Julian A. Fortuna is Special Counsel in the Firm’s Atlanta office and a member of the Tax, Benefits, and Estate Planning practice group. Mr. Fortuna focuses his practice on domestic and international tax planning and tax controversy matters. With over four decades of professional tax experience, Mr. Fortuna is capable of handling all tax matters related to the formation, financing, operation, restructuring, and disposition of a wide variety of business entities. His industry experience spans manufacturing, construction, hospitality, real estate, retail, health care, higher education, sports, entertainment, cannabis, digital assets, and clean energy. Mr. Fortuna represents business entities, owners and executives, fiduciaries and beneficiaries of trusts and estates, and non-profit entities regarding all types of federal and state income, sales and use, estate, gift and generation-skipping taxes. In tax controversies, he represents taxpayers in civil and criminal tax audits, investigations and administrative appeals before the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) and various state, local and foreign taxing authorities, and in tax litigation before federal and state courts and tax tribunals.
Prior to entering private practice, Mr. Fortuna was Vice President and General Tax Counsel for InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) where he was responsible for structuring the international, federal, state and local tax impacts of mergers, acquisitions, dispositions and other corporate transactions, as well as construction projects, leases, exchanges, and other real and personal property transactions. He also directed tax research and planning for cross-border financing, captive insurance, and the worldwide use of trade names and other intangible assets. Mr. Fortuna represented IHG before the IRS and various other tax authorities on audits, appeals, and ruling requests, and pursued tax regulatory and legislative changes for the benefit of IHG with US Treasury and Congressional personnel in Washington, DC.