2025 Distinguished Service Award Recipient

Eric Solomon

The Distinguished Service Award is the highest honor awarded by the Section of Taxation of the American Bar Association. The award is given to individuals who have had a distinguished career in taxation and who have provided an aspirational standard for all tax lawyers to emulate. The 2025 recipient of this award is Eric Solomon, in recognition of his outstanding service to the tax profession and to the tax system.

Eric has had a distinguished career in government service, as a practitioner, and as a professor of tax law, teaching and leading others who have aspired to follow his commitment to doing the right thing, finding the right answer, and upholding the integrity of the tax system. His career spans more than four decades as a tax practitioner, with 15 years in government, including leading the corporate tax division in the IRS Chief Counsel’s Office and serving as Treasury Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy. His career also includes 30 years teaching corporate taxation at Georgetown University Law Center, as well as serving as Chair of the ABA Tax Section, a member of the executive committee of the Tax Section of the New York State Bar Association, President of the American Tax Policy Institute, and co-chair of Practising Law Institute and DC Bar tax conferences, in addition to providing clients and colleagues with sage advice.

Eric’s parents were his mentors. Raised in Princeton, New Jersey, by two educators, one a 7th grade public school English teacher, and the other an executive at a non-profit educational organization, they instilled in him a love of learning and a belief in the value of education as a source of opportunity. They also espoused the virtues of hard work and integrity, virtues that define Eric’s remarkable career.

Eric studied classics at Princeton University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He considered following his parents’ footsteps into education, but job prospects teaching ancient history weren’t good. His father suggested the study of law, where he would learn how our country works. Eric received his J.D. from the University of Virginia and an LL.M. in taxation from New York University.

When Eric was a boy, his father took him to Phillies games where he was a meticulous scorekeeper, so meticulous that he narrowly missed being beaned by a foul ball while he studied his scorecard. With the benefit of hindsight, Eric notes that this event made clear he was destined to be a tax lawyer—“engaged in arcane matters of questionable significance” while the world played on around him.

After working at law firms in New York City and as a partner with Drinker Biddle & Reath in Philadelphia, Eric assumed the role of Assistant Chief Counsel (Corporate) in the Office of Chief Counsel at the IRS, a position he held for five years. He then joined Ernst & Young LLP as a principal advising on mergers and acquisitions, but the call of government service led him back to the Treasury Department in 1999 during the Clinton Administration, where he was a Senior Advisor and then Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy. He stayed on at Treasury during the George W. Bush Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regulatory Affairs and as acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy. In 2006, he was nominated by President Bush to serve as the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy. A delay in his Senate confirmation led to a “free Eric” campaign by many of his ABA Tax Section colleagues and admirers. After leaving Treasury, Eric returned to EY to co-lead the National Tax Office. After retiring from EY, he became a partner at Steptoe & Johnson and then Ivins, Phillips & Barker, where he continues to practice because he has too much energy to retire.

Eric’s Treasury tenure from 1999 to 2009 was particularly marked by government efforts to curb the proliferation of tax shelters and measures to address the 2008 financial crisis. When Eric was appointed by the Clinton Administration to join Treasury, confidence in the tax system was low. The IRS had endured bruising Congressional hearings and the enactment of significant reform legislation. There were recurring reports of tax avoidance, noncompliance, and advisors mass marketing abusive tax shelters. Eric was a leading member of a team that developed a system, including legislative proposals, regulations, and listing notices, to help the IRS combat the problem, to deter users and promoters of tax shelters, and to identify returns requiring audit. Eric played a key role in reforming Circular 230. Although the roll-out was criticized—requiring baffling email disclaimers—the combination of clearer standards and aspirational principles provoked changes in tax practices that have helped sustain the tax system despite increasing complexity and reduced resources for administration.

During the 2008 financial crisis, the Treasury Department played a critical role in stabilizing the economy. Many of the steps taken to shore up the financial system—e.g., infusions of capital and compelled acquisitions of wobbling financial institutions—created issues that Eric and his Treasury colleagues were called upon to address on an urgent basis. Eric led the Office of Tax Policy in its efforts to answer difficult and novel tax questions, to interpret the law sensibly, and to do so via notices that would shorten the process and provide much needed certainty.

As an adjunct professor for three decades at Georgetown University Law Center, he has strived to teach hundreds of students the complexities of corporate taxation in a comprehensible way. He enjoys seeing former students at many tax meetings.

Eric has been married for almost 40 years to Amy, an educator like his parents, and they are proud parents of Sarah. Eric has a love of life and outdoor activities, boundless energy, and a tenaciously infectious spirit. Eric says this energy is why he can’t retire—that Amy won’t let him.

Eric played intercollegiate soccer at Princeton University. As the smallest player on the team, Eric was determined to work harder, practice longer, and run faster than everyone else on the field. This persistence has marked his professional career. Eric takes advantage of every opportunity his travel presents to explore the outdoors. At conferences in Chicago, expect to find Eric running along Lake Michigan, or at conferences out west, finding trails to hike.

Eric has been a true pillar of the tax system. For his exemplary service, Eric has been recognized with numerous awards, including Treasury’s Alexander Hamilton Award, the Distinguished Presidential Rank Award, and distinguished service awards from the Tax Foundation, the Tax Council Policy Institute, Tax Executives Institute, the Federal Bar Association, and the tax sections of the state bars of California and Texas. He also received the Distinguished Adjunct Professor Award for Georgetown University’s graduate law programs.

The history of Eric’s contributions to the tax system and the tax profession demonstrate that he richly deserves the honor of being the 2025 recipient of the ABA Tax Section’s Distinguished Service Award.

—Pam Olson, Denver, Colorado