John A. Biek

About John

John A. Biek, co-chair of Neal Gerber Eisenberg’s Taxation practice group, represents large publicly traded and privately held businesses in controversies, transactional matters and tax planning involving multi-state corporate income/franchise taxes, gross receipts taxes, sales and use taxes, and other business privilege taxes. He has represented clients in state tax audits and litigation before courts, administrative law judges and departments of revenue throughout the United States. As one of the nation’s leading lawyers in the emerging field of state unclaimed property laws, John devotes a substantial part of his practice to complex multi-state unclaimed property audits, litigation, voluntary disclosure and transactional matters for clients in a broad range of industries, including manufacturing, retailing, distribution, aerospace, technology, hospitality, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, financial and investment services, telecommunications, health care, insurance, utilities and transportation businesses. He helps clients determine whether their business operations are producing unclaimed property liabilities and how those operations can be restructured to minimize unclaimed property exposure. John is an adjunct professor of law in the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law Graduate Tax Program. He currently serves as the chair of the Unclaimed Property Subcommittee of the American Bar Association Tax Section’s State & Local Tax Committee. He is also a frequent speaker and author on state tax and unclaimed property issues. He is co-author of a chapter entitled, Federal and State Tax Issues for Energy Companies: A Case Study, in a book entitled, Energy and Environmental Trading: U.S. Law and Taxation (1st Ed. 2008), a publication focused on discussions of the new energy and environmental markets and their developing framework of corporate, regulatory, tax and financial law. He is author of the Unclaimed Property chapter in a treatise entitled, State Business Taxes (1st Ed. 2009), a publication designed to help corporate, tax and trial counsel and accountants deal with all aspects of state tax matters, from constitutional issues to the taxation of digital goods. John was elected in 2007 as a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel. John has been recognized as a leader in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, recommended in ”Illinois: Tax“ since 2008 and in ”National: Tax Controversy“ from 2008-2011. He has been selected by his peers for inclusion in the Chicago Bulletin Publishing Company’s Leading Lawyers Network. He is AV Peer Review Rated (the highest possible rating) via the Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Ratings. While in law school, John served as executive editor of The Tax Lawyer.

Practice Areas

Education

• Yale University, BS, graduated 1984

Bar Admissions

• Illinois, Illinois State Bar Association
• Ohio, Ohio State Bar Association

Languages