The University of Hoston Law Center has a long history of strong tax teaching and scholarship. UH has a well-regarded graduate tax program, anchored by four tenured and tenure track tax faculty and supported by a prestigious group of adjunct faculty drawn from Houston’s leading law firms.
We conclude our profiles of Houston’s tax faculty this week by shining the spotlight on Ira B. Shepard:
- A.B. 1958, Harvard
- J.D. 1964, Harvard
The one thing I learned very early in life was to seek out competent people. I have always surrounded myself with colleagues who were more capable than I. This is exemplified by my current tax colleagues, Bill Streng and Johnny Rex Buckles, whose biographies bracket mine (in alphabetical order) on these three successive Saturdays, and by my new colleague, Christine L. Agnew, whose biography appeared earlier this fall.
I have been the Special Advisor to the Southern Federal Tax Institute since 1974. I chaired the Continuing Legal Education and Research Committee of the American Bar Association Tax Section and the planning committee for the University of Texas Tax Conference, and, most importantly, I have been president of the Wednesday Tax Forum (a tax group that regularly meets in Houston on Tuesdays, which first hears my monthly recent developments presentations). I currently sit on the board of the (Houston) International Tax Forum and the council of the Houston Bar Association Tax Section. I am a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel and a former notary public.
I have spoken for the past 25 years on recent tax developments at various tax institutes, including the University of Denver Tax Institute, the University of Texas Tax Conference, University of North Carolina Tax Institute, the American Institute on Federal Taxation, the Southern Federal Tax Institute, the Tennessee Federal Tax Institute, the Virginia Tax Conference, the New Mexico Tax Conference, the New Mexico Tax Institute, the New Mexico Tax Symposium, the Alabama Tax Conference, the Kentucky Tax Institute, the Lewis & Clark Tax Institute, the Ohio Tax Institute, the Columbus Tax Institute, The West Texas Tax Institute, the Tulane Tax Institute, the NYU Tax Institute, the Hawaii Tax Institute and the William and Mary Tax Conference, as well as at programs sponsored by Tax Executives Institute, the American Petroleum Institute, the Houston Bar Association Tax Section, the Austin Tax Forum, the Austin Chapter of the Texas Society of CPAs, the South Carolina State Bar, the University of Houston Law Foundation, ALI-ABA, Practising Law Institute, the Federal Bar Association and various components and constituencies of the IRS.
For the past ten years, my outline has been written jointly with Martin J. McMahon, Jr., Clarence TeSelle Professor of Law at the University of Florida College of Law, another example of a more capable colleague. We began making joint recent developments presentations more than ten years ago at the instigation of Calvin Johnson, who has a perverse sense of humor. Recently, it has been necessary for the two of us to include the following disclaimer in our outline: “Please read this outline at your own risk; we take no responsibility for any misinformation in it, whether occasioned by our advancing ages or our increasing indifference as to whether we get any particular item right.” Despite this disclaimer, the Florida Tax Review has published our outline annually since 2001.
I pretend to know something about legal ethics, having taught a course in Professional Responsibility intermittently since 1975, as well as a course in Tax Ethics since 1999. I use this meager background to speak on various ethical topics to groups gullible enough to invite me, including the Houston Bar Association and its Tax Section, the American Bar Association Tax Section Committee on Closely Held Businesses, the American Petroleum Institute Tax Forum (six times!), Women Attorneys in Tax and Probate (Houston), the American Corporate Counsel Association (Houston Chapter), the Brazoria County Bar Association, Tax Executives Institute (Houston Chapter), South Texas College of Law, the Houston Estate and Financial Forum, the International Fiscal Association (IFA) and the Council on International Tax Education (CITE).
I was born and grew up in the Bronx. After college, I spent three years as a guest of the government, three years in law school, and seven years in a large New York City law firm. I began my teaching career at the University of Georgia Law School in the area of federal taxation. After four years at Georgia, I settled down at the University of Houston Law Center in 1975 and have remained there ever since. In 1983, I married Rosemary Thomas DuPree, a student in the first class I taught at UH. We both had long childless first marriages. We have two children, Mark (born 1986) and Hannah (born 1990). The children are the delights of our lives. Mark attends college in New England and Hannah is an athletic and sociable high school freshman. Mark’s college tuition is largely paid from my social security and I plan to pay Hannah’s college tuition from my required minimum distributions.
For prior Houston tax faculty profiles, see:
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. For prior Tax Prof Profiles, see here.
