The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has vacated the two-year prison sentence given to a CPA who plead guilty to obstructing and impeding the administration of the federal tax laws on the ground of ineffective assistance of counsel because her lawyer did not retain a tax expert.  Baxter v. United States, No. 1:04-cr-00371 (N.D. Ill. June 25, 2009):

To meet the objective standard of reasonableness, it is essential for criminal defense counsel to recognize that certain criminal cases require the retention of an expert. Criminal tax cases involving seemingly legitimate, sophisticated tax schemes, like the Aegis Trust System in Baxter's criminal case, are among the types of cases where it is necessary that criminal defense counsel retain the assistance of a tax expert before any critical stages of the defendant's criminal case occur. Otherwise, the defense may be adversely affected, as occurred in Baxter's criminal case.

The performance of Baxter's criminal defense counsel, Mr. Keith Spielfogel and Mr. James Montgomery, fell below the Strickland objective standard of reasonableness because they did not analyze or present the mitigating facts and arguments a tax expert's testimony would have assisted them in doing to reduce the tax-loss figure the court used in sentencing Baxter. The evidence also establishes that Baxter was prejudiced by her criminal defense attorneys' constitutionally deficient performance. It undermined the court's confidence in the fairness of the plea negotiations, the sentencing proceeding, and the sentence imposed in Baxter's case. The court believes that had the facts and analysis that have now been presented by Baxter's tax expert, who was retained by her new counsel after her sentencing, been presented to the court prior to Baxter's 2006 sentencing, the court would have imposed a lower sentence.