Bomar Law Firm, LLC

Focus and practice areas

Tax law is the whole of this firm's work. Bomar Law Firm, based in Atlanta, represents individuals and businesses in federal and Georgia tax matters. The work splits into two clear tracks: disputes with the tax authorities, and planning done before any dispute begins.

Audits, appeals and litigation

On the dispute side, the firm handles IRS and state audits along with the administrative appeals that follow them. An audit tests specific entries on a return, and a tax lawyer's job at that stage is to answer the examiner's requests and support the taxpayer's position with records and law. Audits can be limited to a single issue or run across a full return, and the response has to match the scope the IRS sets. When a matter needs a courtroom, the firm litigates in the U.S. Tax Court and before the Georgia Tax Tribunal. That pairing lets it carry one client's federal and state questions in the same hands.

Collection, planning and focused areas

The firm also takes on collection work: offers in compromise, liens, levies, wage garnishment, penalty abatement and unfiled returns. Two narrower areas appear on the site as well, cryptocurrency tax matters and conservation easement cases. Conservation easement cases involve a landowner donating development rights and claiming a charitable deduction, a structure the IRS has examined closely. Cryptocurrency matters raise their own questions of how gains are reported and how records are rebuilt when an exchange closes or changes hands.

Planning work looks the other way, toward the future. For a business, it can mean choosing an entity structure or timing a transaction; for an estate, it can mean arranging transfers so the tax owed at each step is known in advance. Work of this kind aims to fix the tax result early, so the cost is clear when a client commits.

How the firm began

The firm carries the name of one of the two lawyers who started it. Cal Bomar and Charlie M. Shah established the practice, and each brought a tax-specific background to it. The site does not list a founding year.

Cal Bomar earned an LL.M. in taxation from New York University, a degree that sits a level above the general law degree and centers entirely on tax. Before private practice, he worked in Washington, D.C., for the IRS Office of Chief Counsel. The Office of Chief Counsel is the IRS's legal arm, and its attorneys advise on and litigate the government's tax positions. A lawyer who has worked there has watched how the IRS builds and defends a case.

Charlie M. Shah is described on the site as a Tax Court trial attorney. In my opinion, a firm that pairs a former government tax lawyer with a courtroom tax litigator has gathered two of the skill sets that tax controversy work most often calls on.

The attorneys the site names

Seven lawyers appear on the home and about pages. Jeffrey L. Cohen has handled tax matters involving the IRS and the Georgia Department of Revenue since 1984. That start date puts his tax experience across four decades. His work covers audits, wage and bank levies, offers in compromise and collection appeals, and he appears before the U.S. Tax Court and the Georgia Tax Tribunal. He represents small businesses as part of that practice.

Emily A. Gruber practices in taxation, income tax and tax audits, together with corporate law and corporate taxation. That combination places her work at the point where a company's tax position meets its ordinary business decisions. Jamie E. Beton practices taxation law and holds a degree from Georgia State University.

Charlie M. Shah, noted above, is a Tax Court trial attorney and a founder. Jordan Hairston and Mark D. Franchak are the other attorneys the site names. Together the group gives the firm several lawyers working the same federal and Georgia tax terrain, which matters when a case needs more than one hand or a second view.

What tax controversy work involves

From audit to court

These matters move through set stages, and knowing them makes the firm's list easier to read. An IRS audit usually begins with a notice and a request for records. If it produces a proposed change the taxpayer disputes, the next step is an administrative appeal handled inside the IRS by a separate office. Cases that stay open can move to the U.S. Tax Court, where a taxpayer can contest a deficiency before paying it, a feature that sets that court apart from the alternatives.

Georgia matters follow a parallel route. The Georgia Department of Revenue runs its own audits and assessments, and the Georgia Tax Tribunal hears state-level disputes. A firm that works in both systems, as this one says it does, can keep a client's federal and state questions on one desk.

Settlement and collection

Many tax disputes settle before a judge rules. The IRS appeals office exists to resolve cases short of litigation, and even filed Tax Court cases often close by agreement once both sides weigh the hazards of trial. A tax practice therefore spends much of its time on negotiation and paperwork, and courtroom argument comes only when those talks stall.

Collection sits at a later point, after tax is owed. The IRS can file a lien, which secures the debt against property, or issue a levy, which reaches wages or bank accounts directly. An offer in compromise asks the government to accept less than the full balance when the taxpayer cannot pay it all, and penalty abatement asks it to remove added charges for reasonable cause. These are the same tools the firm lists under its collection work.

Reach and client base

The firm's stated client base runs past Georgia. On its own pages it describes clients among individuals and businesses in the state, across the United States and, in its words, worldwide. Tax questions with a multi-state or cross-border element tend to need that wider frame, since a taxpayer's obligations can follow income and assets across jurisdictions.

As a reviewer, I read the worldwide reach as a sign that the firm handles matters with international tax questions, such as the reporting rules that apply to assets or income held outside the United States. Those rules carry their own penalties and deadlines, which keeps them close to the collection and audit work the firm already does. Its office is in Atlanta, and the whole of its listed work stays within tax law across the federal and Georgia systems.