UCLA, NYU Law Schools Announce Joint Annual Conference on Tax Policy

The conference is intended to provide a forum in which leading scholars, policymakers and practitioners can offer expert perspectives on complex tax policy questions and options for reform. The first conference will be held this October in Los Angeles and will focus on the tax policy implications of health care reform.

The joint undertaking brings together two of the nation's strongest tax law faculties. Conference organizers include members of NYU's highly regarded tax law faculty and UCLA Law's business law and policy program. The annual conference will build on both NYU's longstanding Tax Policy Colloquium, which has served as a forum for tax policy discussion among scholars, students and practitioners for 16 years, and the UCLA Colloquium on Tax Policy and Public Finance, which was 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 Richard Revesz, dean of the NYU School of Law. "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 UCLA School of Law dean Rachel F. Moran. "This new conference will allow us to combine our resources to produce a high-quality, bicoastal tax conference each year to address timely and important tax policy issues."

The conference is funded in part through the Milken Family Foundation, one of the most innovative private foundations in the U.S., which develops groundbreaking programs in education and medical research. The conference will alternate each year between Los Angeles and New York, and the proceedings will be published in Tax Law Review, the premier law school journal for tax policy scholarship.

At the first conference, "Tax Policy and Health Care Reform," in October 2011 in Los Angeles, participants will address questions of 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 nonprofit health care providers in the post-health care reform world.

The second conference will be held in October 2012 in New York and is tentatively titled "The Income Tax at 100," to mark the 100th anniversary, in 2013, of the modern U.S. income tax. Consistent with the founding themes of this joint conference, the 2012 NYU-UCLA conference will take stock of the American income tax at this historical juncture and consider prospects for tax reform at the dawn of the income tax's second century.

New York University School of Law, from its Greenwich Village campus in New York City, offers a globally focused program of training and scholarship, and its graduates and faculty members play key roles as practitioners and policymakers around the world. Founded in 1835, it was one of the first law schools to admit women and has long been committed to welcoming students of diverse backgrounds. NYU Law is recognized for academic excellence and scholarly influence in a broad range of disciplines, as well as clinical education and public service.

UCLA School of Law, founded in 1949, is the youngest major law school in the nation and is dedicated to principles of excellence, innovation, access and service. With approximately 100 faculty and 970 students, the school pioneered clinical teaching, is a leader in interdisciplinary research and training and is at the forefront of efforts to link research to its effects on society and the legal profession.