WASHINGTON –William H. Caudill and Karen M. Hawkins have become the chair and chair-elect of the American Bar Association's Section of Taxation.
They were selected at the ABA's annual meeting, which adjourned on Tuesday and assumed their posts for one-year terms beginning on Wednesday, an ABA spokesman said.
Caudill is a partner with Norton Rose Fulbright in Houston and previously been chair-elect of the ABA's Section of Taxation.
Hawkins, currently self-employed, is the former director of the Internal Revenue Service's Office of Professional Responsibility, which put the kibosh on IRS auditors automatically concluding there was a conflict of interest for lawyers acting as bond counsel in a muni deal and then later representing the issuer in an IRS audit of the bonds.
That finding was much lauded by bond lawyers who previously, when serving in the both transaction and the audit, had to go to the issuer to get a conflict of interest waiver to provide to the IRS examiner.
Hawkins was director of OPR from April 2009 through July 2015, overseeing the standards of practice for tax professionals. She was chair-elect of the ABA's Section of Taxation before joining the IRS.
Before that, she was at Taggart & Hawkins in Oakland, Calif. for 24 years, specializing in civil and criminal tax controversy. She also was a faculty member at the Golden Gate University School of Law's graduate tax program. She is currently an adjunct professor at the university.
