Rebecca Kysar

Rebecca Kysar is a Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. She teaches and researches in the areas of tax policy, international taxation, legislation, and the budget process. Her recent scholarship examines international tax and the tax legislative and budget processes. She recently returned to Fordham after serving as a member of the Biden-Harris Presidential Transition Team and as a political appointee in the Biden Administration's Treasury Department. While at Treasury, Rebecca co-led global negotiations on a new international tax framework, with respect to which Secretary Janet Yellen described her as an "invaluable" partner and awarded her the Treasury Medal for her service.  She also generally advised on the formulation of the Administration's domestic tax policies and served to shepherd other tax initiatives related to interagency process and administrative law.

Her scholarly articles have appeared in the Cornell Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Texas Law Review, Washington University Law Review, and the Yale Journal of International Law, and other leading publications. Professor Kysar is a primary co-author of “The Games They Will Play: Tax Games, Roadblocks, and Glitches Under the New Legislation,” the most downloaded paper on SSRN in 2017. She is the tenth most downloaded tax law author on SSRN of all time.

In 2018, Professor Kysar testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance in a hearing on the 2017 tax law, describing problems with the new international provisions. In 2020, Professor Kysar testified before the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee on issues surrounding the regulatory implementation of the new tax law.

Several of her op-eds have appeared in publications such as The New York Times. She is a frequent contributor to the press, having appearances in the Associated Press, The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, CNN, CNNMoney, Fiscal Times, Fox Business, Forbes, Law 360, Marketplace, New York Magazine, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Politico, Reuters, Slate, Tax Notes, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, WNYC, among others.

She has presented her scholarship at various forums, including the Columbia Tax Policy Colloquium, the Harvard Law School Seminar on Tax Law, Policy, and Practice, the Michigan Law School Tax Policy Workshop, the Northwestern University School of Law Colloquium on Advanced Topics in Taxation, the NYU Tax Policy Colloquium, and the UCLA Tax Policy and Public Finance Colloquium.

Prior to joining the Fordham faculty, Professor Kysar taught for nine years at Brooklyn Law School. Prior to that, Professor Kysar worked as a tax associate at Cravath, Swaine, & Moore LLP from 2005 to 2008. She also clerked for the Honorable Richard J. Cardamone on the U.S Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. In the spring of 2012, Professor Kysar served as the James S. Carpentier Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.

Education

Yale, J.D.
Indiana University, B.A. 

For publications and in progress papers, visit Professor Kysar’s author page.