James Sowell

Jim Sowell focuses primarily on tax issues relating to partnerships, REITs, and debt workouts with respect to these entities. He leads the Real Estate group for the KPMG Washington National Tax practice.

Jim is a former chairman of the Real Estate Committee of the American Bar Association (Tax Section) and is a former vice chairman of the Tax Policy Advisory Committee of the Real Estate Roundtable.  He is a member of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, where he is an active participant on the Government Relations Committee.  Jim also currently is the President of the Board of Trustees for the Southern Federal Tax Institute. In addition, he has written articles for various publications and speaks at numerous conferences.

Before joining KPMG, Jim was with the national tax offices of other major accounting firms.  Prior to that time, he was with the U.S. Department of Treasury (Office of Tax Policy) where he served first as an attorney advisor and then as an associate tax legislative counsel.  While at the Treasury Department, he was primarily responsible for administrative guidance and legislation involving partnerships, real estate investment trusts, like-kind exchanges, and other issues. The many matters that Jim was involved in while at Treasury included the regulations relating to partnership mergers and divisions, the partnership basis adjustment regulations, the regulations relating to amortization of intangible property, and the legislation relating to taxable REIT subsidiaries. Prior to the Treasury Department, Jim was an associate at King & Spalding LLP in Atlanta, Georgia.

Jim has a BBA degree and a law degree, both with high honors, from the University of Florida. He earned an LLM degree in taxation from New York University. He was chief tax editor of the Florida Law Review and was a graduate editor of New York University’s Tax Law Review.

About the KPMG Passthroughs group

The Passthroughs group is responsible for providing insight to KPMG professionals and clients regarding the federal taxation of partnerships, real estate investment trusts, and S corporations across all major industries. In addition, the Passthroughs group advises in specialty areas such as like-kind exchanges, oil and gas, leasing, and excise taxes. Client services include transaction structuring, the issuance of opinions, and requesting private letter rulings.