Saturday, September 4, 2004

This week’s Tax Prof Spotlight of Bradley Borden (Washburn) 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.

Growing up in a small farming community in Idaho, it took me some time to realize there was such a thing as tax law and that one could actually teach it as a profession. My interest in tax law and teaching began as an accounting student at Idaho State University. I planned to go to law school from day one of college, but I needed something more to point me toward tax law. Like many embryonic esquires, I had noble ambitions of pursuing a legal education to put myself in a position to help better society. Being somewhat pragmatic at the time, however, I also thought I understood the value of a dollar. At some point during college, another student asked me what I wanted to do after finishing my accounting studies. I mentioned my desire to go to law school. She then told me that law school and accounting would help me become a tax attorney. My interest in tax law was peaked when she told me that her brother-in-law (or some other once-removed relative) was making seven digits as a tax attorney. Thinking back, I have a difficult time believing that she really said seven digits (I think I carried the decimal one digit too far), but that discussion planted the tax law seed that has grown ever since.

Before leaving Idaho State, I had the opportunity to teach a seminar course as a graduate student. Through that experience, I found that time in a classroom is very rewarding. Teaching that course put in the back of my mind the idea of teaching at some future date. Teaching that first class also convinced me that a few years of practical experience would help me be a better teacher.

The desire to study tax law led me to the University of Florida for both law school and an LL.M. In law school, professors such as Marty McMahon helped me realize that tax law is not a means to a financial end, but is actually a fascinating area of study – an end in and of itself. I was particularly amazed as I wrote my graduate tax paper (which later became my first publication, Reverse Like-Kind Exchanges: A Principled Approach, 20 Va. Tax Rev. 659 (2001)) that it was possible to say that much about the definition of a single word (the word “exchange” as used in § 1031). Little did I know at the time that the definition of that word, and other concepts in § 1031, would open up an entire area of practice to me.

During the few years I spent in private practice (Oppenheimer, Blend, Harrison & Tate (San Antonio)), I had the opportunity to write on § 1031 topics for practitioner journals (e.g., The Journal of Taxation, Real Estate Taxation, Tax Management Memorandum, Tax Management Real Estate Journal, and Tax Notes) and to participate in various projects within the ABA Section of Taxation. Doing this revealed to me that much more needs to be written about § 1031. I realized, however, that the law firm setting didn’t provide me with the opportunity to fully explore many of the ideas that are pleading to be put on paper. That realization, a gentle nudge from Professor Erik Jensen (with whom I had done some ABA work), and a continuing desire to be in the classroom led me to academia and Washburn University School of Law. With a little good fortune, I hope that yet another article on § 1031 will be in print in the not-too-distant future.

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.