Mr. Steele received his B.A. degree from the University of Virginia and his J.D. from the School of Law at the University of California, Davis. He was Editor-in-Chief of the U.C.D. Law Review, Order of the Coif, and received the U.C. Davis Law School Medal. He associated with the law firm of Morrison & Foerster in 1976, becoming a partner of the firm in 1982. He currently co-chairs the firm’s State & Local Tax Practice Group.

For the last 20 years, Mr. Steele has focused his practice on state and local tax matters, including particularly litigation involving such issues. He has actively litigated tax matters in numerous states involving a variety of taxes, including income/franchise, sales & use tax, excise taxes, environmental taxes, gross receipts taxes and property taxes. He has been involved in a number of proceedings in the United States Supreme Court. Most recently, he was Counsel of Record in the United States Supreme Court cert. petition proceedings involving McLane Western’s Commerce Clause challenge to a Colorado statute imposing a tax on product distribution. Before that, he was Counsel of Record in Farmer Bros. Co.’s successful challenge to California’s discriminatory dividend received deduction which was overturned as violating the Commerce Clause. His recent experience also includes court litigation challenging a California environmental “fee” on the grounds that it is actually an unconstitutional tax. He has also recently represented McLane in its challenges to excise taxes to Colorado and Florida, DIRECTV in its New Jersey Tax Court challenge to the state’s alternate gross receipts tax and Nissan in its constitutional challenge to the Maryland add back statute. In addition to focusing upon tax litigation in various states, he has developed special expertise in state and local tax issues faced by national communication companies, including both traditional telecommunications providers as well as emerging technologies (e.g., he has served as national tax counsel for Blackberry in its mobile e-mail service and Vonage in its VoIP services). In connection with this work, he has co-authored a lengthy BNA portfolio entitled, “The Imposition of Sales, Use, and Other Similar Taxes on Telecommunications and Electronic Commerce.” His most recent articles have focused upon constitutional issues faced by multistate business. Mr. Steele is a past Chairman of the Tax Section of the Bar Association of San Francisco and has lectured on tax subjects at Council on State Taxation (COST), Tax Executive Institute (TEI), Institute for Professionals in Taxation (IPT) and various universities including, Hastings Law School, the University of San Francisco Law School and Golden Gate University.

He is currently Deputy Chair of BNA’s Tax Management Multistate Advisory Board. Mr. Steele is listed as one of Northern California’s tax “Super Lawyers” by Super Lawyer Magazine (2004-2007).

He is a member of the California and Colorado bars.