The two-day 2005 Tax History Conference, Historical Perspectives on Tax Law and Policy, kicks off today at UCLA.  The conference is sponsored by UCLA School of Law, University of Cambridge Centre for Tax Law, and Tax Analysts’ Tax History Project.  Here is today’s Schedule of Speakers and Commentators:

9:15 am – 10:45 am

• Charlotte Crane (Northwestern), Why Don’t We Know What “Direct Taxes” Are?: Hylton v. United States and the Federalist Vision of the Federal Taxing Power
  • Commentary:  Susan Murnane (Case Western)
• Robin Einhorn (UC-Berkeley), Democracy, Slavery and Taxation: American Tax Systems in the Colonial and Revolutionary Eras
  • Commentary:  Rebecca Rix (Yale)

11:00 am – 12:30 pm

• Reuven Avi -Yonah (Michigan), Four Stages of United States International Taxation
  • Commentary:  Neil Rollings (University of Glasgow)
• Janette Rutterford (Open University Business School), Gross or Net? The Role of Taxation in the History of Equity Valuation
  • Commentary:  Ethan Stone (Iowa)

1:45 pm – 3:15 pm

• Dennis Ventry (O’Melveny & Myers), Tax Shelters: Career of a Concept
  • Commentary:  Ajay Mehrotra (Indiana-Bloomington)
• Assaf Likhovski (Tel Aviv University), Tax Compliance and Modernity or Is Michel Foucault Relevant to the History of Taxation?
  • Commentary:  Eric Zolt (UCLA)

3:30 pm – 5:45 pm

• Florian Schui (St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge), International Exchanges of Ideas About Taxation: French Advisors, Experts, and Ideas in the Prussian "Régie" Tax Administration, 1766-1786
  • Commentary:  Charlotte Crane
• Birger Nerré (University of Hamburg), The Japanese Post-War Tax Culture Shock Reconsidered
  • Commentary:  Assaf Likhovski (Tel Aviv University)
• W. Elliot Brownlee (UC-Santa Barbara), The Shoup Mission: Globalization, Tax Experts, and the Shaping of Taxation in Japan Since 1940
  • Commentary:  Marjorie Kornhauser (Tulane)