What Is A US Tax Court Practitioner?

Recently I had a discussion with an individual about US Tax Court Practitioners in order to learn about this designation. What I discovered was this category of Court Practitioner was created to allow special dispensation to Non-US Lawyers (such as Enrolled Agents, CPAs and International Tax Attorneys) to gain access to the US Tax Court to represent taxpayers. As a member of the US Tax Court, US Tax Court Practitioners have the ability to litigate matters before the US Tax Court on behalf of their taxpayer clients. In order to qualify as a US Tax Court Practitioner you must pass a very difficult US Tax Court Bar Exam set by the Judges of the US Tax Court which takes place once every second year. What is not generally known is that since its inception in 1942, less than 300 US Tax Court Practitioners have ever passed and qualified to be admitted as a US Tax Court Practitioner. Apparently, it is a mighty difficult Bar Exam to pass!

In order to pass the US Tax Court Bar Exam, the person writing the Bar Exam must obtain a minimum of 70% in each of the four major areas that are examined. These four areas are focused on Federal Tax, US Tax Court Procedural Rules, Laws of Evidence and Ethics. It is not unusual that only about 6% to 7% of those who write the US Tax Court Bar Exam every second year will succeed. For that reason, I decided to determine who has passed the US Tax Court Practitioner Bar Exam and contacted their headquarters in Washington DC to find out who these people are at www.ustaxcourt.gov. What I discovered is that they do not list the 300 or so members of this exclusive group on any site but you can verify membership by calling the US Tax Court at 201.521.0700.

Now that I had tracked down how to verify a US Tax Court Practitioner, I needed the name of one and discovered Dr. Daniel Erasmus was a member of TaxConnections and a US Tax Court Practitioner. I then called the US Tax Court number mentioned in this post and asked to verify his credentials and that he was in fact admitted to the US Tax Court as a US Tax Court Practitioner. Dr. Daniel Erasmus was verified as admitted to the US Tax Court as a US Tax Court Practitioner. What is interesting about Dr. Daniel Erasmus is that he forms strong relationships with Enrolled Agents and CPAs around the United States in order to assist them with tax related problems they encounter with their taxpayer clients. He provides solutions to Enrolled Agents and CPAs that they may not even be aware of which enables them to solve difficult and complex tax problems for their clients. We are delighted to have Dr. Daniel Erasmus in our TaxConnections community and if he is reading this blog post today he will find out that I verified his credentials for this post today 🙂

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Kat Jennings, CEO
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1 comment on “What Is A US Tax Court Practitioner?”

  • Kat: I enjoyed the article. The reason why there are so few specially admitted Tax Court Practitioners is that an Attorney At Law can apply for admission to the Tax Court. Since the Rules of Evidence and Litigation principles are taught as part of Law School, being a trained lawyer is very important in the US Tax Court or any Court.

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