The Internal Revenue Service's tax-exempt bond branch has hired two new bond attorneys and an investment banker and is still searching for more tax-law specialists.
The agency is advertising the positions at USAJobs.gov and conducting a nationwide search until July 28.
The tax law specialists will be responsible for providing technical and analytical advice, drafting technical guidance, and developing and implementing projects, according to the IRS.
Clifford Gannett, director of the IRS' bond office, said earlier this month that he has doubled his office's number of field agents to approximately 60 from 30, and more than tripled the number of tax law specialists, to 16 from 5, with recent hires. As result, the TEB office is no longer the smallest national office at the IRS. In addition, the new hires together have decades of experience and expertise and are raising the level of talent within the TEB team.
"The entire new class of revenue agents and tax law specialists is a very impressive group of lawyers as well as tax and accounting professionals," said Steve Chamberlin, senior manager of TEB's compliance and management program.
"The numbers don't tell the whole story," Gannett said. "We really have improved the quality of our work force."
Bob Griffo, a partner at Andrews Kurth LLP since 2002 who joined the IRS on June 22 as a tax law specialist in its Dallas office, was a bond attorney for 27 years. Griffo said Friday that he had previously thought about working in the public sector, but wanted to stay in Dallas.
"I've always been interested in government service, but most of the positions are in Washington, and I really like living in Dallas," he said.
Antoine Zemor, another new tax-law specialist working in the service's Manhattan office, previously spent 23 years at JPMorgan as an investment banker, specializing in structuring tax-exempt bonds.
"I thought to myself, this sounds like a perfect fit - I spent a lot of time with tax issues," he said. "The timing was perfect."
Carmen Zucker, a new revenue agent in Manhattan, was in-house counsel at Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. from 2004 to December 2008, when FGIC stopped taking on new business due to its downgrade.
Before that, she was a public finance attorney with Hawkins Delafield & Wood LLP, where she represented state and local governments as well as broker-dealers. She is married to and worked alongside her husband, Howard Zucker, a member of the firm's management committee and head of its housing and mortgage finance practice group.
"I thought that this would be a terrific opportunity to expand my professional credentials while at the same time adding value ... to the public finance arena," she said. "I'm definitely very much looking forward to my career at the IRS."
All three expect to start contributing to TEB's efforts after two weeks of training.
