Gerald Kafka is the Global Chair of the Tax Controversy Practice and the local Tax Department Chair for the firm’s Washington, D.C. office. Mr. Kafka specializes in tax controversy and litigation matters. He began his professional career as a trial attorney in the Honors Law Graduate Program of the Tax Division of the US Department of Justice, where he received the Tax Division’s Outstanding Attorney Award and two Departmental Outstanding Performance Awards.
Mr. Kafka is the principal author of Litigation of Federal Civil Tax Controversies, (Warren, Gorham & Lamont, 2nd edition, 1997, with annual supplements). He has been an adjunct professor in the LLM (Taxation) program at the Georgetown University Law Center since 1979, where he teaches the federal tax litigation course. He is also the editor of the Procedure Department of the Journal of Taxation. He is a frequent speaker on tax procedure and litigation matters, including at the annual ALI-ABA Federal Civil Tax Litigation program.
Mr. Kafka is active in the ABA Section of Taxation, where he formerly served as Chairs of the Court Procedure Committee and the Appointments to the Tax Court Committee. He is a past Chair of the D.C. Bar Tax Section Committee on Tax Audits and Litigation. He also is a Fellow in the American College of Tax Counsel and a Master in the J. Edgar Murdock American Inns of Court (US Tax Court).
Chambers USA consistently ranks Mr. Kafka as one of the leading tax lawyers in the United States. The publication recently noted that he is “sophisticated, substantial and capable, there's no better practitioner out there!” Mr. Kafka has been cited as a leading national tax controversy lawyer in The Legal 500 US, Lawdragon and Super Lawyers. He also was referenced by the United States Supreme Court in Ballard v. Commissioner, 125 S. Ct. 1270, 1282 n. 13 (2005), as a tax “cognoscenti.”