financial affairs. They have to go through this whole audit to figure it out. They’ve got to pull the information out of us. Especially if I am a large, sophisticated, complex big dollar taxpayer, that can be tricky for the IRS.
The IRS has a lot of power, and nobody wants the harsh spotlight of the government shown on them, but the IRS really doesn't know anybody’s financial affairs. Share on XAlso, there are plenty of other taxpayers out there. They have a sense. An IRS agent can walk down the street and say, “That restaurant has this much cash.” Those people are off the books. Those are relatively smaller matters. To go out and pinpoint where the non-compliance is, it’s hard for them to do. There is a role in that process for the Whistleblower program. I do think it’s an important part of IRS enforcement. Who knows? Going forward with everything that’s happening at the IRS, maybe it will take a more central role in how the IRS develops cases.
Getting back to your question, would I take a whistleblower case? I am in my early 60s. IRS Whistleblower cases take a long time. If I were doing it as part of my estate planning, maybe. I have one case that we’re still litigating in the Court of Federal Claims and the appeals court. That case started around 2007. It’s coming up on twenty years since the claim was made. It involves years pre that, so the 2000s. That case is still being litigated by us against the IRS on behalf of the whistleblower.
The average whistleblower case has taken 8 to 10 years to pay out, and those are for ones that pay out. For ones where the IRS wants to drag its feet or doesn’t want to pay out, and you have to take them to court, you’re looking at 12 to 20 years minimum. Do I want to take a case? It better be a simple, easy case. We’ll come to that in a minute.
Why Whistleblower Cases Take So Long To Process
We’re going to get to that. For the folks reading, why does it take so long? Let’s think about this. If someone comes and meets with me, we don’t fill in the form and fax it off. The Whistleblower Office, statistically, gets 1,000 cases a month. They have moped before dosh. They had 32 people last I checked reviewing this. They have 30 to 35 each to review every single month.
Here’s the thing. If you don’t grab their attention and provide something that they think they can latch onto, meaning if you’re giving them, “I believe this person’s cheating,” that’s going nowhere. It’s a waste of time. They don’t have an unlimited staff. Forget about it. One, we’re going to weed through and we’re going to poke and prod to see, if I’m on the government side, whether I think there’s something here that I would send to civil audit or criminal to say, “Look at this.”
One, we want to provide as much as we can. There’s going to be some time you’re going to spend with us. We’re going to submit it. The Whistleblower Office needs to look at it. Assuming you’ve convinced them there’s something there, it then goes off usually to a civil function, or it could go to criminal, for them to review. It’s another case in their inventory. They need to work on it.
A normal audit could take anywhere from a year to a year and a half minimum. The guy or gal on the other side, the target, is usually not going to sit down. Some of these big cases I filed, I always tell the client, “Assuming the government does pursue this, they’re not going to write a check. They’re going to go hire Bryan, who is going to start fighting the other way.”
That audit that takes a year or two, they hire me, and then it takes 3 to 4.
There are appeals. Remember something. If you’re truly the target, they usually don’t like the idea of paying. They’re going to end up fighting this. They’re going to generally hire someone on the other side. If all goes well 5 or 6 years down the road, the government’s got to collect. There’s a ten-year collection statute. Maybe the client strokes the check or maybe they get into a payment plan. Maybe they file an offer and compromise and get rid of it. You only collect if the government collects. That’s where that 8 to 10 comes in. Bryan has had cases where they’re litigating and you add that on top. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme. In fact, if anything, it’s a lottery ticket that may someday pay you something.
You’re not going to know. You’re not going to have any sense of how it’s going throughout the process either. That’s what drives me crazy. It drives people crazy.
It’s very frustrating. You check in with the government, and all they’ll do is send you that standard letter saying it is active.
Challenges Of Large Whistleblower Claims At The IRS
What you said highlights a lot of issues in this process. What’s important for people to understand is that the IRS isn’t 1 department or 1 set of people. When you’re filing a whistleblower case, at some point, you have to file with the Whistleblower Office. That is an office of maybe approximately 40 people. They’re a clearing house. They do review it but they’re not going to work it and determine whether it’s a good case or a bad case.
What they do is they take a look and see whether you’ve crossed all your I’s and dotted all your T’s, whether you’re a prohibitive whistleblower, whether it meets certain standards, and whether it seems like there’s something to follow up on. If that gets a green light, then they send it to a completely separate part of the IRS, the field. It goes to a small business that’s self-employed or LB&I, but it goes to revenue agents in the field. That’s where you said they receive it, and then they’ve got to decide when they are going to pick it up and work it.
One of the biggest issues with the IRS and the way they handle whistleblower cases is that I’ve heard from senior people at the IRS, “You’re wrong. They do appreciate whistleblower claims,” but for whatever reason, they’ve got their own inventory. They’ve got their own audit plans. They already know what they’re doing over the next 6 months to 12 months. They get a whistleblower case. How do they fit that into their inventory? Do they work it?
I’m going to tell you my firm belief because they don’t tell me anything. We’re going to get to that in a moment why they don’t tell us anything. My firm belief, based on my experience over the years, is that most agents do not jump all over a whistleblower claim, no matter how good it is and no matter how big it is. I can’t tell you how many whistleblowers have come to me and said, “This is the biggest whistleblower claim ever,” or, “This is a $100 million, $500 million, or $20 billion claim.” I have many billion-dollar claims in my life. None of them have paid, but I’ve had many billion-dollar claims filed. Bigger is not better. There’s a lot that goes on at the IRS to deal with a big claim. You’re going to get into a very complex process. I want to make that clear.
I have discovered that if it is big and it’s complicated, the IRS does not have a crack team of people sitting around waiting to work your case. The cases that I’ve had that have paid have been these small income tax evasion cases that are very simple for the government to make. I found the same thing even with the DOJ. They’re not looking to make complicated RICO-type cases. If it’s a straight-up income tax evasion that they can get a plea deal on, that they’re interested in.
It feels to me like the rest of America doesn’t have the patience for anything complicated. I have $2 billion whistleblower cases. I’ve got one that’s about $50 million or $60 million. They were restaurants with people off the books. One of which appears the person closed out the audit and is paying. The other one, to get to your point, the auditor must have gotten it and it was one of these where there are 5 people on the books and 15 people off the books. The auditor shows up one evening for dinner. You could count the number of people and look at the payroll.
That got closed as a no-change audit. My client got pissed. That is the other thing I want to point out. This is done purely at the discretion of the government. The government doesn’t like the case. The government can’t be bothered. It’s not big enough or too complicated, or frankly, they don’t feel like doing it.
They’re too busy.
They don’t do it. One, you cannot compel them. Two, you only collect what they collect. If they pursue one of my billion-dollar cases and the person ends up gambling everything away, they’re broke, and they do an offer and compromise for $100, that’s what the government collected. It can be very frustrating because people come in and they’re like, “It’s a big case.”
They’re doing the math in their head like, “If the government gets 35% tax and a 75% civil fraud penalty, the government’s going to collect $80 million. They’re going to give me 30% because I’m a genius. That’s $24 million I’ll get, and then I have to pay you something, Eric.” They’re retiring to Monaco or wherever in their head. I’m like, “Come back to Earth.”
My thoughts are that $100 million-plus cases are going to face some headwinds and frictions at the IRS because of the complexity and the difficulty of that. Maybe you’re dealing with the taxpayer who’s going to be well-funded and have a very strong defense. The best sweet spot for a whistleblower claim is going to be in the $10 million to $50 million range, or maybe a little smaller in the $10 million to $25 million range. If you get so small that it’s $5 million or $6 million, then is it worth putting a lot of time and effort in to wait 10 years to get 20% to 30% of that award? You have to think about that, the work that goes into it, and the need to pay professionals to do some of that.
You have to think about whether it's worth putting a lot of time and effort into waiting 10 years for 20 to 30% of a small award. Share on XThe Inherent Tension In The Whistleblower Program
You touched on one of the things. We should talk to the folks about this. It has to do with an inherent tension in the Whistleblower Program that needs to be worked out via statute. There is a bill pending in Congress, which has bipartisan support, to revamp the Whistleblower Program a little bit. We should certainly talk about that before our time is up.
Here’s the main issue in the inherent tension. One is that it’s going to take a long time. There are systemic reasons for that. There are also reasons because the taxpayer has the right to contest and to fight back, which they often do. That can stretch things out for quite a while. Number two, the big issue is that during that long period, you don’t hear anything about your claim, and there’s a reason for that. It’s the taxpayer confidentiality section 6103.
I said there was a tension in the statute, and there is. The tension is that the Whistleblower Program encourages people to come forward with information and provide it to the IRS. Sometimes, these whistleblowers are doing it at risk to themselves. There can be fear of physical risk, although I have to say that’s a small minority of cases. Sometimes, it’s people who have worked in the industry, worked for somebody, or worked for a corporation, so they’re doing it at risk to their livelihoods. They’re also taking their time, effort, etc. to do this.
They encourage them to do this, and the Whistleblower Program relies on the information from the whistleblower. Sometimes, that should be an iterative process where the IRS comes back and asks the whistleblower questions about what they’ve submitted. That does not happen. Why? It is because of section 6103, taxpayer confidentiality. Taxpayers have the right to confidentiality, which is very important.
At the same time, if the IRS is seeking to push a case forward, they will define the boundaries of taxpayer confidentiality in one way. However, when it comes to whistleblowers, they define the boundaries of confidentiality broadly, such that they can’t even say something to you that would possibly allow you to infer what was happening with the taxpayer. It gets ridiculous.
Anything that would allow you to even guess where the case is in the process, they say, “We can’t do that because then you could guess where the case is in the process.” However, in other situations, the IRS is not worried about people guessing based on their signals. They’re not worried about taking actions from which somebody could infer what is happening with the taxpayer.
They define the boundary of 6103 broadly, which is very frustrating because what happens is that in any case that involves any complexity, you make the whistleblower submission and then it’s up to the IRS to interpret your information and use it. They would get so much further if they could come back, work with the whistleblower, and ask some questions or say, “We got this information from the taxpayer,” or, “The taxpayer says this. What would the response be?”
Oftentimes, the whistleblower is like, “As soon as they tell me what the taxpayer says, I’ll tell you what the response is.” There’s not that kind of back and forth because they’re afraid that if they involve the whistleblower in that process, the whistleblower will be able to infer that the IRS is auditing the taxpayer, where they stand in the audit, and what’s happening in the audit. They keep you in complete darkness during this 5 to 10-year period. That’s super frustrating.
Limited Workarounds In Complex Whistleblower Cases
One of the workarounds I’ve had, which is very limited, is if somebody comes and they bring a case and it’s a good criminal case.
If it’s a criminal case, you can work around this sometimes.
I will go right to my special agents that I’m friends with and present it to them. When you file the 211, which is the whistleblower form, they say, “Have you provided this to anyone in the IRS?” I always use one of my local special agents, which does annoy them a little bit because they get the whistleblower office calling them.
One of them told me years ago, and he has since retired, “I know you want to file the 211. By all means, do that. Let me see the case. I don’t like the idea that these people in Utah are making a decision. I want to see it.” What I have found is that I can contact them. They won’t say, “Here’s what’s going on with that.” They won’t do that. They have interviewed my client, so there is a little bit at the beginning where we can provide and expand.
I had one where it was the CFO who was the whistleblower. They got a legal opinion about their exposure, this company. They brought in the DOJ lawyers by phone. They were like, “Was this prepared as part of litigation? Meaning, is there an argument that it is attorney-client privilege?” That means we can’t do anything with it. There was no lawsuit going on. There was no legal action. They went and sought an opinion from this accounting firm. By going to CI, we can get a little bit of that. You’re right. Once it goes off into the program, even my connection, all they can do is say, “I made a call. It’s active.”
There are two comments I want to make about what you said. First, you’re right. That is an exception to what I said to a limited degree. I’ve thought about this a lot and I’ve experienced it. The key here is that the criminal investigation side of the IRS is much more used to working with witnesses, informants, and that sort of thing. They’re not afraid to reach out and talk in an interview, for example, or even in some cases, come back and ask more questions. Whereas the civil side of the IRS is concerned about that because they’re afraid of an expansive interpretation of section 6103. There is a workaround to that as well.
For that reason, I agree with you. In the right case, it is better to bypass the Whistleblower Office and go directly to IRS CI. Before CI takes action, lodge your claim with the Whistleblower Office to make sure that you have the ability to get the award. If you don’t lodge it with the Whistleblower Office, you’re not going to get an award. You go to IRS CI first to try to get some traction in the right kind of case.
Understanding Section 6103 In Whistleblower Cases
I want to talk about the regular case. What can you do with 6103? There is a section of 6103, 6103(n), I believe, that allows the IRS to enter into contracts with agents to exchange information. The IRS does this. They do work with agents all the time. When I say agents, I mean third-party contractors. They, in some cases, have hired law firms to help them with various situations.
They can enter into contracts where the agent is bound by 6103 to the same degree the government is with the same penalties for violating 6103, which includes a criminal prosecution or monetary penalties. The whistleblower and the whistleblower’s representatives take on all those burdens, but they’re governed by 6103, too. Disclosure of even a small amount of information in appropriate cases so that you can have the iterative process or the back and forth would work.
That’s something that the IRS should use more often. That would bring it closer to Grassley’s original intent to make it like the False Claims Act. We see the Department of Justice working more closely with claimants under the FCA than the IRS has ever done. The workaround there is to make it more like the FCA, work more closely with the whistleblowers, and use 6103 when appropriate.
What does the IRS do? There have been complaints about this for a long time. The IRS has said, “What we’ll do is we will report out to the claimant, the whistleblower, once a year upon request what’s going on with the case.” That’s become known as a status and stage letter. The status and stage letter has been interpreted so narrowly that all it is is, “We still have your claim.”
They will say one other thing, which is, “It’s still out in the field being worked on,” or, “It’s at the Whistleblower Office being reviewed.” They’ll tell you that. It’s better than nothing, but you only get one a year. Once a year, you get to find out they’re still in the field or it’s at the Whistleblower Office being worked on. That’s all you got.
Due to time, we have to wrap this up. Lee Martin used to be the Director of the Whistleblower Office. Lee retired a number of years ago. He and I gave a talk, and I added a slide. Do you remember the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark where they’re wheeling the ark off into a government warehouse? I said, “That’s what it feels like. You send this in and it goes off somewhere.” Lee got so pissed at me. He was like, “That’s not true.” I was like, “Calm down.”
Is The Whistleblower Claim Worth Your Time?
If you’re reading this, is it worth bringing a whistleblower claim? Yes, if it is a case that can easily be worked. Meaning, it’s not an appraisal, a valuation battle, or anything like that. A battle of the experts, the government is not going to do. I can tell you that. If they can get an expert on the other side saying it’s not an issue, what is a jury going to do with that? One, it’s straightforward.
Two, if you think it’s the biggest case ever, that should be concerning. It’s possible you have the biggest straight-up income tax fraud ever. The moment it starts getting complicated, our experience is you’re going to have a hard time getting the government to work on that. If it’s far-flung and complicated, it’s going to be hard from a resource perspective to get them to do this.
The other thing, honestly, is if all you’ve got is an allegation, no good. I would like to see something that supports this. Here’s the other thing that people should understand. The CFO that brought us all that stuff I told you about, the IRS has to independently verify all that. They can’t work a case based on, “Eric Green’s client gave us this. This must be good.” They’re going to try to independently verify everything that we give them or figure out some other way to prove it, which also can be frustrating.
Where we’ve got inside info we can give them, they can’t rely on that. They’ve got to figure out another way to work this case because they’ve got to be able to support that. It can be very frustrating. Also, understand that you’re in for the long haul. This is a lottery ticket that might pay 10 to 20 years from now, if at all.
You were answering your second question at the outset, which is, what is a good claim? A good claim is one that’s like Goldilocks and the three bears. Not too small, but not too big either. You don’t want the biggest claim ever. It’s a claim that ideally would involve clear-cut tax evasion. What we’re saying there is a criminal case, one where you have strong evidence that somebody knew what they were doing was wrong or tax fraud.
A good claim is one that's like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, not too small but not too big either. Share on XYou want to go to the criminal side of things where you get more traction as opposed to dumping it into the civil audit file side of things. You’re going to have to have good evidence. That’s where somebody like Eric or my office can help you vet the claim and determine whether you have good evidence. Then, you’ve got to be willing to wait.
You have to be willing to understand and hope the government already doesn’t have similar information somewhere. If they somehow can argue they already have the info, they’d be like, “Thank you very much, but you’re not getting paid.”
On the flip side, if you ever are involved with an audit where you believe there’s a whistleblower on the other side, you can also work some of these aspects of the program to your benefit. There are ways to talk to the IRS agents, whether they’re criminal agents or revenue agents on the civil side, about the issues with the whistleblower and also issues regarding 6103, including grand jury secrecy as well under Rule 60 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.
You can use the information that we’ve been talking about to your benefit when you’re representing taxpayers who have whistleblowers on the other side. The IRS doesn’t tell you there’s a whistleblower but you can often know. Also, having been on both sides, Eric and I are able to sense when there’s a whistleblower on the other side. You adjust how you present your case to the IRS given the funnel of knowledge that you believe they’re getting from the whistleblower. It helps to know on both sides what’s going on with the whistleblower program. If I may, can I talk about some of the changes that are pending before Congress?
I have one comment. I had a case where we knew who the whistleblower was. It was the former bookkeeper. During the audit, what we discovered was that my client was arguably pocketing money or skimming money and so was their whistleblower. All of a sudden, the criminal case ended up going away because it became money. Who was the criminal? As an aside, and I do want to talk about the new legislation, just because you’re the whistleblower doesn’t mean you get the get-out-of-jail free card. Look at Mr. Bradley Birkenfeld. He blew the whistle on UBS, got $104 million or whatever he got, and got 40 months in prison for participating.
He got the prison first, and then he got the money afterward.
It all worked out.
It blew back. I do agree. There are important ways. A large portion, maybe at least half or if not more, of my criminal cases, there’s a whistleblower on the other side or a cooperator. We know how to work with those folks and how to argue the case to the IRS to say, “Don’t rely on what the whistleblower is telling you.” That shows you some of the frictions that you can encounter as a whistleblower.
Proposed Bill To Revamp The Whistleblower Program
There is a bill pending before Congress that would change the whistleblower statute in some important ways. The first is the whistleblower office determines whether to pay an award and the amount of that award. That review by the Whistleblower Office is reviewed by the tax court only on an abuse of discretion standard, which means that the Whistleblower Office has complete discretion. Only if you can show that what they did was abusive or clearly erroneous would anybody ever reverse them. What that means is that they know they’ve got that protection.
There’s a bill pending that says change it to a de novo standard so the tax court can review the case de novo and substitute its judgment for whether you should pay or how much the award should be as opposed to seeing the people below abuse their discretion. If that standard is changed, then the Whistleblower Program may open up quite a bit. One would hope.
Another thing that’s super important is that the statute has a provision that after a certain amount of time after the IRS has collected some money, interest begins to run on the whistleblower award. What that does is force the Whistleblower Office to move expeditiously in paying claims. On that point, there is also a policy that the IRS needs to implement better, and that’s partial payment. What the Whistleblower Office does is it waits until it collects every last red cent that’s due and then it waits two more years for the statute of limitations on a claim for refund to expire before they’ll even process your claim. That all works into these long delays.
There could be cases where they assess tax, and then it takes them 5 years to collect, and then they wait 2 years after that 5 years. They may have collected 90% of the money in year one. For the last 10% over the last 4 years, you’re waiting the whole 5 years until every cent is collected. What the Whistleblower Office should be able to do is pay throughout the process. I know that puts a burden on the IRS, but the whistleblower process is broken, and this is one way to fix it.
Even if they waited the 2 years so they collect in year 1, after year 3, they can pay that piece of it out even if they get a rolling annuity. I get it. Thank you for joining me for the commentary.
These were gorgeous questions.
Thank you all for tuning in. Bryan, again, thanks for doing this. Everyone, have a good rest of your day. I’ll see you in the next episode.
Thanks. I’ll keep following you.
Take it easy. Bye.
Important Links
About Bryan Skarlatos
Bryan is often retained to evaluate the strength of tax positions for tax and financial reporting purposes and to advise on potential remedial actions. He counsels corporations and individuals from around the world on how to come into compliance with U.S. tax law, and he has handled hundreds of voluntary disclosures involving both domestic income and foreign assets.
Bryan is an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law where he teaches a course on tax penalties, and he created and co-chairs the annual New York University Tax Controversy Forum, which brings together representatives from the government and expert private practitioners to discuss issues related to tax compliance and enforcement.
Bryan has been hired by foreign and state governments, and several other clients, to provide expert testimony on tax penalties. He has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee as an authority on tax penalties, and he has testified before the Internal Revenue Service regarding the IRS whistleblower law. Bryan was retained by Senator Charles Grassley, the drafter of the IRS whistleblower law, to write an amicus brief on behalf of the Senator in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Chambers and Partners has ranked Bryan in its top tier of lawyers in the U.S. for Tax Fraud in its USA Guide and for Tax: Private Client in the agency’s High Net Worth Guide. Chambers USA Guide has described Bryan as having a “smart reassuring presence with insight into the government….[He is] extremely knowledgeable and very well connected to the various tax authorities.” The High Net Worth Guide notes that Bryan “is a brilliant lawyer,” “has a ton of experience,” “has excellent judgment,” and “is very pragmatic and very dedicated to his clients.”
He also has been recognized by Super Lawyers as one of the Top 100 Lawyers in New York, and Best Lawyers in America has twice named Bryan “Lawyer of the Year” for Tax Litigation in New York.
