Tax Analysts

To shed light on tax policy and administration through aggressive, unbiased reporting and informed commentary from the leaders in the field.

• Cara Griffith - CEO and president
• Jeremy Scott - chief content officer
• Michael Berkeley - chief technology officer
• John Ring - chief financial officer
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• Thomas L. Evans, chair – a partner in the Chicago office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP and former professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
• Lily Batchelder – Robert C. Kopple Family Professor of Taxation at New York University School of Law and an affiliated professor at the NYU Wagner School of Public Service.
• Sharda Cherwoo – C-suite adviser and former senior partner at EY across the audit, tax, management consulting, and transactions advisory practices.
• Eli J. Dicker – executive director of the Tax Executives Institute.
• Karen Hawkins – a former chair of the American Bar Association Section of Taxation.
• Joseph Huddleston – an executive director in EY’s National Tax Department serving the indirect and state and local tax practices.
• Tom Neubig – a founding member of the Tax Sage Network, a group of tax policy economists and former director of quantitative economics and statistics at EY.
• Ameek Ashok Ponda - partner at Sullivan & Worcester LLP in Boston and former member of the firm’s management committee.
• Danielle Rolfes - partner and co-leader of the international tax group within KPMG's Washington National tax office.
• H. David Rosenbloom – member of Caplin & Drysdale in Washington and the James S. Eustice Visiting Professor of Taxation and director of the international tax program at New York University School of Law.
• Sam Sim – a co-founder of Taxise Asia LLC and former regional vice president of the Tax Executives Institute.
• Samuel C. Thompson, Jr. - the Arthur Weiss Distinguished Faculty Scholar and the director of the Center for the Study of Mergers and Acquisitions at Penn State Law.
• Beth Tucker – managing director in PwC’s Washington National Tax Services’ U.S. tax controversy and regulatory services practice.

Tax Analysts has devoted extensive time and effort to ensure public access to key documents in tax policy and administration. When necessary, it has sued the IRS for access to documents through which the agency provides guidance to its staff and individual taxpayers. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Tax Analysts fought for access to key documents in tax policy and administration. In 1972, the organization successfully sued the IRS for access to private letter rulings (PLRs) and technical advice memorandums (TAMs) — crucial guidance documents that provided legal advice to specific taxpayers and IRS field agents.[1][2]

Over the years, those had become sort of "secret laws" whereby the IRS decided how to apply the law to particular taxpayers and then refused to make the terms public. This practice left other taxpayers at a disadvantage, since the IRS relied on existing secret guidance when deciding subsequent cases. At the same time, it gave an unfair advantage to a few large law and accounting firms that had joined forces to create a private library of these undisclosed materials.[1][2]

The courts gave Tax Analysts access to PLRs, and Congress soon required public disclosure of TAMs as well. Those were the foundation for almost 40 years of subsequent litigation by the firm to defend disclosure and tax transparency. The organization continues to work for transparency in the administration of tax law and recently forced the IRS to disclose guidance being sent to its field agents via email.[1][2][6]

The organization hosts policy forums and roundtable discussions to examine issues in federal, state, and international taxation.[1]

In 1995 Tax Analysts created the Tax History Project to provide information about the history of American taxation to scholars, policymakers, students, citizens, and the media. The project provides access to web-based documentary publications, original historical research, tax returns filed by U.S. presidents and presidential candidates, and other archival data.[7]

Joseph J. Thorndike is the director of the project.[8][9]

• Pearlstein, Steven (October 26, 2013). "Marty Sullivan figured out how the world's biggest companies avoided billions in taxes. Here's how he wants to stop them". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company.