Professor Steven Dean Testifies Before Congressional Committee on Tax Policy

updated: 06/11/2021

Professor Steven Dean, an expert on international tax and social enterprise, testified before members of the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee on “Minding the Tax Gap: Improving Tax Administration for the 21st Century,” on June 10.

The joint hearing of the Ways and Means Committee’s Select Revenue Measures and Oversight Subcommittees was open to the public and is available to view online.

A vocal advocate on the issue of racial bias in the enforcement of tax laws, Dean has worked with lawmakers and officials to push for changes in federal policy. Responding to an open letter Dean published in the Nation, President Joe Biden pivoted his message on tax reform to include European as well as Caribbean nations on his list of offending tax havens in his April 28 address to a joint session of Congress. Dean also has authored articles in the New York Daily News and New York Law Journal, and been quoted in Politico and other outlets on the subject.

Dean’s scholarship addresses the impact of neoliberalism and racial capitalism and the evolving relationship between financial profit and social mission evident in the emergence of social enterprise, impact investing, and unregulated philanthropy. He has coauthored two books, Federal Taxation of Corporations and Corporate Transactions (Aspen Publishers, 2018, with Brad Borden), and Social Enterprise Law: Trust, Public Benefit and Capital Markets (Oxford University Press, 2017, with Dana Brakman Reiser). Dean and Brakman Reiser’s forthcoming book, For-Profit Philanthropy (Oxford University Press, 2022), traces the ways that players, practices, and norms native to the business world have migrated into philanthropy. He has served as Vice Dean at Brooklyn Law School and, while a Visiting Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, as Faculty Director of its Graduate Tax Program.

Watch the hearing “Minding the Tax Gap: Improving Tax Administration for the 21st Century”

Listen to the Business Scholarship Podcast episode with Professor Andrew Jennings