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A personal note
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Coming Soon
CiteMatch
Solo practitioners and small firms pay Westlaw and LexisNexis a fortune every year, often for features that shouldn't cost that much. I'm building tools to change that, starting with one that checks the quotes and authorities you cite against the sources. It's private, secure, and priced for lawyers like you, who are entrepreneurial and in the arena. Stay tuned.
Follow your passion and go all in.
–Alexander Powell, Founder & Host of Cited Authorities
Episode 09
From the JAG Corps to Tax Court: How John Pontius Built a Tax Law Firm on Volume and Values
John Pontius is the Managing Attorney and Founder of Pontius Tax Law, PLLC, a D.C.-area firm doing high-volume federal tax controversy and international compliance work. Cited Authorities episode nine is out today.
Running into the JAG Corps. While working in Arlington, Virginia, he was running at noon with retired Army judge advocates who encouraged him to apply. He joined the JAG Corps, deployed to Iraq with the 1st Armored Division, and spent time in Tikrit handling Foreign Claims Act matters on the ground.
Tax season in Wiesbaden looked nothing like a CPA firm. While stationed in Germany, he supervised a volunteer tax preparation program that processed thousands of federal and state returns for servicemembers in just a few compressed weeks. That was his introduction to tax at scale, before he ever set foot in a law school tax class.
Georgetown sharpened his knowledge; KPMG tested it across time zones. He used the GI Bill to earn his Tax LL.M. at Georgetown, then moved into international corporate tax at KPMG, working across cultures and jurisdictions in ways that would shape the international practice he runs today.
He started with five clients in a Regus office in Rockville. Eight years later, Pontius Tax Law operates out of D.C. and runs a recognized volume tax controversy practice.
About a third of his cases are international, and most of those clients didn't know they had a problem. Swiss immigrants who opened accounts without knowing about FBAR requirements. People who reported their income correctly but missed the underlying filings. He uses the streamlined offshore procedures to bring them into compliance without the penalties that would apply to willful violations.
His team is built around IRS insiders. Two former IRS revenue officers are on staff, one of whom spent five years as an appeals officer before joining the firm. Enrolled agents handle return preparation alongside the legal work. That combination of inside knowledge and technical range is central to how the firm operates at volume.
Every case gets three questions before anything else. Can we fix it? Is the cost-benefit worth pursuing? Can the client actually pay for the work? He treats those as a filter. He says that discipline has kept the firm's work focused.
His parting advice for anyone thinking about going out on their own: get competent first, develop a real business sense, keep six months of emergency funds in reserve, and bet on yourself.
“There's never a perfect time to start. It's going to be a little bit scary. After eight years, it's gotten much more stable. But you have to have that faith in yourself and bet on yourself.”
John Pontius, Episode 09