Christopher J. Swift — Partner at Baker & Hostetler

Mr. Christopher J. Swift, also known as Chris, is a Partner at Baker & Hostetler LLP. Mr. Swift has more than 30 years' experience as a healthcare and tax lawyer. He is a member of the firm's Policy Committee, and has served as the Coordinator of the Tax, Personal Planning and Employee Benefits Group in the Cleveland office. Mr. Swift focuses his practice on health care, tax-exempt organizations, and state and local tax matters. In the health care area, he has represented a number of tax-exempt hospitals in various types of transactions, inclusive of mergers and affiliations between tax-exempt organizations, sale of assets to investor-owned corporations, and joint ventures with investor-owned corporations. He has also represented the 'conversion' foundations that have resulted from the sale of tax-exempt hospitals. He has also represented a number of for-profit health care clients, including several large faculty practice plans and professional corporations for more than twenty years. In addition, he has assisted in the planning and formation stages of several joint ventures in the health care area, including medical office buildings, MRIs, and ambulatory surgery centers. Mr. Swift has extensive experience in health care in the tax-exempt organization area'particularly with hospitals and hospital affiliates. He has handled IRS exemption applications for a number of major clients, including hospitals and hospital subsidiaries, and has experience with IRS audits. He also has experience with private inurement/private benefit, Medicare fraud and abuse and Stark I and II issues. Mr. Swift has assisted a number of major clients with multistate operations in structuring their corporate organizations to minimize state and local taxes. Further, he handles the state and local tax issues in connection with acquisitions or dispositions of businesses. Mr. Swift, in addition to state and local tax planning and transactional work, assists clients at the audit level before the Ohio Department of Taxation. He has litigated numerous tax issues before the Ohio Department of Taxation, the Ohio Board of Tax Appeals, Ohio Courts of Appeals, and the Ohio Supreme Court over the last twenty years. Mr. Swift has extensive experience in the area of real and personal property tax abatement. Projects have included obtaining tax abatement from property taxes for a number of significant Ohio construction projects. He is skilled in structuring tax abatements under various tax abatement programs including Ohio's enterprise zone, community reinvestment area and impacted cities programs. In addition, he has been involved in a number of projects utilizing tax increment financing. Mr. Swift has lectured on state and local taxes to several organizations, including the Cleveland Bar Association, the Columbus Bar Association, and the Committee on State Taxation. In 1988, he was the Chair of the Cleveland Bar Association's State and Local Tax Institute. In 1990-91, he served as Chair of the Cleveland Bar Association's General Tax Committee. He has also co-authored two articles appearing in the Ohio Tax Review: 'Will An F Reorganization Receive A Passing Grade As An Ohio Franchise Tax Planning Technique' and 'The Ohio Tax Aspects To Consider When Transferring A Business.' Mr. Swift is a member of the Taxation and Health Sections of the American, Ohio, and Cleveland Bar Associations. Mr. Swift has been a speaker and Chair at the Cleveland Bar Association's Health Care Law Institute, and is a past Chair of its Health Law Council. Mr. Swift has been listed annually in the Best Lawyers in America since 1997 and was named an 'Ohio Super Lawyer' in 2003.