About Jarrett Kalish
Jarrett S. Kalish, JD, LLM, Esq. is a New York metro-area lawyer and former Administrative Law Judge at the New York City Tax Appeals Tribunal. He previously served as tax counsel for the New York City Department of Finance and has practiced at prominent global accounting and law firms.
He is also the author of the forthcoming LexisNexis Practical Guidance publication, A Practitioner's Guide to the New York City Tax System: Authority, Tax Types, and Procedure.
Jarrett’s core practice focuses on tax advisory and resolution. Beyond this concentration, he provides fractional general counsel services to closely-held, venture-backed, and emerging businesses.
As an Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) at the New York City Tax Appeals Tribunal, Jarrett authored published opinions addressing complex questions of tax law. His opinions aimed to provide a thorough legal framework for resolving multifaceted tax controversies. In Matter of A&E Television Networks, Jarrett applied tools of statutory construction to determine the availability of a $2.45 billion interest deduction. Multiple members of the State Tax Advisory Board of Tax Notes cited Matter of A&E Television Networks as the best development in state and local taxation in 2024, referring to the opinion as “exceptional and precise” and reflecting “detailed analysis and logic.” [1] Jarrett’s determination in the matter was upheld on appeal, creating binding precedent.
Jarrett also authored the ALJ determination in Matter of 105-02 Forest Hills
LLC, a real property transfer tax case addressing the interplay between the step-transaction doctrine and the “mere change in form” exemption. The Tribunal’s Appeals Division later affirmed in part and reversed in part. The matter has drawn sustained attention, including commentary by tax law author, lecturer and adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, Robert Willens, describing the opinion’s analytical framework and logic. [2]
As an ALJ, Jarrett presided over a wide range of other matters highlighting his careful approach to both procedural and substantive issues. In Matter of CCB HOLDCO INC., he addressed jurisdictional issues under New York City’s corporation taxes, drawing careful parallels to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on procedural fairness. In Matter of Weisberger, he provided clarity on the application of technically nuanced regulatory provisions.
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[1] Tax Notes State Advisory Board Brief, Dec. 23, 2024, 114 Tax Notes State 745 (Dec. 23, 2024).
[2] Step Transaction Doctrine Applied to Impose Real Property Transfer Tax, The Willens Report, (October 8, 2025) (discussing the policy and previous federal law application of the step transaction doctrine, and highlighting Jarrett’s logic and conclusion in the matter).
Following several internships as a law student with the NYC Department of Finance, Jarrett joined the agency as tax counsel in 2013 and served in that capacity until 2016—an especially transformative period in the City’s tax history.
As tax counsel, Jarrett was part of the team that drafted the City’s modern Business Corporation Tax, enacted in 2015, and he identified the need to retain the City’s Banking Corporation Tax to prevent a tax-avoidance gap for banks taxed under Subchapter S of the Internal Revenue Code. During that same period, the Department developed novel legal and policy approaches to recurring fact patterns in the asset management and real estate industries, including management fee and carried interest structures (and related expense attribution) as well as multi-step real estate transactions.
Jarrett helped resolve numerous matters involving large taxpayers and regularly served as the Department’s lead representative in Conciliation Bureau proceedings, including Bureau matters addressing whether the City’s Unincorporated Business Tax permits amortization and depreciation deductions arising from transfers of partnership interests. In that work, he advocated within the Department and in discussions with taxpayers that such deductions should be recognized only when they stem from federal basis adjustments at the partnership level. That approach was later reflected in the Department’s Statement of Audit Procedure (SAP) UBT-2017-1 (5/5/17), for which Jarrett authored early drafts and which the Department released after his departure.
Jarrett also regularly provided consultation to the Audit Division on the interpretation of tax statutes, regulations, and case law, and he similarly coordinated with the City’s Law Department on tax issues subject to formal litigation.
After stepping down from the bench in April 2025, Jarrett briefly served as tax counsel at a global law firm before launching Kalish Law LLC in January 2026, where he acts as trusted counsel to his clients and provides tax advisory and resolution services within and outside of New York.
Prior to serving as an ALJ, he managed the tax workstreams and implementation of transactions ranging from middle-market deals to multi-billion-dollar private equity and public-company matters, including major corporate carve-outs and separations. While Jarrett’s work in these matters primarily concerned U.S. federal income tax issues, he routinely worked with specialists to provide advice regarding foreign, state, and local tax consequences. He separately served in roles managing the corporate and operational implementation of cross-border tax step plans.
Jarrett’s transactional work included the management of day-to-day deal processes, such as:
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diligence review of historic tax positions;
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modeling and structuring support; analysis of tax attributes and basis considerations;
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review of, and advice regarding, transaction documents; and
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coordination of implementation across legal, finance, and operational teams.
Representative of his extensive deal sheet, Jarrett provided support on transactions including a $3 billion+ sponsor cross-border acquisition in the technology learning/software sector, an approximately $90 million strategic acquisition in the consumer eyewear sector, a $40 billion+ global carve-out/IPO in the consumer health sector, and a $2 billion+ public-company separation of a jeanswear business.
Jarrett’s deal background informs his advisory and resolution work, particularly where outcomes turn on documentation, economics, and operating facts.
Jarrett holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at SUNY Albany, where he was a member of the school’s inaugural Honors College class. Prior to his senior year, he participated in the Cornell Summer Pre-Law Program and interned for the Hon. Elizabeth Stong of the United States Bankruptcy Court (E.D.N.Y.).
Jarrett earned his Juris Doctor from Brooklyn Law School, which he attended on a full academic scholarship, and focused his studies on tax law and policy. During law school, he was a founding member of the school’s ABA Law Student Tax Challenge team, volunteered with the IRS low-income taxpayers clinic, and was an active member of the Tax Law Student Association. His coursework included general federal income taxation, corporate taxation, partnership taxation, taxation of real estate transactions, international taxation, and estate and gift taxation. In a tax policy seminar, he focused his research on state and local tax policy considerations for banking and payment processing transactions. As a law student, he also completed internships with the Tax Fraud Unit of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office and with the Tax Law and Resolutions Units of the NYC Department of Finance.
Jarrett holds a Master of Laws in Taxation from NYU School of Law. In addition to coursework in multistate tax litigation and multistate income and gross receipts taxes, he studied advanced courses relevant to audit issues within and outside of New York, including transfer pricing, taxation of business conduits (e.g., S corporations, RICs, REMICs, and REITs), and the taxation of financial instruments. At NYU, he wrote a thesis paper comparing the constitutional and statutory approaches in New York versus the Multistate Tax Commission with respect to attributional nexus and apportionment—an area that continues to be a focus of audits in New York and elsewhere.
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New York
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New Jersey
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New York City Bar Association, State & Local Tax Committee
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New York State Bar Association, Tax Section; Local and State Government Law Section
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New Jersey State Bar Association, Tax Section
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American Bar Association, Tax Section; Dispute Resolution Section; State, Local, and Tribal Government Law Section; Judge, 2026 Regional Championship, ABA Law Student Mediation Challenge