Walter Hellerstein Receives 2007 Latcham Award For Distinguished Service In State And Local Tax

January 4, 2008

Walter Hellerstein Receives 2007 Latcham Award For Distinguished Service In State And Local Tax

BNA Tax Management announces that the 2007 Franklin C. Latcham Award for Distinguished Service in State and Local Tax Law honors Walter Hellerstein, the Francis Shackelford Distinguished Professor of Taxation Law at the University of Georgia Law School.

The award was presented Dec. 17 at a meeting of the BNA Tax Management State Tax Advisory Board in New York City. The Latcham Award is named for Franklin C. Latcham, former Advisory Board chair and founder of BNA Tax Management's Multistate Tax Portfolio Series. Prof. Hellerstein, a member of the State Tax Advisory Board, is widely regarded as the leading academic authority on state and local taxation.

"For four decades Prof. Hellerstein has been a leader, an educator, and an inspiration to the state tax world," said Paul Frankel, chairman of BNA Tax Management's State Tax Advisory Board. "His treatise, his analyses, and his contributions to academic excellence have made us all better at what we do," Frankel said.

Prof. Hellerstein has published widely on the topic of state and local taxation. He is the author of BNA Tax Management's Portfolio No. 1400: Federal Constitutional Limitations on State Taxation. With his father, Jerome Hellerstein, he co-wrote the leading treatise on state taxation, State Taxation, vols. I & II (Warren Gorham & Lamont, 3rd ed. 1998) (with semi-annual updates), and the leading casebook, State and Local Taxation (West, 8th ed. 2005). He also is the co-author of Electronic Commerce and Multijurisdictional Taxation (Kluwer Law International 2001). His articles have appeared in the Cornell Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, Virginia Law Review, The Supreme Court Review, Tax Lawyer, Journal of Taxation, National Tax Journal, Tax Law Review, Tax Notes, State Tax Notes, and other journals.

He also has practiced extensively in the field, and he has been involved in numerous state tax cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He successfully argued on behalf of taxpayers in two major state tax cases, Hunt-Wesson Inc. v. Franchise Tax Bd., 528 U.S. 458 (2000) and Allied-Signal Inc. v. Director, Div. of Taxation, 504 U.S. 768 (1992). Currently, he is of counsel to Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan.

"Wally has been both a source of intimidation to many of us in the state and local tax profession - he is not afraid to tell us how we have failed to reach the "correct" conclusion regarding various technical questions - and a source of inspiration," said Kendall Houghton, partner in Sutherland Asbill & Brennan.

Prof. Hellerstein also has been deeply involved in issues relating to state taxation of electronic commerce. He was a member of the steering committee of the National Tax Association's Telecommunications and Electronic Commerce Tax Project and is currently a consultant to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Committee on Fiscal Affairs, Working Party No. 9) on issues involving cross-border consumption taxation. In addition, he has consulted with the United Nations and the World Trade Organization on e-commerce issues and has lectured at the European Tax College in Leuven, Belgium; the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation in Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and the University of Lyon (III) in Lyon, France.

Before joining the University of Georgia faculty, Hellerstein clerked for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, served in the Honors Program of the Air Force General Counsel's Office, practiced law at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., and taught at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a member of the American Law Institute and of the District of Columbia, Illinois, and New York bars. He was of counsel to Morrison & Foerster from 1986 to 1996, a partner at Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan from 1996 to 1998, and counsel to KPMG from 1999 to 2004, before rejoining to Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan.

Hellerstein is a graduate of Harvard College (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and the University of Chicago Law School, where he was editor in chief of the University of Chicago Law Review.

Earlier recipients of the Latcham Award include James Buresh, former national partner in charge of sales and use tax practice for Deloitte and Touche; Jack Cronin, former partner in charge of Deloitte Tax's Multistate Tax Practice; Jean Walker, retired senior manager with Ernst & Young; William R. Brown, first executive director of COST; the late Paull Mines, general counsel with the Multistate Tax Commission; Joanne Garvey, member of Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe in San Francisco; William Peltz, senior tax counsel for Shell Oil Corp.; Gerald Goldberg, former executive director of the California Franchise Tax Board; California tax attorney John Warren; the late educator and author Jerome Hellerstein; and Eugene Corrigan, first director of the Multistate Tax Commission.