Nikolajs (pronounced nickel-ice) is a member of Barley Snyder’s Employee Benefits Practice Group, focusing on all aspects of employee benefits, executive compensation, and employment and payroll taxes. Nikolajs’ employee benefits practice includes matters about 401(k) and profit sharing plans, welfare benefit plans, pension plans, and other fringe benefits. A sizable portion of Nikolajs’ practice is devoted to correcting non-compliant plans with the IRS’s and DOL’s correction programs. 

Nikolajs also drafts executive compensation agreements that are compliant with the non-qualified deferred compensation and golden parachute sections of the Internal Revenue Code. Additionally, Nikolajs represents clients before the IRS in a variety of matters, including employment and payroll tax levies and liens and the Trust Fund Recovery Penalty. 

Before joining Barley Snyder, Nikolajs was an Honors Program Attorney with the IRS, Office of Chief Counsel in its Litigation & Advisory division. At Chief Counsel, he litigated and advised on dozens of cases across a wide variety of issues in the U.S. Tax Court. Nikolajs brings his Chief Counsel mindset and experience to all his clients’ matters to protect their interests before the IRS.

Nikolajs proudly earned his J.D. Cum Laude from Penn State Dickinson Law. There, he also earned a Tax Certificate and served as the Executive Symposium Editor of the Dickinson Law Review. When he is not serving his clients, you will find Nikolajs reading books about early American history and hiking the Appalachian Trail with his wife, Margot, and rescue “supermutt,” Dorie.