About Us

The Tax Law Center at NYU Law seeks to protect and strengthen the tax system through rigorous, high-impact legal work in the public interest. 

The legal choices that shape the tax system can be complex and opaque for people who are not tax experts, but they can have profound impacts, including on how much revenue the tax system raises and who pays tax. Private interests often invest heavily in shaping these choices. The Tax Law Center will seek to be a strong public interest voice weighing in on these technical yet consequential tax law issues. To do so, the Center will provide technical input on tax legislation, submit comments on tax regulations, and intervene in tax litigation, with the aim of improving the integrity of the tax system, saving and raising revenues, and advancing equity.

The Tax Law Center’s work will include:

• Rigorous legal input into tax law and administrative decisions. Tax law decisions that may otherwise miss the attention of policymakers and the public can have large impacts on tax revenues and equity. Tax legislation, whether bold or incremental, is most effective when the details of the law are robust. Regulatory, judicial, and administrative decisions about how tax laws are implemented also have a big impact on how tax policy works in practice. Private interests are often heavily invested in shaping these technical decisions. The Tax Law Center will provide rigorous technical input into these decisions from a public interest perspective. 
• Engaging tax technical experts in the Center’s work in the public interest. The Center is based at NYU Law, which is also the home of the first and foremost graduate tax law program in the nation. The Tax Law Center seeks to engage and amplify the deep expertise of tax law academics and practitioners around the country in furthering its mission. The Center will collaborate with and complement existing public interest efforts in tax policy by providing a technical legal focus.  
• Strategic and consistent engagement. Even in years when no major tax legislation is enacted, hundreds of tax regulations are proposed or finalized, and hundreds of tax cases are reported. The Tax Law Center will monitor this flow of decision-making in order to decide when and how to shape consequential tax decisions. Important tax policy questions can also take years to move from law to regulation and onto the courts; the Center will seek to have input on important legal issues throughout that process.
• Assessing and improving the processes and structures of tax law and policy making. The process and institutions by which tax laws are drafted, tax regulations are promulgated, and tax disputes are decided shape the substance of tax law. The Tax Law Center seeks to develop and advance proposals to strengthen these processes and institutions.
• Demystifying complex but important tax law decisions. The technical nature of tax laws, regulations, and court cases can obscure their high stakes. The Tax Law Center aims to be a resource that can help policymakers, the media, and civil society better understand the impacts of these tax law decisions.