Robert Samuel Horwitz

Robert Horwitz has over 35 years of experience as an attorney specializing in the representation of clients in civil and criminal tax cases, including civil audits and appeals, criminal investigations, administrative hearings and in civil and criminal trials and appeals in federal and state courts.  He has served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Taxation Section of the State Bar of California and is Chair Elect of the Taxation Section for the 2014-2015 year. He will assume the role of Chair of the Taxation Section for the 2015-2016 year.  He was previously chair of the Tax Procedure and Litigation Committee of the State Bar Taxation Section.

A cum laude graduate of Northwestern Law School, Mr. Horwitz was a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division, where he represented the United States in several hundred tax cases, involving areas as diverse as trust fund recovery penalties, manufacturers’ excise taxes, accumulated earnings tax, oil and gas windfall profits tax, employment taxes, tax shelters, criminal investigations, and tax collection. Mr. Horwitz successfully represented the government in the first district court cases involving captive insurance companies, the taxability of various perks paid to college professors, and the deductibility of payments to support missionaries. At the Department, Mr. Horwitz received numerous awards, including two Outstanding Trial Attorney awards and a Special Commendation from the Tax Division.

After leaving the Department, Mr. Horwitz was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles in the Tax Division.  As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, he represented the United States in both civil and criminal tax cases, including real estate and computer tax shelters, exempt organizations and disclosures of tax return information. He successfully prosecuted the leading real estate tax shelter promoter in the western United States.

Mr. Horwitz left the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 1988, and worked at a mid-sized firm in Los Angeles, where he represented clients in civil and criminal cases, including civil and criminal bank fraud, wind and thermal energy tax shelters, tax fraud and tax collection matters, trademark, trade secrets, securities, and insurance coverage cases. He was also appointed by the United States District Court in Los Angeles to represent a death row inmate in habeas corpus proceedings. 

Mr. Horwitz was an attorney with a boutique tax controversy firm in Orange County, where he represented clients in civil and criminal tax cases in U.S. Courts of Appeal, U.S. district courts, California superior courts, and before the Internal Revenue Service, the California Franchise Tax Board, the Board of Equalization, the Employment Development Department and the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.

Mr. Horwitz has been a speaker on tax matters at the UCLA Tax Controversy Institute, the Annual Meeting of the Taxation Section of the California Bar and the California State Bar Annual Meeting. He has authored articles on tax law that have appeared in several publications, including Tax Notes, the Federal Lawyer (the publication of the Federal Bar Association), and the California Tax Lawyer.  He was a delegate to the 2015 U.S. Tax Court Judicial Conference.