Melania Smith

Melania Smith is an attorney with a decade of experience in tax compliance in oil and gas as well as the automotive retail industry. Her experience working in-house for some of the world’s largest businesses has provided her with the knowledge needed to advise large businesses on tax related matters. Throughout her career, she has acquired significant tax experience in contributing to the preparation and review of some of the world’s largest and most intricate tax returns, consistently navigating evolving tax compliance standards and delivering value-driven insight into tax implications.

Melania practices in the tax controversy and litigation arena, zealously advocating for clients on both business and individual tax matters. She has represented taxpayers before the IRS and the United States Tax Court on matters including independent contractor disputes, identify theft, tax debt, collections issues, employment taxes, and audits. In addition, she has advocated for clients in state and local tax matters and disputes over worker classifications by the Texas Workforce Commission.

Melania is well-versed in federal domestic and international tax issues. Her time spent working in industry for publicly traded companies provided her with experience in consolidated tax returns and FASB ASC 740 standards for accounting for income taxes. As such, she has considerable experience in accounting for taxes, as they affect financial reporting. With her experience in accounting, has conducted in depth financial analysis on tax matters that provided insight to the operations and financial needs of a business.

Melania is also proficient in multistate taxes. Her experience includes state income and franchises tax matters, having worked on both unitary and separate filing states. Her experience has comprised of analyzing state conformity, the treatment of tax matters at the state level, and accounting for the implications of tax reform post the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

In addition to extensive accounting and tax compliance experience, she has supported major businesses in mergers and acquisitions by assisting with analysis of asset purchase agreements and the required disclosures for federal tax purposes. Furthermore, she has assisted with the post-acquisition process involving complex asset valuations and issues related to the tax basis of acquired assets.

She also has deep experience in analyzing earnings and profits in connection with distribution planning. As such, she is well versed in tax basis studies for both corporate and partnership entities for the purpose of determining the amounts available for dividends and providing the necessary support for tax planning of these distributions.

Her experience extends to other financial matters as well, such as FinCEN Report 114 Foreign Bank Account Reporting. She also brings extensive experience in unclaimed property filings across nearly all U.S. jurisdictions, as well as nonprofit tax compliance and reporting.

With such broad background, Melania leverages her experience to effectively represent clients before federal and state taxing agencies and tribunals on both individual and business-related matters.

Before joining Kean Miller, Melania worked for a focused tax litigation and controversy firm in Dallas. Her previous experience also includes working for one of the world’s largest integrated energy companies, where she acquired extensive experience in the domestic and international tax areas while working on major oil and gas projects across the upstream, downstream, and midstream sectors including Guyana and Papua New Guinea. In addition, she was Associate Tax Manager for a large automotive company, where she acquired broad experience on various multistate matters impacting retailers including state income tax, franchise tax, and sales and use tax.