Masha M. Yevzelman

Shareholder

Email: myevzelman@fredlaw.com
Office: 612.492.7410

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PRIMARY SERVICES

Tax Disputes & Litigation
Property Tax Appeals
Business & Tax Planning
Litigation

Trusts & Estates
Trusts & Estates Litigation
Sports & Entertainment

Overview

Masha chairs Fredrikson’s Tax Disputes and Litigation Group. She represents public and private companies, trusts, estates and high-net-worth individuals in complex tax disputes. She handles all stages of tax controversies – voluntary disclosures, audits, administrative appeals, tax court, district court and appellate litigation.

Her experience includes resolving and litigating numerous types of tax disputes:

State Corporate Income and Franchise Taxes, including nexus and Public Law 86-272, combination, business versus non-business income, allocation and apportionment issues (including sales factor sourcing), and credits (e.g., R&D, JOBZ, etc.);
Sales and Use Taxes, including nexus, taxation of goods and services (e.g., digital goods, computer software, software as a service, telecommunication services, sales of electricity, advertising, prepared food), bundled transactions, sales for resale, “sales price” (e.g., cost of goods sold, services necessary to complete the sale, delivery charges, discounts, consideration received from third parties), sourcing, exemptions (e.g., qualified data center, manufacturing/industrial production, capital equipment, advertising, occasional sales, waste management, purely public charities), qui tam actions, and voluntary disclosures;
Federal and International Tax Disputes, including audits and appeals involving the Global High-Net Worth initiative, offshore foreign financial asset disclosures, section 469 passive/non-passive income and losses, and section 183 hobby losses;
Real and Personal Property Taxes, including state-assessed property (railroads, pipelines, utilities) and exempt property (public hospitals, hospital districts, clinics, nursing homes, churches, and institutions of purely public charity);
Other State and Local Taxes, including MinnesotaCare Tax, Insurance Premiums Tax, Withholding Taxes (including worker classification), Tobacco Products Tax, and Minneapolis Entertainment Tax;
State Individual Income Tax, including audits and appeals involving residency changes, personal and officer liability, criminal tax matters, section 469 passive/non-passive income and losses, and section 183 hobby losses.

Masha serves clients from a variety of industries, including retail, product distribution, manufacturing, financial services, insurance, aerospace, computer software, energy, healthcare, telecommunications, aerospace/automotive, hotel, cooperatives, restaurants, and entertainment.

Experience

REPRESENTATIVE EXPERIENCE

State Corporate Income and Franchise Taxes

Represent an air carrier in an income tax dispute before the Minnesota Tax Court in which the court held that the Minnesota Minimum Fee’s inclusion of Minnesota sales or receipts for airlines is preempted by the federal Anti-Head Tax Act, 49 U.S.C. § 40116, which prohibits states from taxing the gross receipts of airlines.
Represent several large manufacturers before the Minnesota Department of Revenue and the Minnesota Tax Court in Public Law 86-272 disputes.
Represented a publicly traded manufacturer in a corporate franchise tax dispute before the Minnesota Tax Court regarding whether a manufacturing entity was unitary with a related financial services entity, whether one of the related entities had nexus with Minnesota, and regarding unconstitutional distortion resulting from the state’s assessment and alternative apportionment.
Represent a multi-tiered pass-through entity in a dispute before the Minnesota Department of Revenue regarding whether related lower-tiered partnerships that were controlled by an unrelated third party were unitary with the parent holding company.
Represented a food processing company before the Minnesota Tax Court in a corporate franchise tax dispute. At issue was how to source the client’s “bill and hold” sales to its customer for sales factor purposes when title to the goods transferred to the customer while the products were in Minnesota, but the customer did not physically receive the goods in Minnesota.

Sales and Use Tax

Represented a large retailer (Fortune 50) before the Minnesota Department of Revenue and the Minnesota Tax Court in a dispute relating to whether software purchased by the retailer and loaded or used at the retailer’s qualified data center was exempt from Minnesota sales and use tax.
Represented a marketplace provider before the Minnesota Tax Court in a sales-and-use tax dispute regarding whether a marketplace was responsible for sales and use tax collection for periods before the effective date of Minnesota’s marketplace provisions.
Represented Ticketmaster in a sales tax matter before the Minnesota Tax Court. Following trial, the court held that Ticketmaster’s convenience charges and processing fees are not subject to the Minneapolis Entertainment Tax.
Represented a telecommunications provider (Fortune 100) in a sales-and-use tax dispute relating to sourcing of telephone calls as well as the taxability of free phones given away with purchases of services.
Represented a distributor of medical imaging equipment and x-ray consumables in a sales tax matter before the Minnesota Tax Court. Following trial, the court held that discounts/credits received by the distributor from manufacturers in exchange for honoring pricing agreements between the manufacturers and their customers are not part of the gross receipts from the retail sale and as such are not subject to sales tax.
Represented 16 electrical cooperatives in Minnesota sales tax refund appeals before the Minnesota Tax Court and Minnesota Supreme Court relating to determining the correct sales price of electricity sold by the cooperatives and addressing whether the state’s assessments of refunds previously issued were barred by the erroneous refund statute of limitations.
Represented an emerging retailer in multistate sales tax disputes regarding nexus and several qui tam

Property Tax

Represented a hospital district in a property tax exemption matter before the Minnesota Supreme Court and Minnesota Tax Court, in which the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the Minnesota Tax Court’s opinion that medical clinics owned and operated by the District were exempt from property tax because they were operated to improve and run the hospital—they helped attract physicians and patients, improved the hospital’s overall operations and service delivery, increased patient follow-up, provided physical space for use by other Hospital departments.
Represented a pipeline in a series of personal property tax appeals before the Minnesota Tax Court.

Federal and International Tax

Represent individuals in audits by the IRS’s Global High Net Worth team.
Represent clients before the IRS in audits and appeals relating to Foreign Bank Account Reporting (FBAR), foreign pension plans (including superannuation funds), foreign trusts, ownership of non-U.S. entities (including Passive Foreign Investment Companies—PFICs) and other unreported offshore assets and income.
Represented a client in a built-in-gains tax matter before the U.S. Tax Court.
Represented clients in a transferee liability matter before the U.S. Tax Court.
Assist individuals and companies in becoming compliant with their U.S. tax and reporting obligations through the IRS’s 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2014 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Programs (OVDI and OVDP), Streamline Programs (SDOP and SFOP) and Delinquent Filing Procedures.

Individual Income Tax

Represented an individual before the Minnesota Tax Court in a residency dispute in which, following a trial, the Minnesota Tax Court held that the taxpayer was a domiciliary of Florida and not Minnesota, even though his wife remained a Minnesota resident.
Assist clients with planning and executing residency changes from Minnesota to other states.

Other Tax Types

Represent clients in MinnesotaCare Tax audits and appeal before the Minnesota Department of Revenue and the Minnesota Tax Court.
Regularly represent companies in worker classification audits and appeals before the Minnesota Department of Revenue and the IRS.

Articles & Presentations

Professor Moriarty Is Going to Make an Appearance at the U.S. Supreme Court

October 26, 2022

By Kenneth S. Levinson and Masha M. Yevzelman

Remember how back in December of 2021 in “As Sherlock Holmes Would Say, ‘The Game’s Afoot’: A Possible SCOTUS Tax Case?” we told you that there was a split in the Circuits regarding the imposition of non-willful FBAR penalties by the IRS on noncompliant taxpayers, and predicted the Supreme Court would accept this case, as unlikely as that may have been historically for a “tax” case?