Henry Cheng

At DLA Piper, his notable engagements include:

• Lead counsel advising an Indian multinational IT service provider in connection with the negotiation of a Bilateral Advance Pricing Agreement between the U.S. and Indian competent authorities. Henry also represents the same client in connection with a number of direct and indirect tax multistate audits before U.S. state and local taxing authorities.
• Trial counsel for an offshore hedge fund before the U.S. Tax Court in a multi-year litigation over the issue of whether the fund had a U.S. trade or business and other precedent setting legal issues. The amount of liability in dispute is over $180 million. The case is currently pending before the court.
• Prevailed in a motion for summary judgment before a state court for a global mobile telecommunications company on the claim that the state was preempted by federal law from imposing a communications users tax on roaming calls that originated by foreign travelers in the U.S. 
• Tried and prevailed in a case before the U.S. Tax Court (T.C. Memo. 2019-158) involving an income adjustment of over $40 million, where the primary issue involved the valuation of a complex real estate development business, by developing effective trial strategies and authoring a persuasive post-trial brief.
• Advised a U.S. cloud-based telecommunications company in connection with a withholding tax audit before the IRS.
• Successfully defended a major global shipping company in several state direct and indirect tax audits in the U.S. 
• Successfully resolved payroll and employment tax issues for several U.S. and non-U.S. multinationals.
• Successfully advised a Chinese multinational dairy product production and sales company in connection with an IRS audit covering 8 taxable years. The audit involved several complex tax issues including subpart F income, transfer pricing, section 956 inclusion, foreign tax credit and net operating loss carryover, and FX gain. The audit resulted in a zero cash tax liability to the taxpayer.
• Successfully represented an Indian multinational in connection with a multi-year permanent establishment audit.
• Persuaded IRS counsel during discovery in a matter before the Tax Court to concede $34 million of income adjustments on behalf of an S corporation with substantial real estate development and financing business, resulting in $11 million of tax savings in addition to interest and penalty savings.
• Obtained Section 9100 relief from the IRS National Office for an S corporation to make a late election that was previously denied by the exam agent at the exam level. The election was critical to the S corporation’s ability to take substantial bad debt and worthless stock losses.

• ABA Tax Section Meeting, Report on Important Developments in Civil Litigation, February and October 2024
• Tax Executives Institute Annual Conference, Strategic Management of International Tax Controversies, October 23, 2023
• Tax Executives Institute, Practical Implications of the Administrative Procedure Act on Tax Controversy & Planning, March 2023
• Tax Executives Institute, Minimizing Risk of and Defending Penalties, September 2022
• ABA Tax Section Meeting, IRS Exam – Reflections on Two Years of COVID, May 2022
• Tax Executives Institute, Attorney-Client Privilege in Tax Planning, March 2022