About

Lily Batchelder is the Robert C. Kopple Family Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and is recognized as 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 serves as the faculty director of the Furman Public Policy Program. Batchelder is also co-founder and co-faculty director of the Tax Law Center at NYU Law, which aims to ensure that the public interest is considered in technical tax legislative and administrative questions, regulatory proceedings, and litigation. Her scholarship covers a broad range of topics in taxation and social policy, including approaches to taxing high-income and high-net-worth individuals, tax expenditures, business tax reform, inheritance taxation, optimal tax theory, retirement policy, and the effects of fiscal policy on income and wealth disparities, as well as intergenerational mobility. She has been widely published and her work is frequently cited by academics, the public, and the press. Batchelder has advised policymakers on fiscal policy matters and has testified before Congress multiple times. She served as Assistant Secretary of Tax Policy for the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 2021 to 2024, where she played a key role in advancing legislative and regulatory initiatives, including guidance on landmark legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and the American Rescue Plan. Her work at Treasury involved developing proposals, issuing tax regulations, negotiating treaties, and collaborating with the IRS on modernization efforts. She also contributed to the global minimum tax agreement among 140 countries. Prior to her role at the Treasury, Batchelder served as Deputy Director of the White House National Economic Council and Deputy Assistant to the President under President Obama, and as Majority Chief Tax Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance. She holds an AB from Stanford University, an MPP from Harvard Kennedy School, and a JD from Yale Law School.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Public economics
• Law and economics
• Labour economics
• Mathematics
• Psychology
• Pure mathematics
• Business
• Microeconomics
• Law
• Finance

Selected publications

• The Moores Lost Their Claim and <i>Moore</i>

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Optimal Tax Theory as a Theory of Distributive Justice

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Law and economics
  • Economics
  PublisherDOI

• Amicus Brief of Tax Scholars in Support of Appellants

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020

  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Law and economics
  DOI

• Leveling the Playing Field between Inherited Income and Income from Work through an Inheritance Tax

  2020 · 10 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Labour economics
  • Economics

  Despite our founding vision as a land of opportunity, the United States ranks at or near the bottom among high-income countries in economic equality and inter-generational mobility. Our tax code plays a key role. Inherited income is taxed at less than one-seventh the average tax rate on income from work and savings. This chapter proposes a major step toward leveling the playing field by requiring wealthy heirs to pay income and payroll taxes on inheritances they receive above a large lifetime exemption. As part of this shift, the proposal would repeal the current estate and gift taxes and would tax accrued gains (beyond a threshold) on transferred assets at the time of transfer. It would also substantially reform the rules governing family-owned businesses, personal residences, and the timing and valuation of transfers through trusts and similar vehicles. Relative to current law, the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates the proposal would raise $337 billion over the next decade if the lifetime exemption was $2.5 million, and $917 billion if the lifetime exemption was $1 million. The proposal would almost exclusively burden the most affluent and most privileged heirs in society, while the additional revenues could be used to invest in those who are not as fortunate. As a result, the proposal would soften inequalities, strengthen mobility, and more equitably allocate taxes on inheritances among heirs. It would also enhance efficiency and growth by curtailing unproductive tax planning, increasing work among heirs, and reducing distortions to labor markets and capital allocation. Furthermore, the proposal is likely to increase public support for taxing inherited income. While the burdens of estate and inheritance taxes both largely fall on heirs, inheritance taxes are more self-evidently “silver spoon taxes” and appear to be more politically resilient as a result.

  Publisher

• 34. Fiscal Considerations in Curbing Climate Change

  New York University Press eBooks · 2020-12-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Climate change abounds with fiscal issues. At a macro level, the debate between a carbon tax, cap-and-trade system, and command-and-control regulation is about the extent to which the tax system is the best vehicle to address climate policy objectives. At a micro level, energy-related fiscal incentives and the tax treatment of carbon taxes, carbon permits, and climate markets can have important implications for a regime’s effectiveness. The question of how to address the distributional impacts of carbon mitigation, both domestically and internationally, is also a fiscal issue. This chapter provides a brief summary of the fiscal, administrative, and political considerations relevant in designing a climate migration regime. It then focuses on the importance of distributional offsets, and the challenges in implementing them.

  PublisherDOI

• The Games They Will Play: Tax Games, Roadblocks, and Glitches under the 2017 Tax Legislation

  eYLS (Yale Law School) · 2019-01-01 · 34 citations

  articleOpen access

  The 2017 tax legislation brought sweeping changes to the rules for taxing individuals and business, the deductibility of state and local taxes, and the international tax regime. The complex legislation was drafted and passed through a rushed and secretive process intended to limit public comment on one of the most consequential pieces of domestic policy enacted in recent history. This Article is an effort to supply the analysis and deliberation that should have accompanied the bill’s consideration and passage, and describes key problem areas in the new legislation. Many of the new changes fundamentally undermine the integrity of the tax code and allow well-advised taxpayers to game the new rules through strategic planning. These gaming opportunities are likely to worsen the bill’s distributional and budgetary costs beyond those expected in the official estimates. Other changes will encounter legal roadblocks, while drafting glitches could lead to uncertainty and haphazard increases or decreases in taxes. This Article also describes reform options for policymakers who will inevitably be tasked with enacting further changes to the tax law in order to undo the legislation’s harmful effects on the fiscal system.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Policy Options for Taxing the Rich

  eYLS (Yale Law School) · 2019-11-21

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The U.S. economy exhibits high inequality and low economic mobility across generations relative to other high-income countries. The United States will need to raise more revenues in order to reduce these disparities, finance much-needed new services and investments, and address the nation’s long-term fiscal needs. This paper outlines policy options for raising a large amount of revenues primarily from the most affluent, first discussing potential incremental reforms and then focusing on four main options for more structural reform: dramatically increasing the top tax rates on labor and other ordinary income; effectively taxing the wealthy on accrued gains as they arise and at ordinary rates; a wealth tax on high-net-worth individuals; and a financial transactions tax. Although we summarize the relative advantages and disadvantages of these approaches, we generally conclude that they all merit serious consideration. Several options are also complementary to one another. In practice, however, the relative strengths of each of these policies will depend to a large extent on how each is designed after it has made its way through the legislative and regulatory process.

  Publisher

• Ninth Circuit Brief of Law Academics and Professors as Amici Curiae in Opposition to the Petition for Rehearing En Banc in Altera v. Commissioner

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2019-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Taxing the Rich: Issues and Options

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2019-01-01 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The 2017 Tax Bill and the Future of Tax Reform

  2018-11-16

  article

Frequent coauthors

• Daniel Shaviro

  31 shared

• David Kamin

  25 shared

• Daniel J. Hemel

  18 shared

• Ari D. Glogower

  18 shared

• Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

  17 shared

• Michael Knoll

  William Carey University

  16 shared

• Rebecca M. Kysar

  14 shared

• Mitchell Kane

  13 shared

Education

• B.A.

  Stanford University

• Other

  Harvard Kennedy School

• Other

  Yale Law School

Awards & honors

• Assistant Secretary of Tax Policy for the U.S. Department of…