Michael Novogradac is the managing partner in the San Francisco office of Novogradac & Company LLP. He has more than 25 years of experience specializing in affordable housing, community development and renewable energy. Mr. Novogradac’s focus is in real estate taxation and accounting. He is the author of numerous real estate-related tax and accounting articles and books, including the New Markets Tax Credit Handbook and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Handbook. A frequent speaker at tax credit conferences and forums throughout the country, Mr. Novogradac is very active in advocating for the inclusion of affordable housing, historic, new markets and renewable energy tax credits in federal and state policy and broadcasts a weekly podcast that focuses on tax credit issues. In addition, he serves as advisor on industry and governmental affairs for the NMTC Working Group and the LIHTC Working Group. Mr. Novogradac also serves on the executive committee of the Housing Advisory Group and the boards of directors of the Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition, the National Housing Conference, the NMTC Coalition and Historic Tax Credit Coalition, as well as being an original member of the National Multifamily Housing Council’s Affordable Housing Committee. He previously served on the boards of directors of A Hand Up and the Berkeley Chess School, the board of governors of the California Housing Consortium, as an advisory board member of the National Leased Housing Association, the Federal Housing Policy Council and Housing and Development Reporter. He was also a member of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association NMTC Steering Committee, the National Trust for Historic Preservation Tax Policy Council and the California State Treasurer's Housing Finance Advisory Board, as well as a board member and chief financial officer of the Housing Industry Foundation. Mr. Novogradac graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a bachelor’s degree in economics. He received an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. He is licensed in California, Oregon, Maryland and Texas as a certified public accountant.

As a senior member of the firm’s Public Affairs team, Mr. Robertson advises executive teams, boards of directors and senior decision-makers on public policy issues that pose opportunities and challenges to their organizations' enterprise values. Mr. Robertson’s expertise is in the fields of energy, communications, trade, transportation and tax.

Mr. Robertson is part of C2 GROUP, a highly regarded bipartisan government relations and lobbying firm, which was acquired by FTI Consulting in 2013.

Prior to joining C2 GROUP, Mr. Robertson served on the staff of Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) for nine years, the last five as Deputy to the Chief of Staff. He also served as Campaign Manager for Senator Rockefeller’s 2008 re-election campaign.

During his time on Capitol Hill, Mr. Robertson helped the Senator distill and attack problems and shaped solutions on a wide spectrum of issues from economic development to the complexities of the tax code. He worked closely with the Finance Committee on tax bills, trade policy and Trade Adjustment Assistance issues. In addition, he tackled telecommunications and transportation issues on the Senate Commerce Committee. Mr. Robertson also worked with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on translating its enormously important and classified work to a broader audience. He worked closely with state officials across West Virginia on large-scale projects and development, such as the West Virginia Summit on Homeland Security, plant relocations and openings, and on trade missions both overseas and here in the US.

Mr. Robertson is a graduate of American University’s Washington College of Law and the University of Pittsburgh. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Discover the Real West Virginia Foundation, a non-profit focused on economic development in his home state of West Virginia.

Michael Kressig is a partner in the St. Louis office of Novogradac & Company LLP, where he specializes in community development and affordable housing, including new markets tax credit (NMTC), low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) and historic rehabilitation tax credit (HTC) transactions. He has more than 20 years of public accounting and business advisory experience. His consulting expertise includes forecasts and projections, deal structuring and related services. Mr. Kressig also works extensively with real estate partnership and compliance audits, advises clients on accounting, tax and regulatory issues, and is a frequent speaker at industry events. Before joining Novogradac & Company LLP, Mr. Kressig was partner in charge of Sabino & Company's assurance services group and directed the firm's real estate services practice group. Mr. Kressig also served as a senior manager with Deloitte LLP, where he specialized in financial industry audits as well as merger and acquisition consulting and due diligence. Mr. Kressig received a bachelor’s degree in business administration, majoring in accounting, from Rockhurst University. He is licensed in Missouri as a certified public accountant.

Jerry Breed focuses his practice on tax planning and the structuring of low-income housing tax credit, historic rehabilitation tax credit, new markets tax credit and renewable energy transactions.

Mr. Breed has closed many low-income housing, historic rehabilitation, new markets tax credit and renewable energy transactions that permit his clients to maximize tax benefits and investment returns, all within the framework of the client's business goals. He has substantial experience in the taxation of community development and new markets credit investments. Mr. Breed also has represented clients with respect to audits of tax credit investments.

Clients of Mr. Breed include syndicators and investors in low-income housing, historic rehabilitation, new markets tax credit and renewable energy transactions as well as developers of these credit projects. In the New Markets Tax Credits area, Mr. Breed represents the owners of qualified active low-income community businesses and community development entities. Mr. Breed also represents state housing authorities that allocate low-income housing tax credits. Frequently, these federal credits include state credits and other federal, state and local subsidies.

Mr. Breed has given presentations at numerous seminars and conferences on the low-income housing, historic rehabilitation, new markets tax credits and renewable energy credits including presentations on partnership taxation, and real estate tax issues. He also is author of a number of articles on tax credits and other federal income tax matters.

Thomas Stephens, Dentons 

Thomas Stephens is a head of Dentons' legacy tax advantaged investments practice. Mr. Stephens’ practice encompasses tax planning and transaction structuring for partnerships, limited liability companies, corporations and individuals. Nationally recognized in partnership taxation and tax credit investing, Mr. Stephens is ranked Band 2 by Chambers USA. Mr. Stephens heads the tax side of Dentons' tax advantaged investing practice, one of the largest and most active in the United States, including its representation of many market-leading banks and insurance companies. Mr. Stephens is widely recognized as an authority in tax credit investing, including the structuring of transactions benefiting from low-income housing tax credits (LIHTCs), new markets tax credits (NMTCs), historic rehabilitation tax credits (HTCs) and renewable energy tax credits (RETCs). A creative and thoughtful tax practitioner, Mr. Stephens' input is regularly sought by clients and competitors. Mr. Stephens has authored and co-authored numerous articles, outlines and papers and presented speeches on a variety of tax subjects, including speaking at numerous industry conferences centered around LIHTCs, NMTCs, HTCs or RETCs, and including writing and/or speaking for the New York University Institute on Federal Taxation, the University of Chicago Federal Tax Conference, the Practicing Law Institute, the American Federal Tax Institute, the World Trade Institute, the American Bar Association, the Journal of Taxation, TAXES, the Journal of Taxation of Investments and the Journal of S Corporation Taxation. Mr. Stephens earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut, his J.D. from Columbus School of Law, The Catholic University of America, and earned his LL.M. in taxation from New York University School of Law.

John is a Senior Vice President and member of Bank of America’s Historic Rehabilitation, New Markets and Renewable Energy Tax Credits Origination Team. John joined Bank of America in December of 2013. Prior to joining the Bank, John was a founding principal of NGP Capital LLC where he provided advisory services to corporations and real estate developers in structuring federal and state real estate tax credit transactions. In addition to his experience with NGP Capital, John is former Tax Counsel of The Sherwin-Williams Company where he was responsible for structuring and overseeing historic rehabilitation and low-income housing tax credit transactions resulting in over $1 billion of real estate project construction, as well as coordinating state and local tax planning and litigation.   

Before joining Sherwin-Williams in 1996, John was a Tax Manager for Arthur Andersen in Chicago and was Assistant Tax Counsel for The Chicago Bridge & Iron Company. John is licensed to practice law in Illinois and Pennsylvania.

Holly H. Heer is a partner in the Real Estate Department of Barnes & Thornburg LLP’s Columbus office. She represents developers, syndicators and financial institutions in partnership syndication and related transactions including entity formation, lending, asset management and workouts with a particular emphasis on transactions involving the low-income housing tax credit, historic tax credit and new markets tax credit.

Ms. Heer is a frequent speaker on issues relating to tax credit syndication, which includes tax structuring for credit-oriented transactions; technical tax issues related to credit syndication and compliance; partnership negotiation issues; exit strategies for syndicated investment vehicles; and layering various subsidy and tax credit programs with each other (including HUD programs such as HOPE VI; Replacement Housing Factor Funds; Section 202, 231, 221(d)(4) and 223(a)(7) Loans; Mark to Market Financing; and Interest Reduction Payment Decouplings).

She is a member of the Columbus Bar Association’s Real Property Section, the Ohio State Bar Association and the Forum on Affordable Housing & Community Development Law of the American Bar Association.

Ms. Heer is admitted to practice in front of the state courts of Ohio, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.

She earned her J.D. from the University Of Virginia School Of Law, where she was Order of the Coif and a member of the Virginia Law Review. She received her B.A. degree from Wellesley College, graduating magna cum laude and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

 

Forrest Milder, Nixon Peabody 

Forrest Milder is one of Nixon Peabody LLP’s lead tax partners when it comes to tax credits and other tax-advantaged investments. Mr. Milder has a national practice that emphasizes the development of renewables, affordable housing, historic and new markets tax credit projects as well as resolving disputes with the IRS. Mr. Milder’s practice emphasizes structuring and bringing to closure many kinds of tax-advantaged projects, both for investors and those who need their investment. Mr. Milder has advised on an exceptionally wide range of ventures, with sizes from hundreds of thousands of dollars to hundreds of millions. He is especially known for “outside-the-box” solutions. For example, he has developed a technique that facilitated more than $100 million of renewable facilities qualifying for government grants, even though the projects were nominally owned by the government and bond-financed. Mr. Milder enabled another client to obtain a $15 million-plus state credit as the first user of a new program by working with the applicable agency before it had published any rules. Mr. Milder has resolved three multi-million-dollar disputes with the IRS with the taxpayer having zero liability. On one occasion he worked with clients and others to get the applicable tax code provision changed, thereby ending the audit. Mr. Milder has worked with countless developers and investors to close hundreds of transactions involving the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC), including everything from standard ventures to “80-20” deals and “lease pass-throughs” that also involve the historic tax credit (HTC). Mr. Milder has written tax opinions enabling a client with an innovative renewable technology to close more than $50 million of tax credit investments. Mr. Milder served as chair of the American Bar Association’s 7,000-member Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development and chairman of the 3,000-member MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge. He’s authored a leading treatise on housing and historic tax credits, and written more than 40 articles about renewables, and he is heavily involved in drafting legislation and guidance for the historic rehabilitation industry.