Faculty

Lily Batchelder

  • Robert C. Kopple Family Professor of Taxation
Assistant: Joel Wynn
  jw9392@nyu.edu       212.992.8855
Lily Batchelder

AREAS OF RESEARCH

Business Tax Reform, Personal Income Taxes, Retirement Savings Policy, Social Insurance, Wealth Transfer Taxes

Lily Batchelder, the Robert C. Kopple Family Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, is one of the nation’s leading voices on tax law and policy. She is an affiliated professor at the NYU Wagner School of Public Service, and faculty director of the Furman Public Policy Program. She is also co-founder and co-faculty director of the Tax Law Center at NYU Law, which works to ensure that the public interest, not just well-resourced private interests, are considered in technical tax legislative and administrative questions, regulatory proceedings, and litigation.

Batchelder’s scholarship spans a wide array of topics in taxation and social policy, including approaches to taxing high-income and high-net-worth individuals, the design of tax expenditures, business tax reform, inheritance taxation, optimal tax theory, retirement policy, and the effects of fiscal policy on income and wealth disparities, and intergenerational mobility. Her work has been published in books and major journals, and is widely read and cited by academics, the public, and the press. She regularly advises policymakers on fiscal policy matters, and has testified numerous times before Congress.

In 2021, Batchelder was confirmed by the Senate to be Assistant Secretary of Tax Policy for the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2021 and served in that role until 2024. She also led the Biden-Harris Treasury transition team’s work on tax policy and the IRS. As Assistant Secretary, she reported to Secretary Yellen and played a pivotal role in advancing some of the Biden administration’s most far-reaching legislative and regulatory initiatives. She led Treasury’s Office of Tax Policy (OTP), which is responsible for developing legislative proposals, issuing tax regulations in conjunction with the IRS, negotiating tax treaties, advising on tax policy aspects of tax administration, and providing revenue and distributional estimates for the Executive Branch. During her tenure, OTP issued guidance clarifying and implementing more than $1 trillion of tax provisions in landmark pieces of legislation, including the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and American Rescue Plan. It also partnered with the IRS to significantly increase uptake of refundable credits by eligible taxpayers, conducted distributional analysis of tax provisions and audit disparities by race and ethnicity for the first time, and closely collaborated with the IRS on their modernization efforts. Starting in the transition, Batchelder was part of a team that supported the Secretary in reaching the historic agreement among 140 countries to establish and implement a global minimum tax.

From 2014 to 2015, Batchelder served as Deputy Director of the White House National Economic Council and Deputy Assistant to the President under President Obama. From 2010 to 2014, she served as Majority Chief Tax Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.

Batchelder received an AB with honors and distinction from Stanford University, an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a JD from Yale Law School.


Courses

  • Communicating Academic Work to Policymakers Seminar

    This seminar is designed for students who have devoted substantial effort towards developing a policy proposal in another class, and want to learn how to effectively advocate for their ideas with policymakers and the public. We will work on translating your ideas into shorter written pieces (such as op-eds and policy briefs) and using them to advance your proposal with policymakers, thought leaders, and the press. About half of the seminar will be devoted to in-class discussion of each student’s work. (Start date: March 3)

  • Corporate Tax I & II

    This course examines the federal income tax treatment of corporations and their shareholders arising from various transactions including transfers to controlled corporations, distributions, redemptions, liquidations, and acquisitive reorganizations. Emphasis will be on rigorous analysis of statutory materials and discussion of tax reform ideas.

  • Income Taxation (for 1Ls)

    This introductory course, designed for first-year law students with no prior background in tax law, examines the basic concepts underlying the income taxation of individuals. Subjects covered include defining the tax base (income and deduction), timing issues, gains and losses on the disposition of property, the tax treatment of marriage and the family, and tax expenditures (such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, charitable deduction, retirement savings preferences, and health insurance preferences). Although the primary focus is on current law, the course also devotes substantial time to policy questions, including how tax provisions affect equity, efficiency, and behavior.

  • Tax and Social Policy Seminar

    Tax and Social Policy is a year-long intensive writing seminar exploring the economic, philosophical, and political considerations relevant when designing social policies implemented, in whole or in part, through the federal tax and transfer systems. The Fall semester will be devoted to readings and class discussion. Potential topics include the taxation of high-wealth individuals, as well as tax-based and direct subsidies for children, work, retirement saving, education, home ownership, and charitable contributions. Students will be expected to have developed a suitable paper topic and outline by the end of the Fall semester. The Spring semester will be devoted to researching, writing, and revising a paper of publishable quality, and to in-class discussion of drafts by each student. During the spring, we will only meet the first seven weeks of the semester.

  • Tax Policy and Public Finance Colloquium

    The Colloquium offers students the opportunity to pursue tax policy and theory, along with related issues in public economics, at an advanced level. The primary focus is on papers and works-in-progress by scholars from around the country, including NYU faculty. Students attend the afternoon colloquium and participate in its discussions. In addition, each week the morning seminar examines the paper scheduled for presentation at the colloquium, including background issues that may help in understanding it. Students must prepare a short paper in 5 of the 14 weeks focusing on the upcoming paper, lead or co-lead the morning discussion on one of the 14 papers, and ask a question at the afternoon session on at least three occasions. In addition, starting in week 2, if not submitting a paper or making a presentation, students must submit a question that the paper raised for them.

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Publications

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Education

  • JD, Yale Law School, 2002
  • MPP (Microeconomics and Human Services), Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, 1999
  • AB (Political Science), Stanford University, with honors and with distinction, 1994

Ideas from NYU Law

Protest sign reading "Black Lives Matter"

A Reckoning in Racial Justice

In the Media

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Tweets by @lilybatch

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