| Biography | Mike is a member in the firm's Boston office, and practices in the Tax and Public Finance Sections. He has tax responsibility in connection with the firm's role as bond counsel, underwriter's counsel, and purchaser's counsel on numerous state and local bond issues. The firm has served as bond counsel for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Educational Financing Authority, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the Massachusetts School Building Authority, the Massachusetts State College Building Authority, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, the New York Liberty Development Corporation, and the Vermont Bond Bank, as well as in many school and hospital financings and industrial revenue bond financings. Mike has also represented a large number of multistate companies in connection with Massachusetts tax problems, primarily involving the corporation excise (income) tax and sales and use taxes. This representation has included all levels of the administrative process, as well as litigation before the Appellate Tax Board, the Appeals Court, the Supreme Judicial Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Mike served as one of three tax-exempt bond representatives on the Internal Revenue Service Advisory Committee on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities, and chaired that committee from 2007-2008. He has served as chairman of the Tax Section of the Boston Bar Association, and as chairman of its State Tax Committee and its Subcommittee on Multistate Taxation. He has been a speaker at seminars and meetings sponsored by the National Association of State Treasurers, the National Federation of Municipal Analysts, the Practising Law Institute, the New York University State and Local Tax Institute, the Federal Tax Institute of New England, the Tax Executives' Institute, the Committee on State Taxation, the National Association of Bond Lawyers, the Massachusetts Hospital Association, the Massachusetts Health and Educational Facilities Authority, and the Boston Bar Association. In 2008 and 2009, he chaired national teleconferences on post-issuance tax compliance for the National Association of Bond Lawyers. Mike has served as a member of the Steering Committee for the annual Bond Attorneys' Workshop, sponsored by the National Association of Bond Lawyers. He has published articles in the Boston Bar Journal and The Tax Executive. Mike has been recognized for his tax law and public finance practice as one of The Boston Globe Magazine's "Boston's Best Lawyers," as a Massachusetts Super Lawyer, and in Best Lawyers in America. Mike is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and before the U.S. Tax Court, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a member of the American, Massachusetts, and Boston Bar Associations, as well as the National Association of Bond Lawyers. Mike received his A.B., magna cum laude, from Harvard College and his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. |