Biography
I am a law professor at Wayne State University Law School who teaches various courses in the area of federal income tax, such as introduction to federal income tax, corporate taxation, partnership taxation, international taxation and perhaps in the future a course in statutory interpretation focussed on tax. I think that the tax system should reflect the values of ordinary Americans and our long-held belief in principles of liberty, equality and community. I fear that we have instead tended to give too much credence to purportedly "objective" ideas about taxation based on the rationales of law and economics and unverified theories about economic growth and too little credence to human needs for community that require allocating the burdens and benefits of the tax system fairly among the people and entities that make up our system.
I write in particular about the role of increased transparency in ensuring that corporations and audit firms comply with the law. For example, I have suggested that public corporations should be required to inform their boards about their participation in aggressive tax transactions and the risks that such participation entails. I have suggested that information about the relative riskiness of tax transactions should be published in companies' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and that audit firms should be required to reveal similar tax risk information about the transactions they promote and penalties that they have been required to pay in connection with aggressive tax planning advice. I have also considered the way banks and other large financial institutions account for their complex financial products for tax purposes, and have argued against letting them determine their own tax liability through a policy of "conforming" tax results to their financial book results.