DeFranceschi & Klemm, P.C.

Focus and practice areas

Based in Boston, the firm works with individuals and businesses across New England, including Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Its core is tax controversy at both the state and federal level, which means disputes with the taxing authorities, tax litigation, and criminal tax matters. That focus is narrow by design, and it shapes almost everything else the firm does.

Related areas fill out the rest of the docket. The firm handles trust and estate planning, probate, corporate law for closely held corporations, and bankruptcy. These connect back to the tax work in practical ways. A closely held company in a tax dispute often needs corporate and bankruptcy counsel in the same conversation, an estate plan carries tax questions of its own, and probate can raise them again once an estate is settled.

The client base has a feature worth naming. Many of the firm's clients are lawyers or certified public accountants who face tax issues before government authorities. In my opinion, that is telling: people who work on tax matters for a living bring their own problems here, and they tend to know how to judge the counsel they hire.

The shape of a tax controversy

A tax controversy usually begins well before a courtroom. It often starts with an audit or a notice from the IRS or a state agency, moves through administrative review, and reaches a judge only if the earlier stages fail to settle it. The firm works at each of these points, which lets it handle a single dispute as one continuous matter across every stage.

Criminal tax work sits at the sharper end of this. Charges there can involve unfiled returns, unreported income, or false statements to a tax authority, and both the burden of proof and the stakes differ from a civil audit. The firm names criminal taxation among its core areas, and one of its associates handles criminal defense as well, so that capability sits inside the firm.

Because the firm covers both the civil and criminal sides of tax, a client who begins with a routine audit can keep the same counsel if the matter turns serious. Facts developed early in a case tend to shape the options later, and continuity protects that work.

Where the firm litigates

Tax disputes can land in several forums, and the choice of forum shapes the case. The firm has litigated in the US Tax Court, the US District Courts, the US Court of Federal Claims, and the US Bankruptcy Court. On the state side, it has appeared before the Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board and the Massachusetts Superior Court. That is a broad set of venues for one firm to have worked across.

Each forum has its own rules on timing, payment, and proof. The US Tax Court lets a taxpayer dispute a bill before paying it, while a refund suit in a District Court or the Court of Federal Claims runs the opposite way, after the tax is paid. A firm that has appeared in all of them can weigh which door fits a given client and a given set of facts.

The firm's appeals reach the First and Third Circuit Courts of Appeals. An appeal at that level turns on questions of law and works from the record built below, so the groundwork laid at trial sets the terms of any later argument. A firm that runs both the trial and the appeal keeps that thread in one set of hands.

Debt resolution and foreign-account matters

Alongside litigation, the firm handles the procedural side of tax problems. It negotiates offers in compromise and installment agreements, the two common routes for a tax debt a client cannot pay in full. An offer in compromise asks the IRS to accept less than the balance owed, on defined grounds. An installment agreement sets a payment schedule that spreads the debt over time.

Foreign-account work is a further part of the firm's practice. It represents non-filers with unreported foreign bank accounts and delinquent FBAR returns. FBAR rules apply to US taxpayers who hold money abroad above a set threshold, and the penalties for a missed filing can run high. Bringing a late filer back into compliance is a careful, paperwork-heavy process, and it rewards a firm that has done it before.

Two further areas round out the tax work. The firm represents tax return preparers in preparer penalty cases and Circular 230 matters, the federal rules that govern how paid preparers must conduct themselves before the IRS. It also handles whistleblower claims under IRC section 7623, which lets a person who reports a tax underpayment share in what the government later collects.

How the team is built

The firm carries the name of Edward DeFranceschi, listed in memoriam for the years 1944 to 2017. David Michael Klemm is the partner. Klemm holds a Master's in Taxation and is a certified public accountant, and he has taught tax accounting at the graduate tax program level. That pairing of law and accounting fits a firm where the numbers and the statute meet on the same page, since a tax dispute often turns on both at once.

Three associates work with him: James Everett, Grace E. Conley, and William Jennings. James Everett earned a B.S. in Accountancy from Bryant University in 1999, a J.D. from New England School of Law in 2002, and an LL.M. in Taxation from Boston University in 2009. His work covers federal and state tax controversies, tax planning, tax litigation, and criminal taxation, along with criminal defense. That accounting-then-tax-law path mirrors the partner's own training.

With one partner and three associates, the firm keeps a small roster. For a client, that usually means dealing with the same lawyers from the first meeting through to a hearing, and it puts the partner's tax and accounting background close to the day-to-day work.

What the experience adds up to

The firm states it has more than 40 years of experience. The site does not give a founding year, so that figure is what the record offers on tenure. As a reviewer, I read the pairing of that longevity with a CPA credential at the top of the firm as a marker of steady, technical tax work, of the kind that takes years to build.

The forums the firm has appeared in support that reading. Trial courts, a state appellate tax board, and two federal circuits span a wide range of tax procedure. For a client whose matter may move through an audit, a petition, and then an appeal, keeping that path with one firm has a plain benefit: the people who know the file are the ones who argue it at each stage.