Conference: Understanding the Effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

The Honorable Kevin Brady served as the U.S. representative for Texas’s 8^th congressional district for over 26 years. During his tenure, Brady was considered one of the country’s most respected minds on tax and economic policy, serving as chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittees on Health and Trade, and ultimately becoming just the third Texan in history to serve as Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

As Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Brady was the architect of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the most significant overhaul of America’s tax code in over 30 years. The law cut taxes across the board for families and businesses and restored America’s competitive standing on the world stage. In addition to being considered one of Congress’s most respected leaders in tax policy, Brady was also an instrumental voice in 13 of America’s 15 free trade agreements—including the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA) and the Central American trade agreement. Brady was also a leading voice in numerous initiatives to help families save more of their hard-earned money, including through reforms to the country’s retirement system, elimination the individual mandate, repealing three of the largest Affordable Care Act taxes, and spearheading the first reforms to the IRS in over two decades.

Prior to his service in Congress, Brady was a Chamber of Commerce executive for nearly two decades and served three terms in the Texas House of Representatives. He never moved to Washington, and still lives in The Woodlands with his wife and two sons.

George leads the Public Finance team at Arnold Ventures, where he aims to further develop the evidence and analysis needed to drive tax, fiscal, and budget policies to ensure a more equitable public finance system that is both sustainable and provides an adequate safety net without burdening future generations with debt.

In his most recent role at Steptoe & Johnson LLP, George advised some of the world’s largest corporations on tax policy matters, helping them navigate the complexity of tax reform legislation. Prior to that, he served for 15 years on Capitol Hill, primarily as a senior tax counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives—both for the Ways and Means Committee and to former Speaker Paul D. Ryan. He also served as Counsel for the House Budget Committee and as Legislative Director for a U.S. Senator. In these roles, George developed a reputation for working across the aisle to shepherd bipartisan reforms through a divided government, providing him not only strong bipartisan relationships but also unique insights into the legislative process and the procedure and hard work needed to transform data and evidence into real-world policy change. George started his professional career in the Tax Legislative and Regulatory practice at KPMG LLP.

Since leaving the Hill, George has appeared frequently in national news publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, commenting on major tax and fiscal policy issues of the day. He also has published commentary in tax and legal publications such as Tax Notes and Law360. George earned bachelor of arts, juris doctor, and master of laws in taxation degrees from the University of Florida, where he also served as senior managing editor for the school’s scholarly legal publication, the Florida Journal of International Law.

Kimberly Clausing holds the Eric M. Zolt Chair in Tax Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.

During the first part of the Biden Administration, Clausing was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis in the US Department of the Treasury, serving as the lead economist in the Office of Tax Policy. Prior to coming to UCLA, Clausing was the Thormund A. Miller and Walter Mintz Professor of Economics at Reed College.

Her research examines how government decisions and corporate behavior interplay in the global economy. She has published numerous articles on the taxation of multinational firms, and she is the author of Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital (Harvard University Press, 2019).

Professor Clausing is a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She has worked on economic policy research with the International Monetary Fund, the Hamilton Project, the Brookings Institution, the Tax Policy Center, and the Center for American Progress. She has testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Committee on Finance, the Senate Committee on the Budget, and the Joint Economic Committee.

Professor Clausing received her B.A. from Carleton College in 1991 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1996, both in economics.

Scott Dyreng is Professor of Accounting at Duke University. His research interests are in corporate tax avoidance, international taxation, and accounting for income taxes. He has published in The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, and Journal of Financial Economics, among others. He teaches managerial accounting to graduate students, and has received the Excellence in Teaching Award in the Duke MMS program three times. He received his PhD at the University of North Carolina in 2008. He holds Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in accounting from Brigham Young University.

Tadd Fowler is a member of Tax Foundation’s Board of Directors.

As Senior Vice President, Treasurer & Global Taxes at Procter & Gamble, Mr. Fowler is responsible for all Global Treasury and Tax matters for the company.  P&G’s Global Treasury organization manages global liquidity, capital markets, financial risk management, pensions and insurance. P&G’s Global Tax Organization manages P&G’s global tax and trade policy efforts, tax planning, tax controversy  and compliance with P&G’s total global tax contribution approximating $10 billion annually.

William Gale is the Arjay and Frances Miller Chair in Federal Economic Policy in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. His research focuses on tax policy, fiscal policy, pensions, and saving behavior. He is the author of Fiscal Therapy: Curing America’s Addiction to Debt and Investing in the Future (Oxford University Press, 2019). He is co-founder and co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute.

From 2006 to 2009, he served as vice president of Brookings and director of the Economic Studies Program. From 2007 to 2023, he served as director of the Retirement Security Project at Brookings. Prior to joining Brookings in 1992, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a senior economist for the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.

Gale attended Duke University and the London School of Economics and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Michelle Hanlon is the Howard W. Johnson Professor and a Professor of Accounting at the MIT Sloan School of Management

Hanlon teaches a course on taxes and business strategy and she also often teaches an introductory financial accounting course. Her research focuses primarily on the intersection of taxation and financial accounting. Hanlon’s recent work examines the capital market and reputational effects of corporate tax avoidance, the economic consequences of U.S. international tax policies for multinational corporations, the effect of individual-level taxes on corporate payout policy, and the extent of individual-level offshore tax evasion. She is an editor at one of the leading accounting research journals. She has won several awards for her research and is the winner of the 2013 Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching at Sloan.

Hanlon has testified in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance and the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means regarding U.S. tax policy. She recently worked as an Academic Fellow for the U.S. House Ways and Means (majority) tax staff.

Professor Hanlon holds a BBA from Eastern Illinois University, an MAcc in taxation from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and a PhD in accounting from the University of Washington.

James R. Hines Jr. is the L. Hart Wright Collegiate Professor of Law and co-director of the Law and Economics Program at Michigan Law. He is also the Richard A. Musgrave Collegiate Professor of Economics in U-M’s Department of Economics and serves as the research director of the Office of Tax Policy Research in U-M’s Ross School of Business.

Hines’s research focuses on various aspects of taxation. He taught at Princeton and Harvard universities before joining the U-M faculty in 1997 and has held visiting appointments at Columbia University; the London School of Economics; the University of California, Berkeley; and Harvard Law School.

He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, research director of the International Tax Policy Forum, former co-editor of the American Economic Association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives, and once, long ago, served as an economist in the US Department of Commerce.

Jeff Hoopes serves as the research director of the UNC Tax Center. He studies how taxpayers respond to tax laws and changes in tax enforcement. He examines issues at the intersection of accounting, public economics, and finance. He has expertise in both corporate and individual taxation as well as tax administration and compliance.

He regularly interacts with the research analysis and statistics division of the Internal Revenue Service on ongoing joint research projects, and is a CPA with an active license in the state of Colorado.

He received his PhD in business administration from the University of Michigan. He received his MAcc with a tax emphasis from Brigham Young University, where he also graduated with a BS in accounting.

Dr. William McBride is the Vice President of Federal Tax Policy & Stephen J. Entin Fellow in Economics at the Tax Foundation, where he leads our efforts to research, model, and reform the U.S. tax code.

Dr. McBride has more than ten years of experience analyzing a variety of economic and policy issues. Prior to his current role at the Tax Foundation, he served as a manager in the National Economic and Statistics (NES) group at PricewaterhouseCoopers where he worked on numerous projects, including economic impact analyses, industry surveys, U.S. federal and state tax revenue estimates, and general quantitative analyses. He also has experience researching and modeling the economics of taxation and issues related to tax reform at the state, federal, and international levels.

Dr. McBride is no stranger to the Tax Foundation. From 2011 to 2015 he served as chief economist, where he wrote extensively on the economics of taxation, particularly regarding business investment, and guided the development of the Tax Foundation dynamic scoring model.

Dr. McBride holds a PhD in economics from George Mason University, where he specialized in macroeconomics and agent-based modeling. His research has been cited by policymakers, quoted by major media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and published in scholarly journals, such as the National Tax Journal and Tax Notes.

Katherine is a tax and trade policy expert at Capitol Tax Partners.

She served for a decade as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s chief policy advisor on tax, trade, economic, and budgetary issues. During that time, Katherine was a lead negotiator on numerous legislative accomplishments, including passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the most significant climate package in U.S. history; renegotiation and passage of legislation implementing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which garnered the support of both the Republican Administration and the AFL-CIO; several COVID relief packages, including the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the American Rescue Plan; and several tax extenders packages, including the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes (PATH) Act of 2015.

Prior to her time in the House, Katherine worked for Senate Finance Committee Member Ben Cardin (D-MD) as his tax and trade counsel and policy advisor on banking, human resources, and general economic issues. Katherine also worked as a transactional tax attorney at Mayer Brown LLP.

Katherine earned a Juris Doctor degree (cum laude) from Boston College Law School and a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service degree from Georgetown University.

Loren Ponds is a member of Tax Foundation’s Board of Directors.

As Member and Practice Co-Lead, Tax Policy at Miller & Chevalier, Ms. Ponds centers her practice on providing strategic counsel to clients on legislative, regulatory, and other tax policy issues, as well as advising on technical tax matters related to transfer pricing and other international tax topics. She advises clients on the impacts of tax policy, such as the implementation of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, and issues related to technical corrections, administrative guidance, and legislative amendments to various provisions.

Teri Wielenga is a member of Tax Foundation’s Board of Advisors.

Teri is the former Senior Global Finance Executive & Board Director and Vice President, Global Head of Tax Policy at Gilead Sciences.

Teri is a results-oriented finance executive with more than 20 years of experience with a Fortune 500 global company. Teri currently serves as Vice President of Tax for Gilead Sciences, Inc.—a NASDAQ multinational biopharmaceutical company based in the Bay Area. Prior to Gilead, Teri served as Senior Vice President of Taxation for Allergan, Inc.—a NYSE multinational pharmaceutical/biotech/medical aesthetics company based in Southern California.

Eric Zwick studies the interaction between public policy and corporate behavior, with a focus on fiscal stimulus, taxation, and housing policy. His research draws insights from finance and behavioral economics while using a variety of methods: new data, natural experiments, theory, and anecdotal exploration.

Zwick is particularly interested in the problems that small and medium-sized private firms and new ventures face, from the perspective of owners, investors, managers, and workers. A secondary area of interest concerns the role of bounded rationality and imperfect information in the design of policies that promote behavior change. This work focuses on determinants of habit formation in health and workforce productivity settings.

Zwick earned a Ph.D. and M.A. in business economics from Harvard University and a B.A. in economics and mathematics with high honors from Swarthmore College. Prior to grad school, he worked as a research assistant at the National Bureau of Economic Research and as a web and software developer for several start-ups and non-profits.