Saturday, August 14, 2004
This week’s Tax Prof Spotlight continues our series of profiles of folks starting their careers this fall as tenure-track tax professors at American law schools. We hope the profiles will help introduce our newest tax colleagues to the academic tax community.
Yariv Brauner joins the Arizona State faculty this fall. He came to the United States in 1997 to take the NYU LL.M. in International Taxation and enjoy New York City’s East Village.
Originally from Israel, Yariv grew up in the Galilee, spent a long time in the Israeli Defense Forces and went to law school at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In Hebrew U., he was also a research and teaching assistant for Professor Zohar Goshen (now with Columbia University) in corporate and antitrust law. During law school, Yariv worked for Israel’s State Controller’s legal department, the Jerusalem Court and the Israeli Council for the advancement of Democratic Values, operated in the Supreme Court. He completed a mandatory internship period and practiced corporate and M&A law with one of Israel largest firms, S. Friedmann & Co.
After receiving his LL.M. from NYU, Yariv joined Ernst & Young New York City’s international tax practice at the peak of the high tech boom, where he was involved in tax planning for both large and start-up clients, primarily involving technology transfers and international restructurings.
In 2000, Yariv was called by his mentor, Paul McDaniel, to teach at NYU as an acting assistant professor in the international tax program while continuing to consult with E&Y. He spent a wonderful three years teaching a variety of tax courses at NYU, including Fundamentals of U.S. Individual and Business Taxation, Comparative Tax Policy, Corporate Tax, Advanced Corporate Tax Problems (International), International Tax, International Tax Policy, International Business Transactions, Tax Procedure, and Comparative Jurisprudence: Taxation. At the same time he completed his doctoral work at NYU on cross-border M&A, receiving the J.S.D. May 2003. In 2003 he joined the faculty at Northwestern, where he taught in the Graduate Tax Program.
Yariv has written several tax articles (both in Hebrew and English), including:
• A Good Old Habit, or Just an Old One? Preferential Tax Treatment for Reorganizations, 2004 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 1
• An International Tax Regime in Crystallization, 56 Tax L. Rev. 259 (2003)
Yariv has participated in several International Tax seminars and lectured in Israel, Austria, Australia, and the United States. He is this year’s U.S. national reporter for the EU High Scientific Committee conference on “The WTO and Direct Taxation” and is in the process of writing an article on the difficulties of reconciliation of tax and trade agreements. The conference, held in Rust in July 2004, was hosted by Vienna University and the small tax empire of Michael Lang (Vienna). The U.S. was represented also by keynote speaker Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan) and Eran Lempert (NYU). Yariv notes that “the conference was very interesting and the discussion unique in the blend of pure traditional doctrine and normative thought in an area with so little scholarship.”
Yariv focuses his scholarship on the merits of international coordination of tax policies, following Professor Avi-Yonah’s lead in the field. His International Tax Regime in Crystallization piece experiments with international rule, rather than rate harmonization, and its efficiency benefits. His current projects include also an article on integration and on international fairness.
Each Saturday, TaxProf Blog shines the spotlight on one of the 700+ tax professors in America’s law schools. We hope to help bring the many individual stories of scholarly achievements, teaching innovations, public service, and career moves within the tax professorate to the attention of the broader tax community. Please email me suggestions for future Tax Prof Profiles, particularly for our series on new tax professors. For prior Tax Prof Profiles, see here.
