The firm assists clients with the following types of tax and estate-planning problems: IRS and State Tax Audits; IRS and State Collection; Federal and State Tax Liens and Notices of Levy, Offers in Compromise and Installment-Payment Agreements, Innocent Spouse Appeals and Litigation; IRS Penalties; Civil Tax Fraud; Tax Litigation before the United States Tax Court, United States Court of Federal Claims, United States District Courts and United States Courts of Appeal; State Tax Problems; Threatened Seizure of Clients' Wages and Bank Accounts; Employment Tax Problems; Taxpayer Rights; Securing and Retaining Tax-Exempt Status; Counseling and Transactional Planning for Sophisticated Corporate and Partnership Transactions; Deferred Compensation and Retirement Plans; Estate and Wealth Planning; and Wills, Trusts and Probate.
Jane C. Bergner's practice encompasses a broad range of tax matters in the areas of Federal and D.C. taxation, including tax audit and controversy matters; tax collection disputes; innocent spouse issues; civil litigation at the trial and appellate levels; corporate, partnership, business and individual transactional tax planning; the representation of tax-exempt organizations; and estate, gift and wealth planning and probate.
Jane has represented publicly, closely held and exempt organizations and has concentrated in all aspects of civil tax litigation, including tax-sheltered investments and tax fraud. She is a frequent speaker on tax matters, and her articles have appeared in a number of tax journals. She has testified before Congress on tax-administration matters.
Jane was selected by the Forbes In-Flight Radio Network as one of America's Most Influential Women, and her interview in which she discusses her tax practice was broadcast, on all American Airlines flights in Spring, 2006 and, in September and October, 2006, on all US Airways and America West flights as part of the Newsweek Business Show. Jane's interview may be heard on line by accessing Jane's link at www.skyradionetwork.com/women.cfm.
From 1986-1990, Jane was the Chair of the District of Columbia Bar's 1500-member Taxation Section. She also chaired that Section's Tax Audits and Litigation Committee in which capacity she initiated a program in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area to assist nonfilers in reentering the Federal tax system. The program received the Bar's 1993 award for the Best Section Community Outreach Project. She has been a member of the Judicial Conferences of the United States Tax Court and the United States Court of Federal Claims.
Jane is the author of Chapter 50, "Tax Court Jurisdiction, Procedure & Practice," included in the tax treatise Mertens, Law of Federal Taxation, as well as two annually updated treatises on "Tax Court Practice" and "Court of Federal Claims Practice," included in the West's Federal Forms series published by Thomson Reuters. She was one of three members of the private bar appointed by the Chief Judge of the United States Tax Court to a nine-member committee which drafted statutory provisions ultimately included in the Technical Corrections Act of 1988. Other members of the Committee included three judges of the United States Tax Court, the Chief Counsel, Internal Revenue Service and the Assistant Attorney General of the Tax Division, U. S. Department of Justice.
From 1993-1995 Jane chaired the American Bar Association Tax Section's Regional Liaison Meetings Committee which facilitated meetings between members of the private bar and representatives of the IRS throughout the United States. From 1991-1993, she was Chair of the Important Developments Subcommittee of the ABA Section of Taxation's Committee on Civil and Criminal Tax Penalties. She continues to serve on that Committee, as well as on the ABA Section of Taxation's Committees on Government Relations and Court Procedure.
Jane holds an LL.B. from Columbia Law School and an A.B. from Vassar College. She is a member of the District of Columbia Bar, the American Bar Association, the Court of Federal Claims Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association, the American College of Tax Counsel and the Washington, D.C. Estate Planning Council; and her biography has been included in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America, Who's Who in American Law, Who's Who of American Women and Who's Who in the East. She has been selected as one of the Best Lawyers of America.