At Joe Kristan’s request, we are happy to blog here Tax Analysts’ interesting interview with George K. Yin, who recently departed as Chief of Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation to rejoin the faculty at Virginia, where he will be the inaugural Edwin S. Cohen Distinguished Professor of Law and Taxation.  Joseph J. Thorndike & Heidi Glenn, Conversations:  George K. Yin, 110 Tax Notes 322 (Jan. 23, 2006), also available on the Tax Analysts web site as Doc 2006-940, 2006 TNT 15-3.  George issues this challenge to the Tax Prof community:

In particular, I would encourage the academic community to become more active in the debate. For example, legal academics who think seriously about tax policy tend to work on very "big picture" ideas for the long term. They tend to ignore debates on smaller issues being considered in the short term, or even more immediately. Sometimes they write articles after a change has been made detailing the policy arguments for and against the change. But for the most part, these arguments come too late. Thus, they tend to cede the principal debate opportunities to the inside-the-Beltway crowd who provide their input to Congress in real time.