Michael Hamersley

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Michael Hamersley is a candidate for John Doolittle's California seat. Campaign WebsiteA corporate income tax expert, he became a whistleblower of KPMG's multi-billion dollar tax shelter fraud in 2003.

Hamersley testified before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee and assisted the investigations of U.S. Senate Homeland Security Governmental Affairs Committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The subcommittee's report (S. Rept. 109-54) detailed the misconduct.

Nineteen senior executives of KPMG were indicted on criminal conspiracy and tax evasion charges and KPMG paid $456 million in fines and restitution. Some of KPMG's tax shelter clients are now suing KPMG for the liability exposure.

The February 2004 PBS Frontline documentary "Tax Me If You Can" ^[1] about tax shelters included interviews with Hamersley. ^[2] His KPMG experience appears as a case study in the Legal Ethics: Law Stories textbook.^[3]

Hamersley joined the Abusive Tax Shelter Task Force in the Legal Department of California's Franchise Tax in 2004. He has since lectured at various tax seminars and professional ethics lectures at Yale University and New York Law School.

Hamersley lives with his wife, Sylvia, and their son Jared in El Dorado Hills, California. He graduated from Florida International University (BBA and MBA) and from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., where he was the Tax Lawyer law journal's lead articles editor. At Florida International, Hamersley was named the Gregory B. Wolfe Student Leader of the Year.

Hamersley's wife is a commercial real estate attorney. She was raised in the Sacramento area before attending college in the D.C. area, also earning business and law degrees. They met at Georgetown in spring 1993 and were married in its Dahlgren Chapel in 1996. In 2000 they moved to California.