John D. Colombo (Illinois)
- A.B. 1978, Illinois
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J.D.1981, Illinois
When students come by and ask me for counseling on upper level law courses, I generally tell them to take a wide variety of classes because “You can’t plan your life.” I’m a perfect example. I grew up in a small town in deep southern Illinois (Herrin) and majored in Political Science at the University of Illinois. A combination of watching too many Perry Mason episodes as a kid and finding too few interesting job opportunities for Political Science majors led me to consider law school. So I signed on for another 3-year stint in Champaign, thinking that after graduation I could “move up” to the big city of Mt. Vernon, Illinois.
Instead, things took quite a different path. I did well enough as a student to get a job as a law clerk for Phyllis Kravitch on the 11th Circuit, then joined what was then Long, Aldridge & Norman in Atlanta with my eyes set on doing general corporate representation. But the day I reported for work, the entire firm (about 30 lawyers back then in 1982) was in the midst of doing a public offering for one of our major clients. Clay Long asked me to help do some research work for the tax opinions on this offering. I warned him that I was a Political Science major who had studiously avoided anything beyond the basic income tax course, but the fact that I vaguely remembered what “basis” was sealed my fate. Six years and several tax courses at Emory University’s LL.M. program later, I was more or less (mostly less, I fear) a tax lawyer.
And it was then, on a particular frenetic Friday afternoon in early 1988, that the chair of the U of I’s appointments committee called to ask if I’d have any interest in teaching advanced tax courses. Wanting any excuse to avoid looking at my impossible calendar for the coming week, I said I’d come and talk with them, and as the saying goes, the rest is history.
From the beginning, my main research interest was tax-exemption. Again, for reasons only the fates know, in my final two years of practice our firm got involved in a variety of what I considered completely wacky exemption requests – for a local university’s medical school “faculty practice plan” (I remember telling Clay that it could not possibly be the law that one could get tax exemption for what was essentially a group of doctors running a private clinic); for the Underground Atlanta Redevelopment Corporation (“It surely isn’t possible to get exemption for what is essentially a real estate developer, right?”); and others. Just after I started teaching, my long-time friend Mark Hall, who I had met while clerking on the 11th Circuit and was at that time teaching health law at Arizona State, called and asked me why hospitals could get tax exemption. Eighteen years later, I’m still writing about tax exemption and particularly about tax exemption for nonprofit hospitals. My most recent article, The Failure of Community Benefit (due out “any day now” in the latest issue of Health Matrix), summarizes the current legal tests and empirical case for exemption of hospitals and examines a number of alternatives.
Outside of work, I’m an electronics gadget freak. We have five computers in a household with three people (my oldest son having left the nest this year for college); my wife Tina, who runs her own business designing and sewing custom wedding gowns, even has computerized sewing machines. We also have two HDTV capable home theater systems; five satellite dishes; three iPods of various shapes and sizes; etc. You get the picture (pun intended). I watch a movie or two a week, religiously follow three TV shows (Lost, the original CSI and Stargate SG1), listen to a lot of bombastic orchestral music (e.g. Richard Strauss, Bruckner, Mahler), and I’m still waiting for my beloved Chicago Cubs to make a World Series appearance. It might happen one day – after all, you can’t plan your life.
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