Lily Batchelder will return to NYU Law in Spring 2024 after serving as assistant secretary for tax policy at the US Department of the Treasury. Batchelder, who is the Robert C. Kopple Family Professor of Taxation at the Law School, was nominated to the Treasury post by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the US Senate in 2021 by a vote of 64-34.
As assistant secretary, Batchelder led Treasury’s Office of Tax Policy (OTP), which is responsible for developing and implementing the federal government’s tax policies and programs, negotiating tax treaties, and providing estimates for the president’s budget, fiscal policy decisions, and cash management decisions. In collaboration with partners across the US government, OTP also helps shape economic policy, health and retirement policy and clean energy policy. This includes implementation of landmark legislation, such as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, SECURE 2.0, the American Rescue Plan, and the Affordable Care Act. Batchelder has also overseen US negotiations in the OECD-led international tax deal, which aims to reduce corporate profit shifting between high- and low-tax jurisdictions.
“It has been a tremendous honor to serve at Treasury, and I am so excited to be coming home to NYU Law,” Batchelder says.
Batchelder’s principal areas of research and teaching are federal income taxes, wealth transfer taxes, and social insurance. Her scholarship centers on tax expenditures, business tax reform, retirement savings policy, wealth transfer taxes, optimal tax theory, and the effects of fiscal policy on economic disparities, income volatility, and intergenerational mobility.
The position she leaves at Treasury is not the first post Batchelder has held in government. From 2014 to 2015, she was deputy director of the White House National Economic Council and deputy assistant to the president under President Barack Obama. There, she was responsible for tax and budget issues, including tax reform, retirement policy, and low-income benefits. From 2010 to 2014, she served as majority chief tax counsel for the US Senate Committee on Finance.
Before joining NYU Law in 2005, Batchelder was an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and had also worked as director of community affairs for a New York state senator and as a client advocate for a small social services organization in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Brooklyn.
Posted January 19, 2024