Welcome to the 2024-2025 Tax Section Year!
By I trust everyone is having a good summer and finding enjoyable ways (aside from work) to avoid the heat and the daily downpours. We were fortunate this year to have wonderful weather during our annual CLE at Kiawah Island. Our CLE co-chairs, Kristin King and Jordan Fieldstein, did an outstanding job finding a slate of spectacular speakers, and we had a fine turnout of attendees in person and online. Jordan will be staying on as a CLE Committee co-chair, joined by Helen Herbert. Please plan to join us over Memorial Day weekend in 2025 for another wonderful weekend of sun and tax topics.
I’m honored to be serving this year as Chair of the Tax Section alongside an excellent Section Council: Chris Hannum as Vice-Chair, Stacey Brady as Treasurer, and Kristin King as Secretary. Please reach out to any of us, or to our Immediate Past Chair Bob Gallagher, with any questions, comments, suggestions, or complaints. Our goal is to ensure the Tax Section is serving your needs and to help all of us maintain and build relationships within the North Carolina tax community.
As part of our continuing effort to create ties among each other, again this year we will be hosting tax roundtable discussions in coordination with each of our council meetings. Our first such roundtable is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. on August 16. You can attend in-person at the NCBA Bar Center in Cary or online – there is no cost for these roundtable events. They are an open floor to ask questions and discuss whatever tax topics are on your mind. Even if you don’t have any burning questions, please plan to join us and meet or reconnect with your tax colleagues. We’d love to see you at the roundtable! Registration for the first roundtable is open.
Our first Tax Section Council meeting will take place right after the roundtable on August 16, starting at 12:30. Our following two Council meetings will be on November 1, 2024 and March 14, 2025, culminating in our annual meeting and CLE in Kiawah on May 23-25, 2025. In addition to those meetings, we will join the NCACPAs for a meeting with NCDOR and anticipate coordinating a meeting with local IRS representatives as we have done in past years.
We continue to encourage submissions to the Tax Section newsletter. This is a wonderful opportunity for tax attorneys to reach a statewide audience, not just of tax lawyers, but attorneys throughout the NC Bar Association. Please contact our Communications Chair Herman Spence regarding submissions for our newsletter.
The section recently had the pleasure of awarding our second annual Tax Section Lifetime Achievement and Service Award to Richard E. Thigpen Jr. Wells Hall presented Dick with our section’s award during the June 2024 NCBA Board of Governors meeting in Charlotte. For those newer to the section, Dick Thigpen was the founding chair of the Tax Section and a legend among the North Carolina tax community. We were honored to recognize his essential contributions to the distinguished and collegial tax practice we enjoy today.
Finally, let me give my heartfelt gratitude to BreAnne Shieh, our exemplary Communities Manager at the NC Bar Association. She has been a fantastic liaison between the Council and the NCBA. I look forward to another successful year under her patient tutelage.
Have a wonderful summer, and I look forward to seeing you at our meetings and in Kiawah!
Reed J. Hollander serves as the 2024-2025 Chair of the Tax Section. He is an attorney with Young Moore in Raleigh.