Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s Tax Policy Colloquium will reconvene this Thursday, January 23, 2020. Michelle Layser from the University of Illinois College of Law will start us off, presenting her new paper titled “When, Where, and How to Design Community Oriented Place-Based Tax Incentives.” It’s a really interesting study of tax-expenditure design in the context of geography-based tax incentives. Prof. Layser’s paper includes original “heat maps” of Chicago showing areas with high poverty levels, areas with high numbers of low-wage jobs, areas that are eligible for the New Markets Tax Credit, and areas designated as Opportunity Zones. The talk promises to be really interesting!
The full schedule of talks is listed below, after the jump, and is also shown in the poster pictured above. Overall, this year’s line-up of speakers is more international than usual, following my wonderful Fulbright research stay at the University of Luxembourg in Spring 2019.
As I did the last time I ran the Colloquium, I’m planning to blog each workshop afterwards, with permission of the speakers. If you will be in Bloomington and are interested in attending one or more workshops, just let me know and I can add you to the email list or send you a particular paper once I receive it. (Most of the paper drafts will not be publicly available.)
As I explained in 2018 and last year, the Tax Policy Colloquium is a combination of a workshop series and a course for students. The course involves a background session with the students in alternate weeks, to help them get up to speed on the concepts presented in the paper draft. The workshops are open to the law school community and interested guests, which yields a really interesting discussion. Among others, we invite interested alumni and other attorneys practicing in Bloomington or Indianapolis, tax professors from other schools at IU and other area law schools, students not enrolled in the class, and local judicial clerks. The talks typically are attended not only by the students in the course but also by me, my tax colleague David Gamage; senior tax attorney/Maurer alumnus Tim Riffle; a Visiting Scholar or two; and a few other faculty, typically tax or economics faculty from other schools on campus and/or law school colleagues.
Here is the full schedule for 2020. (Please note that some paper titles are tentative and may change.)
- January 23, 2020
Michelle Layser
Assistant Professor of Law
University of Illinois College of Law
“When, Where, and How to Design Community Oriented Place-Based Tax Incentives“
- February 6, 2020
Werner Haslehner
ATOZ Chair for European and International Taxation
University of Luxembourg Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance
“Tax Competition — the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”
- February 20, 2020
Zach Liscow
Associate Professor of Law
Yale Law School
“Democratic Law and Economics”
- March 5, 2020
Orly Mazur
Associate Professor of Law
SMU Dedman School of Law
“Can Blockchain Revolutionize Tax Compliance?”
- March 26, 2020
Rita de la Feria
Chair in Tax Law
University of Leeds School of Law
“The Impact of Public Perceptions on VAT/RST Rates Policy” (with Michael Walpole) - April 9, 2020
Dan Shaviro
Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation
NYU School of Law
“What Are Minimum Taxes, and Why One Might Favor or Disfavor Them?”
- April 16, 2020
Jennifer Bird-Pollan
Robert G. Lawson Professor of Law
University of Kentucky College of Law
“Taxing the Ivory Tower”
&
Tina Ehrke-Rabel
Professor and Head of the Department of Tax and Fiscal Law
University of Graz, Institute of Fiscal Law
“How Much Tax Surveillance Can Human Dignity Afford?”
The Surly Subgroup 