James M. Ervin Jr. is a partner in Holland & Knight's Tallahassee office. He has a multi-forum state tax practice that covers the legislative, administrative and judicial areas. In the legislative arena, Mr. Ervin drafts bills and laws on tax issues; monitors, reviews and analyzes legislation; and lobbies for specific issues. Through this approach, tax issues can be avoided before they become problems, or problems solved through legislative action.

Administrative issues of tax law involve formal and informal assessment challenges, rulemaking activities and advisement requests. Mr. Ervin handles assessment negotiations with auditors and the preparing, filing and resolving of protests against assessments. Through his longstanding relationships with the Department of Revenue, Mr. Ervin assists clients in tax inquiries to facilitate tax planning on behalf of his clients and to resolve any questions concerning potential tax liability. His practice in this area involves a wide array of state taxes, particularly sales tax, corporate income tax, communication services tax, insurance premium tax, documentary stamp and intangibles taxes, pollutants taxes and severance tax.

Should legislative and administrative avenues fail to resolve tax problems, Mr. Ervin works with clients to bring the matter to litigation. He handles tax assessment challenges and refund denial litigation against the Department of Revenue.

His articles on state taxation have been published by the Journal on State Taxation, Interstate Tax Report and The Florida Bar Journal. Mr. Ervin is a regular speaker on state taxation and has spoken at meetings of the Southeastern Association of Tax Administrators, the Committee on State Taxation (COST), the Florida State Tax Conference, the Tax Executives Institute, the American Mining Congress, the Interstate Tax Press and the National Institute on State and Local Taxation.