Leonard E. Burman

Director

Len Burman, the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Chair in Public Affairs at Syracuse University's Maxwell School, is a nationally recognized tax policy and public finance expert with more than 25 years of experience in a range of academic, government, and public policy organizations. Before going to Syracuse, he was director of the Tax Policy Center, which he co-founded, and an institute fellow at the Urban Institute. Previously, he was deputy assistant secretary for tax analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and a senior analyst at the Congressional Budget Office in Washington, D.C. Burman testifies frequently before congressional committees on tax and budget policy issues, appears regularly in national and regional media, and is a blogger for Forbes.com as The Impertinent Economist. His most recent book is Taxes in America: What Everyone Needs to Know, written with Joel Slemrod. He also wrote The Labyrinth of Capital Gains Policy: A Guide for the Perplexed and co-edited Taxing Capital Income and Using Taxes to Reform Health Insurance. He is past president of the National Tax Association and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Syracuse University's Center for Policy Research. Burman earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota.

Areas of expertise

Ph.D., Economics, University of Minnesota

1998-2000, Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis
1989-1997, senior analyst at Congressional Budget Office

Areas of expertise: Federal tax and budget issues; AMT; estate tax; retirement tax incentives; health insurance tax incentives; taxes and social policy

Publications by topic:

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