our professionals > Robert S. Horwitz

Mr. Horwitz has over 25 years of experience as a tax attorney. He joined the firm in 1994. Mr. Horwitz represents clients in civil and criminal tax matters, including audits, appeals and criminal investigations before the IRS and state taxing authorities, and in trials in both federal and state courts.

Upon graduating from Northwestern Law School in 1978, Mr. Horwitz joined the U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division. In his six years with the Department, he represented the United States in several hundred tax cases, involving areas as diverse as manufacturers’ excise taxes, accumulated earnings tax, oil and gas windfall profits tax, employment taxes, tax shelters, criminal investigations, and tax collection. Among others, 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.

Mr. Horwitz then worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles in the Tax Division, where he represented the United States in both civil and criminal tax matters, 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 areas 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.

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 been published in Tax Notes, the Federal Lawyer (the publication of the Federal Bar Association), and the California Tax Lawyer, among other publications

Education

B.A. (English Literature), with honors, University of Illinois
M.S. (English Literature), University of Nebraska
J.D. Northwestern University School of Law cum laude, Order of the Coif.

Bar Admissions

State Bar of California
State Bar of Illinois
Ninth Circuit, Seventh Circuit and Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal
U. S. Tax Court
U. S. Court of Claims
U. S. Supreme Court
U.S. District Courts for the Southern, Central, Eastern and Northern Districts of California

Organizations

Chair of the Tax Procedure & Litigation Committee, Taxation Section, California State Bar, 2010-2011;
Officer of the Tax Procedure & Litigation Committee, Taxation Section, California State Bar, 2007-2010;
Member of the Executive Committee of the Taxation Section, California State Bar.