Tax in the City

Catherine (Cate) A. Battin is the head of McDermott Will & Schulte’s State & Local Tax Practice Group and has practiced at the firm for more than 20 years.

Cate represents clients in all aspects of state and local tax matters, including controversies at the audit, administrative, and judicial levels across several jurisdictions. She advises on national state tax strategies involving a broad range of issues, such as income tax apportionment, sourcing, nexus, transfer pricing, combination and sales tax characterization of products and services, and other local excise tax issues. She has a particular focus on state and local tax controversies and has litigated cases throughout the United States, successfully arguing cases before state appellate and supreme courts.

Cate regularly speaks on state and local tax issues and has presented before organizations such as the Tax Executives Institute, the Council on State Taxation, the Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois, and The Chicago Tax Club.

Prior to joining McDermott, Cate worked at a major international accounting and consulting firm, where she focused exclusively on state and local taxes.

Kristen E. Hazel has extensive experience representing clients in US and international aspects of federal tax matters, including international acquisitions and divestitures, international joint ventures, and capital plan design and implementation, including tax planning with respect to intellectual property. Her work includes both inbound and outbound transactions.

Kristen is the co-head of the Firm’s Captive Insurance Affinity Group. She regularly counsels clients with respect to the tax aspects of organizing, operating and defending captive insurance companies. She is head of the Firm’s New Business Committee and is a member of the Firm’s Professional Responsibility Committee.

Kristen frequently speaks on captive insurance, domestic and international tax topics for various professional organizations.

Kristen is a co-founder of Tax in the City: A Tax Roundtable®, which consists of tax professionals with an interest in discussing substantive tax issues in a collegial and confidential setting.

Lindsay Heyen concentrates her practice on the tax aspects of complex business and investment transactions, with a particular focus on single-family offices and private investment funds, and transactions involving partnerships and limited liability companies, such as acquisitions, divestitures, investments, joint ventures and restructurings.

Lindsay has extensive experience working with single-family offices in connection with the formation and/or restructuring of family offices and investment entities, the creation of investment funds, the establishment of incentive equity programs for key employees and related income tax planning. She also routinely works on complex tax planning for high-net-worth individuals and families, tax structuring for partnership-related matters, and tax controversy matters.

Mary Kay McCalla Martire focuses her practice on a wide variety state and local tax issues. She advises clients on matters related to sales tax, with an emphasis on the sale of digital products. In addition, she advises business clients on income tax apportionment and remote employee withholding obligations. Mary Kay counsels individual clients on residency and income sourcing questions, and frequently advises captives and their insureds on direct procurement tax issues. She also has experience with state and local utility and telecommunications tax matters.

Mary Kay has an extensive litigation background in state and federal court, as well as administrative tribunals. She has particular experience in the defense of qui tam (whistleblower) claims filed in the state tax arena and has won the dismissal of many Illinois False Claims Act cases. Mary Kay played a key role in many of the reported decisions issued by the Illinois appellate court in this area. She also has experience defending clients against class action and consumer fraud claims.

Mary Kay also has represented clients in a number of state insurance tax litigation matters, including serving as the principal trial attorney for a group of insurance companies that successfully challenged the constitutionality of the Illinois Privilege Tax (Milwaukee Safeguard Ins. Co. v. Selky, 179 Ill.2d 94 (1997)).

Mary Kay serves as Co-Chair of the Chicago Office Pro Bono Committee. She is actively engaged in a number of pro bono matters, including the representation of not for profits seeking sales and property tax exemptions, and serving as a guardian ad litem in child custody disputes. In 2014, Mary Kay was awarded one of McDermott’s Chicago Office pro bono service awards. In addition, she is an editor of the Firm’s State Tax Blog, InsideSALT.com.

Elizabeth C. Lu focuses her practice on US and international tax matters.  She advises clients on international tax issues, including the subpart F anti-deferral rules, foreign tax credit planning, repatriation, and the international provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (GILTI, FDII, BEAT, etc.).  Elizabeth has experience advising multinational corporations on global supply chain restructurings, acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures, post-acquisition integrations, internal reorganizations, tax controversies, and intellectual property migrations.  Elizabeth also advises clients on tax treaties, cost sharing agreements, and the taxation of the digital economy.

Elizabeth regularly speaks on international tax topics, including as part of the Tax in the City® Roundtable.

While in law school, Elizabeth served as a features editor for the Yale Law Journal.  Elizabeth also worked at the University of Chicago Law School as the chief research assistant to Judge Richard A. Posner and Professor William M. Landes.

Sandra McGill focuses her practice on international tax planning. Sandra works with US and non-US multinational companies, public and private as well as high net worth individuals and family businesses. Sandra has extensive experience advising clients on a broad range of cross-border tax issues, including the following:

• Foreign tax credit planning
• Subpart F and PFIC anti-deferral rules
• Source of income and withholding tax issues and compliance, including obtaining Treaty relief
• Foreign currency recognition rules under Sections 985-989
• US trade or business or local country permanent establishment (PE) issues
• Section 367 and other subchapter C issues related to cross-border restructurings, acquisitions and financings, including issues with respect to intellectual property

Sandra works with an extensive network of non-US lawyers on developing multi-jurisdictional business structures such as centralized sales and services and finance company structures.

Sandra is a co-founder of Tax in the City®: A Tax Roundtable, which consists of tax professionals who meet regularly to discuss substantive tax issues in a confidential setting.

Meaghan A. Wolfe represents multinational organizations on US federal income tax matters and international tax planning related to cross-border transactions. She advises on corporate reorganizations, mergers, acquisitions, dispositions and repatriation strategies. Meaghan also assists clients with tax controversy matters and tax dispute resolution.

Meaghan regularly speaks on domestic and international tax matters at professional seminars. She is a co-author of a consolidated return treatise called Federal Income Taxation of Corporations Filing Consolidated Returns.