This week’s Tax Prof Spotlight of  Dan Sheaffer (Thomas Cooley) 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.

I graduated from Thomas Cooley Law School and received my tax LL.M from Florida.  Before joining the Cooley faculty, I held three tax jobs: the only tax associate in a 50-person firm, Wishart Norris Henninger & Pittman, in Burlington, North Carolina; senior adviser for Ernst & Young LLP, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, working on international tax issues for a broad range of clients; and corporate tax counsel for Alticor Corp., in Ada, Michigan, where I had the lead role in tax planning and tax advice for Alticor’s Asian affiliates.

I am currently working on an article that examines the impact of the check-the-box regulations on the foreign tax credit.  I also plan to write an article on the dual consolidated loss rules once the Treasury Department issues new consolidated loss regulations later this year. 

I am enjoying the intellectual freedom that teaching offers.  Teaching has always been my  long term goal; however, I was not planning to pursue this goal so early in my professional life.  With that said, I have no regrets about seizing the day when the opportunity to return to Cooley as a professor presented itself.   I have enjoyed every minute of serving as a professor to date.   I am  truly proud to part of the academic community.

On a personal note, I am married with four children (all under the age of ten).   We all love to travel.  When I have a spare moment, I try to spend it outside.  I enjoy almost any outdoor activity, especially kayaking and pheasant hunting.

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.