Profile: Philip C Cook

Corporate Tax

Biography: Corporate Tax

Philip Cook is a partner at Alston & Bird. He specialises in federal income taxation and federal tax controversies, representing clients in major disputes with the Internal Revenue Service. In particular, he has handled significant tax controversy matters for financial institutions. More recently, he has taken a lead role in the mobile telephone industry's dispute with the IRS over whether commissions paid to enrol new subscribers qualified as currently deductible ordinary and necessary business expenses. He was lead trial counsel in the first test case for the industry concerning this issue, which was resolved - after trial - by a complete IRS concession of the issue. Mr Cook has also litigated a variety of issues for clients in the insurance and reinsurance industry.

Mr Cook played a leading role in the banking industry's successful efforts to sustain the core deposit amortisation deduction in purchase transactions. He was lead trial and appellate attorney in the seminal case of The Citizens and Southern Corporation v Commissioner - the first case to uphold an amortisation deduction for purchased deposit base intangible assets - and subsequently litigated numerous other cases on the same issue. In 1992, on behalf of the American Bankers Association, Mr Cook prepared and filed an amicus curiae brief to the US Supreme Court in the case of Newark Morning Ledger v United States, which ultimately resolved the legal issue of amortisation of intangible assets. He has also represented clients in controversies concerning other industry issues, including taxation of loan origination expense, insurance fund entrance and exit fees, mortgage servicing rights, loan charge-off and accrual issues, attempted re-characterisations of securitisation transactions and true-lease issues.