The Beverly Hills, California, tax lawyer nominated by the Trump administration to lead the Internal Revenue Service reported earning $1.13 million in salary and disclosed providing legal services to a host of business professionals and celebrity estates, according to a financial disclosure released Monday.

Charles Rettig of California's of Hochman, Salkin, Rettig, Toscher & Perez was nominated in February. His firm would change its name to Hochman, Salkin, Toscher & Perez, according to an ethics agreement that was also released Monday. Rettig's nomination is pending at the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.

Rettig's financial disclosure, posted below, showed he provided legal services to the estate of Michael Jackson and to the estate of Movita Castaneda, a film actress and Marlon Brando's second wife, who died in 2015.

Rettig provided legal services to Albert Seeno Jr. and the Albert D. Seen Construction Co. The East Bay Times reported in 2016 that the IRS had sent Seeno family members “tax-delinquency notices for more than $159 million in federal income taxes from 2000 to 2006.”

The financial disclosure, a mandatory filing for most top-level executive nominees, identified a handful of individual clients—including David Butterfield of San Diego, Kosti Shirvanian of Newport Beach, Alan Smalley in Los Angeles and James Pflueger in Honolulu.

Rettig declined to identify 26 confidential clients who are subject to what he called nonpublic investigations.

Rettig had not represented Donald Trump or any of his related businesses. But Rettig's blog posts reveal his thinking about the guidance he would have offered the then-candidate who faced criticism for his refusal to release his tax returns.

“Would any experienced tax lawyer representing Trump in an IRS audit advise him to publicly release his tax returns during the audit?” Rettig wrote in a contributed piece at the Forbes site IRS Watch. “Absolutely not.”

Trump was the first president in modern times who did not voluntarily disclose his tax returns in the run-up to the election. The IRS in 2016 said there was nothing stopping any individual from releasing his or her own tax documents.

Rettig's $1.13 million in salary from the 12-lawyer Hochman Salkin would have covered 2017 and 2016, according to the rules the U.S. Office of Government Ethics provides for filling out financial disclosures.

“Further, as is routine practice for departing shareholders, I will receive a pro rata share based on the value of my interests for services performed in 2018 through the date of my withdrawal,” Rettig wrote in his ethics agreement. “This payment will be based solely on the firm's earnings through the date of my withdrawal from the firm and will be paid before I assume the duties of the position of commissioner.”

Rettig disclosed receiving tens of thousands of dollars in rent or royalties from residential property in La Jolla, California, and in Honolulu. He also reported receiving income from industrial real estate in Los Angeles.

Rettig said he will refrain from participating in any matter involving the accounting firm Wishnow, Ross, Warsavsky & Co., where his wife is employed. He also said he would not participate—absent a waiver—in matters that involve Wolters Kluwer CCH based on his ongoing receipt of royalties from his book “CCH Expert Treatise Library: Tax Practice & Procedure.”

The financial and ethics documents show Rettig would plan to divest interests—within 90 days of his confirmation—in six companies, including Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

Rettig is one of two California lawyers up for IRS positions.

Trump this month nominated Michael Desmond for chief counsel to the IRS and assistant general counsel in the Treasury Department. Desmond has run his own tax-focused firm in Santa Barbara for six years. Previously, Desmond was a Bingham McCutchen partner from 2008 to 2012. In his financial disclosure, Desmond identified his solo law firm salary and bonus at $560,000.

Desmond reported providing legal services to, among other individuals, Diane Wilsey in San Francisco and Prakash Janakiraman, co-founder of Nextdoor.com, in San Francisco. In 2016, Janakiraman sued the U.S. government to recover alleged overpayment of federal income tax. He also said he received arbitrator fees from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

“Upon confirmation, I will cease providing services to my clients, and I will refer them to other legal counsel for any ongoing legal matters,” Desmond wrote in an ethics agreement. “I will complete all such referrals before I assume the duties of the position of chief counsel.”

Desmond said amounts owed to him by any former client “will be fixed before I assume the duties of the position of chief counsel.”

 

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