Post date: April 16, 2000
Eric Zolt has been appointed Director of the International Tax Program at Harvard Law School, Visiting Professor of Law, and John Harvey Gregory Lecturer on World Organizations effective July 1, 2000.
Zolt’s research and teaching interests are in individual, corporate and international taxation, and the tax systems of transition economies. He is currently Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. Professor Zolt has received several teaching awards at UCLA, including the Rutter Award for Distinguished Teaching and UCLA’s Distinguished Teaching Award.
“Eric Zolt is a leading expert in designing tax systems for developing countries and countries making the transition to a market economy,” said Dean Robert C. Clark. “His experience in private practice, academics, and government service makes him an excellent choice to direct the International Tax Program.”
The educational mission of the Harvard Law School International Tax Program (ITP) is to provide future fiscal leaders and tax policy advisors from countries around the world with the finest available interdisciplinary graduate education in taxation. The Program is designed so that the legal, economic, and administrative aspects of taxation are each considered in the context of a country’s economic and social development. This interdisciplinary perspective is particularly important as graduates of the Program advance to senior-level tax advisory positions.
The Program seeks tax professionals from both developed and developing countries who are involved in formulating and implementing tax policies, drafting tax legislation, negotiating tax treaties, and managing tax administrations. The strongest candidates have demonstrated an interest in public service or university teaching and research. The wide range of countries represented in each class ensures exposure to a diversity of tax and fiscal systems. The professional backgrounds of students, which include law, economics, accounting, information technology, and public administration, also contribute to a diversity of perspectives.
Since the founding of the ITP in the mid-1950s, over one thousand government officials, university teachers, researchers, and representatives from international organizations from more than 100 countries have completed the Program. Many distinguished alumni of the ITP have served their countries as ministers and deputy ministers of finance, directors and commissioners of revenue, auditors general, economic secretaries, judges, and other senior government officials and advisors.
Zolt has been a visiting professor at Yale Law School, New York University School of Law, and Aoyoma Gakuin in Tokyo, Japan. From 1989 through 1992, Zolt served in the Office of Tax Policy, Department of the Treasury, first as Deputy Tax Legislative Counsel and then as Director of Treasury’s Tax Advisory Program for Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Working with the U.S. Treasury Department, the World Bank, and the IMF, he has provided technical assistance in reforming tax systems in more than 25 countries. Before beginning teaching at UCLA in 1985, Zolt was a partner in the Chicago office of Kirkland & Ellis.
He earned a J.D. from the University of Chicago School of Law, a M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.