Rutgers–Newark Law Professor Joshua Blank Elected to International Organization of Tax Law Scholars

Newark, NJ – Joshua D. Blank, Assistant Professor of Law at Rutgers School of Law–Newark, has been elected a full member of the Academia Tributária das Américas (ATA) – Tax Academy of the Americas. He is one of nine scholars from the United States who are full members.

ATA assembles legal scholars from the three Americas as well as from Portugal and Spain for the study, production, and communication of scientific knowledge in tax law. The organization holds several scholarly conferences a year in Brazil and Latin America. 

Professor Blank is a rising scholar in the areas of tax administration and compliance and taxpayer privacy. He has been invited to present his forthcoming UCLA Law Review article “Overcoming Overdisclosure: Toward Tax Shelter Detection” at the 2009 IRS Research Conference, scheduled to take place on July 8 and 9 at the Georgetown University Law Center. Blank argues that while the primary aim of current tax law is to deter non-disclosure of information to the IRS by taxpayers and advisors, the government should also strive to prevent “overdisclosure” of information, behavior that can be just as problematic to the IRS’s ability to detect and challenge tax shelters. The IRS conference will highlight research on tax compliance and administration and facilitate dialogue among IRS researchers, IRS and state tax administrators, tax experts from other countries, academic researchers, federal agencies, and private sector experts. In past years, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service and United States Senators who are members of the Senate Finance Committee have attended the conference.

Professor Blank joined the Rutgers faculty in fall 2008 from New York University School of Law where he taught several advanced tax courses in its graduate tax program. Prior to that he was an associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where he advised clients regarding tax aspects of complex public and private company mergers, spin-offs and hostile takeovers. He holds an LL.M. in Taxation from New York University, a J.D. from Harvard, and a B.A. from New York University.

Media Contact: Janet Donohue
973-353-5553
E-mail: jdonohue@andromeda.rutgers.edu