Richard W. Skillman is a member in Caplin & Drysdale's Washington, D.C. office specializing in federal taxation. Mr. Skillman’s practice covers a broad cross-section of domestic and international tax matters and includes the representation of taxpayers in tax controversies as well as tax planning. His areas of specialization include insurance companies and products, executive compensation and other employee benefits, corporate tax, tax accounting, and international tax.
Between 1999 and 2002, Mr. Skillman served as Deputy Chief Counsel and Acting Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service. As Acting Chief Counsel, Mr. Skillman was the chief legal official of the IRS. He held final authority for all legal and litigating positions of the IRS and management responsibility for approximately 2500 Chief Counsel employees in more than 50 offices nationwide.
Mr. Skillman is a member of the Tax Sections of the ABA and of the D.C. Bar. He formerly taught Corporate Tax as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center and has lectured and written articles on a broad range of tax subjects.
Mr. Skillman holds a B.A. from Amherst College and a J.D. from New York University Law School, where he graduated first in his class and served as Editor-in-Chief of the
N.Y.U. Law Review. After law school, he served as law clerk to Judge Gibbons of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and to Chief Justice Burger of the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Skillman is listed in The Best Lawyers in America in the specialty of Employee Benefits Law and Tax Law from 2006-2010.