Phil serves as of counsel in Blank Rome’s national State + Local Tax (“SALT”) practice where he brings more than 42 years of experience providing tax advice to many of the world’s largest corporations across multiple industry groups, including industrial products, retail, consumer goods, aerospace, healthcare, entertainment, and utilities. He has handled every major aspect of corporate SALT matters, with a primary focus on corporate income, property, payroll, sales and use, gross receipts, and other transaction-based taxes. He has consulted on tax controversies in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
In addition to his work in assisting corporations with tax advice and multistate and multitax planning, he has served as an expert witness and technical adviser in numerous disputes involving SALT issues before federal and state courts. He has helped craft legislative and administrative tax proposals, testified before government agencies and officials, and served on prominent industry and state and local tax reform commissions.
Before joining Blank Rome, Phil served as SALT counsel for an Am Law 100 firm and, prior to that role, was a partner in the National Tax Department of Ernst & Young where he founded and chaired its global SALT practice. During this time, he was appointed to the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) Advisory Council, which offers recommendations on policies, programs, and procedures as well as tax administration issues to the IRS Commissioner. He is the first and only SALT professional appointed by the IRS to chair its full Advisory Council.
Outside his legal practice, Phil is a professor and director of the SALT Certificate Program within the Graduate Tax Department of the Georgetown University Law Center. He notably focuses on subnational taxation of multijurisdictional enterprises and teaches Federal Income Taxation of Partners and Partnerships. He also recently served as a visiting professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he taught U.S. Tax Systems, Limitations, and Policies.
At Georgetown Law, Phil has taught courses dealing with state income and sales and use taxes, as well as a comparative laws seminar contrasting U.S. subnational taxes to other global tax regimes. He frequently serves as a faculty advisor to graduate tax students who elect to propose their own unique class and write a paper on some aspect of U.S. federalism and balance of taxing powers between national and state government. Currently, he also is teaching a Survey of SALT course to J.D. and LL.M. students not enrolled in the SALT Certificate Program, as well as a SALT course addressing major subnational levies other than income and sales and use taxes imposed on multijurisdictional enterprises, and a Federal Limitations on SALT course.
For the last 40 years, Phil has chaired and moderated Georgetown Law’s Advanced State and Local Tax Institute, and, until recently, served as a faculty adviser to its law journals, The Tax Lawyer and The State and Local Tax Lawyer, where he has published a number of topical articles dealing with SALT issues and their role in U.S. federalism, as well as the history of SALT within the American Bar Association.
Outside the Firm
Phil enjoys spending time with his family/grandchildren, the outdoors, reading, studying classical music, and restoring classic cars.