Thorn Law Group, PLLC

Focus and practice areas

Tax law is the whole of what this firm does, from a base in Boston, Massachusetts. It concentrates on federal and state tax matters, and it handles both disputes and planning. The firm represents individuals and businesses in tax controversies and tax litigation, and it works with clients across the United States and in several foreign countries.

The named practice areas run across several kinds of tax trouble. They include business tax law, criminal tax law, tax audits, and IRS audits and litigation. The firm also handles offshore bank accounts, international tax and FATCA questions, and IRS voluntary disclosure.

Newer areas sit on the same list. The firm advises on cryptocurrency taxes, and it takes on ERC and PPP fraud matters. Tax planning fills out the offering for both businesses and individuals.

Who leads the work

Kevin E. Thorn is the founder and managing partner. He handles civil and criminal tax law matters, including business tax issues, criminal tax investigations, offshore bank accounts, IRS voluntary disclosures, and IRS audits and litigation. His clients include individual taxpayers, tax professionals, accounting firms, banks, trusts, partnerships, and closely held businesses.

Mary Elizabeth Rinaldi is a partner and the firm's technical director of tax controversies. She worked as a trial attorney with the Internal Revenue Service and clerked at the United States Tax Court before joining the firm. She represents clients in civil and criminal tax matters before the IRS, the Department of Justice, federal courts, and state taxing authorities.

Rinaldi's own client work covers individuals, partnerships, trusts, closely held businesses, and corporations, and it reaches national and international litigation. In my opinion, that government background is worth weighing, because a lawyer who once argued for the IRS knows how the other side builds a case.

The firm says its attorneys hold more than 80 years of combined tax law experience. Some of them, like Rinaldi, are former IRS trial attorneys and United States Tax Court law clerks.

The forums these cases reach

Tax disputes land in more than one place, and the firm names the ones it appears before. Its lawyers work before the IRS, the Department of Justice, the United States Tax Court, the Court of Federal Claims, and state taxing authorities.

Each forum runs by its own rules. A United States Tax Court case lets a taxpayer contest a proposed deficiency before paying it. A Court of Federal Claims case usually follows a payment and a refund claim. Criminal tax matters bring in the Department of Justice, and they carry the heaviest stakes of any tax matter.

How a tax controversy tends to unfold

Most of these matters start with a question from a taxing authority. An audit opens when the IRS or a state agency examines a return and asks for records. The taxpayer answers, the examiner proposes changes, and the two sides either settle or move toward appeal.

Voluntary disclosure runs on a separate track. A taxpayer who has unreported income or foreign accounts can come forward through an IRS program, file corrected returns, and pay what is owed with reduced penalty exposure. Offshore account matters and FATCA questions often travel this route.

Criminal tax cases sit at the sharp end of the field. They can begin with an IRS Criminal Investigation referral and move to the Department of Justice for a charging decision. A lawyer's job at that stage is to test the government's proof and, where the facts allow, steer a matter back toward a civil resolution.

Fraud claims tied to pandemic relief are newer work. ERC and PPP reviews look at whether a business qualified for the credits or loans it claimed. As a reviewer, I read the firm's attention to these areas as a sign it follows where IRS enforcement is currently pointed.

Planning alongside the disputes

The firm also works ahead of disputes. It offers tax planning to businesses and individuals, which is the work that happens before a taxpayer files a return. Planning covers how a transaction is structured, how a client reports income, and how a business prepares for the rules it will face.

Sound planning can keep a client out of the audit chair. It also leaves a cleaner record if an examiner does come calling, since the firm records the reasoning behind a position while it is fresh. In my opinion, a firm that does both planning and controversy work can carry lessons from one side into the other.

Who the firm works with and where

The client list leans toward people and companies with layered finances. It includes individual taxpayers, high-net-worth individuals, corporate executives, banks, trusts, partnerships, and small and mid-sized companies. Organizations that operate both in the United States and abroad also appear.

Thorn Law Group operates from Boston and lists a second office in Washington, DC. It serves clients throughout New England and, by its own account, across the country and in a number of foreign countries. That reach fits the work, since federal tax law follows the same code wherever a client sits.

The founder's training and focus

Kevin Thorn earned his law degree at Nova Southeastern University. He founded Thorn Law Group and has led it as managing partner ever since. His own docket runs from civil audits at one end to criminal tax litigation at the other, and it takes in international tax questions and tax appeals along the way.

His client roster tells you something about his standing. It reaches individual taxpayers and closely held businesses, and it also draws accounting firms and other law firms. When people who handle tax themselves bring a matter to an outside lawyer, they are usually handing over the ones they cannot settle on their own. To my eye, that kind of referral is a quieter measure of a tax lawyer than any headline number.

Where appeals fit

Kevin Thorn lists tax appeals among the areas he handles, and that stage sits between an examiner's findings and a courtroom. A taxpayer who disagrees with an audit result can ask the IRS Office of Appeals to look again, and this office works apart from the agents who ran the exam. Many disputes close here without a judge, which saves the cost of a filed case.

The office and its address

The firm keeps its main office at 265 Franklin Street in Boston. Its website address is boston-tax-lawyer.com, which states the practice and the city in a single line. A client weighing general firms against this one can read that signal before the first call and know the door leads to tax work alone.

A firm built around one subject keeps its lawyers on the same kind of law year after year. The attorney who opens a client's audit is the same one who drafts the reply and, if the matter goes that far, argues the position later. In my reading, that kind of continuity is easier to hold when a single field is all the office does.