Dean A. Zerbe

Partner at Zerbe, Miller, Fingeret, Frank & Jadav LP

Dean Zerbe has long been at the forefront of the Internal Revenue Service tax whistleblower program. Starting in 2006 when serving as Senior Counsel and Tax Counsel for the Senate Finance Committee for then-Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-IA), he was the staffer responsible for the legislation that created the modern IRS whistleblower program. Mr. Zerbe left government service in 2008 to practice at the law firm of Zerbe, Miller, Fingeret, Frank & Jadav, and in 2010 he was asked to serve as co-counsel with Steve Kohn for Mr. Brad Birkenfeld’s whistleblower award claim.

Mr. Birkenfeld received an award of $104 million dollars for blowing the whistle on UBS and illegal offshore accounts. Mr. Zerbe has also successfully represented a number of tax whistleblowers who to date have received awards totaling approximately $500 million dollars.   In addition, Mr. Zerbe has represented several tax whistleblowers successfully in U.S. Tax Court, including serving as lead attorney for the landmark case Whistleblower 21276-13W v. IRS, 144 TC 15 (2017), which established the definition of “collected proceeds” for purposes of determining an award under the whistleblower law. The Tax Court decision was codified by the U.S. Congress.

Mr. Zerbe has been widely published in a number of publications regarding the IRS whistleblower law, has consulted with state governments as well as foreign nations about tax whistleblower laws and also serves as Senior Policy Analyst for the National Whistleblower Center. He has a J.D. from George Mason University and an LL.M. (Tax) from New York University – and more importantly is the only NYU LLM graduate who also has a BFA (film production) from NYU as well.