H. Karl Zeswitz

He provides clients with sophisticated tax planning and defends them in tax inquiries and investigations.

Working with domestic and multinational publicly traded, privately held and nonprofit clients, Karl provides advice on corporate and partnership tax planning, tax accounting methods, FIN 48 reporting, worker classifications, financing transactions, and consolidated return matters. He helps clients navigate the multiple layers of tax planning in mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations and recapitalizations for domestic and cross-border transactions, and advises them in corporate joint ventures, venture capital and hedge funds matters, and complex pooling and financing arrangements.

He began his law career as a trial attorney with the Office of Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Karl now maintains a significant tax controversy practice, handling individual and large case audits and litigation. Because his clients range from high-profile individuals in the entertainment industry to Fortune 50 businesses, Karl frequently manages tax controversies that have adversarial, as well as public relations, challenges for well-known clients. He appears in tax controversy matters at all administrative government levels (federal, state and local), including before the IRS and U.S. Departments of the Treasury and Justice, and he litigates cases before the U.S. Tax Court, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fifth, Sixth and Federal Circuits, as well as in trial and appellate courts in state and local jurisdictions across the country.

Karl devotes time to teaching tax law and has served as an adjunct professor in taxation of partnerships, corporate tax, consolidated returns, and income tax accounting at Georgetown University Law Center for more than 20 years.