Biography
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Eric M. Zolt
Michael H. Schill Professor of Law
B.S. Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 1974
M.B.A. University of Chicago, 1975
C.P.A. Illinois, 1976
J.D. University of Chicago, 1978
UCLA Law faculty since 1985
zolt@law.ucla.edu |
Eric Zolt joined UCLA in 1985. Before joining UCLA, he was a partner in the Chicago law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, where he specialized in individual and corporate tax matters. Before practicing law, Eric was on the research staff of the Center for Policy Alternatives, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Eric teaches Introduction to Federal Income Taxation, Taxation of Corporations & Shareholders, Taxation of International Transactions, Elements of Economic Organization (jointly offered with the UCLA Anderson School of Management), and seminars on Taxation and Development, Comparative Tax Policy, and Transition to Market Economy.
A successful teacher, Eric received the University's Distinguished Teaching Award in just his fourth year of teaching. He has also received the Law School's Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching (1997). Eric has been twice been elected by the graduating class as Professor of the Year.
While on leave from UCLA, he served in the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 1989 through 1992. Eric served first as Deputy Tax Legislative Counsel in the Office of Tax Policy. He was a co-director of Treasury's Report on the Integration of Individual and Corporate Tax Systems: Taxing Business Income Once (1992).
In 1991, Eric founded and served as the Director of Treasury's Tax Advisory Program for Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Based at the U.S. Mission to the OECD in Paris, this program provided technical assistance to countries reforming their tax systems to be more compatible with a market economy. Eric later found out that Paris was not in Eastern Europe.
Eric continues to serve as a consultant to the Treasury Department, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In the last 15 years, he has provided tax policy advice in over 25 countries.
In 2002, Eric co-founded and served as the first Chair of the Executive Committee of the Southern African Tax Institute, a joint venture of four South African universities, administratively located at the University of Pretoria. In its first five years of operations, SATI has provided training to over 500 government tax officials from 20 different African countries.
To escape the weather in Los Angeles, Eric visits at other law schools. Eric has been (or will be) a visiting professor at Harvard Law School (Spring 2008 - William K. Jacobs, Jr. Visiting Professor of Law; Fall 2000 through Fall 2002 - John Harvey Gregory Lecturer on World Organization), Distinguished Visiting Professor at University of Toronto (Fall 2007), and Yale Law School (Fall 1997, Fall 1999 - Jacquin D. Bierman Visiting Professor of Taxation, and Fall 2005). Eric also served as the Director of Harvard Law School's International Tax Program from June 2000 through June 2003.
He is currently working on a project examining the relationship of inequality and the taxing and spending patterns of state and local governments. He is also working with economist Richard Bird (U. of Toronto) on a project on technology and taxation in developing countries.
