American Bar Association Section of Taxation’s 2026 Virtual Fall Tax Meeting

Airdo Werwas attorney Jake Leahy, a member of the Executive Committee of the ABA Tax Section’s State and Local Tax Committee, will attend the American Bar Association Section of Taxation’s 2026 Virtual Fall Tax Meeting this week.

The program is particularly relevant to Jake’s work with tax-exempt organizations, religious and educational institutions, foundations, local governments, closely held businesses, and taxpayers involved in tax controversies.

A significant portion of the meeting will focus on developments affecting tax-exempt organizations. The program includes an update from representatives of the IRS Office of Chief Counsel’s Employee Benefits, Exempt Organizations and Employment Taxes division and the Joint Committee on Taxation concerning recent legislative, judicial, and regulatory developments affecting exempt organizations.   

Additional exempt-organization programming will address issues increasingly important to nonprofit and religious organizations, including private foundations, state and local regulation of nonprofits, audits and appeals, religious and educational organizations, compensation, affiliated entities, and fiscal sponsorship arrangements. The meeting will also examine the legal and tax considerations involved when Section 501(c)(3) organizations operate alongside other nonprofit or for-profit affiliates, including governance and Form 990 reporting considerations.  

For governmental and nonprofit employers, Jake will also be following developments involving tax-exempt and governmental employee benefit plans. Those sessions include perspectives from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Benefits Tax Counsel and the IRS Office of Chief Counsel, with discussion expected to include Section 4960, retirement-plan guidance, and other developments affecting governmental and tax-exempt employers.  

The meeting also includes programming directly relevant to tax controversy and dispute resolution. Sessions featuring perspectives from the United States Tax Court and IRS Office of Chief Counsel will examine how practitioners should develop and preserve the administrative record, obtain government files, address missing or withheld documents, preserve issues for judicial review, and litigate controversies in which review is based on an agency record.

For closely held businesses and their owners, the program will address current IRS developments, business succession and exit planning, reorganizations, compliance considerations, defending tax positions, and the intersection between business planning and estate planning.

Finally, the meeting includes significant state and local tax programming, including constitutional challenges to state taxes, changing approaches to exemptions and incentives, and developments involving residency audits and state taxation of increasingly mobile individuals.  

Participation in programs such as the ABA Tax Section Fall Meeting helps our attorneys stay informed not only about new statutes, regulations, and cases, but also about how tax authorities and practitioners are applying those developments in practice. We look forward to bringing those insights back to the organizations, governmental entities, businesses, and individuals we advise in practice. Jake serves on the Executive Committee of the ABA Tax Section’s State and Local Tax Committee.