NYU School of Law and UCLA School of Law have created the NYU/UCLA Tax Policy Conference, a joint annual conference focusing on tax policy issues from both a legal and economic perspective.
The new venture, which will provide a forum in which leading scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners can analyze complex tax policy questions and options for reform, brings together members of both NYU Law’s tax law faculty and UCLA Law’s business law and policy program. It will build on NYU’s 16-year-old Tax Policy Colloquium, which promotes discussion among scholars, students and practitioners, and the UCLA Colloquium on Tax Policy and Public Finance, started in 2004.
“I’m delighted that these two terrific tax programs will be joining forces for an annual conference on a topic of such critical importance to the private and public sectors alike,” said NYU Law’s Dean Richard Revesz. “I’m confident it will become a sought-after forum for airing significant research and policy perspectives in this area.”
“Tax issues are pervasive—they are important in both structuring private transactions and designing public policy programs to address social and economic issues,” said Rachel F. Moran, dean of UCLA School of Law. “This new conference will allow us to combine our resources to produce a high-quality, bi-coastal tax conference each year to address timely and important tax policy issues.”
The conference, funded in part through the Milken Family Foundation, will alternate each year between Los Angeles and New York. Each year’s proceedings will be published in the Tax Law Review, a leading source of tax policy scholarship edited by Deborah Schenk, Ronald and Marilynn Grossman Professor of Taxation.
The first conference, “Tax Policy and Health Care Reform,” will be held in October 2011 in Los Angeles, with a focus on the tax policy implications of health care reform. Topics will include tax alternatives to fund health care reform, tax subsidies and penalties for health insurance, using the tax system to implement individual health insurance mandates, and the desirability of tax benefits for non-profit health care providers in the post-health care reform world.
The second conference will be held in October 2012 in New York. Tentatively titled “The Income Tax at 100,” it will observe the hundredth anniversary of the modern U.S. income tax in 2013. Participants will take stock of the American income tax at its centennial, and consider prospects for tax reform as the income tax begins its second century.
Posted on March 8, 2011