ATT: Professor Infanti, it’s great to be talking to you about your career. What got you interested in tax in the first place?
PI: Rather than following the more typical path of coming into law school with an interest in tax or developing an interest after taking a few tax courses, you might say that tax found me. Although tax was always on my list of courses to take, I never actually managed to work it into my schedule during law school. After law school and clerking, I began work in the corporate department at a law firm in New York. Within days of starting, the head of the corporate department came to speak with me. I was a bit nervous until he told me that there were no new associates joining the tax department, that the tax department had gone through the resumes of the entering associates, and that they wanted to see if I would be interested in working in tax. I readily confessed that I knew nothing about tax law (aside from having filled out a Form 1040-EZ each year to report my earnings from summer work during law school), but the head of the corporate department took me up to the tax department anyway. I told the head of the tax department the same thing, but he was very easygoing and suggested that I give tax a try for six months—after which I could stay if I liked or rejoin the corporate department if I didn’t. The firm didn’t have a formal rotation system for junior associates, which made the possibility attractive. Being young and willing to give new things a try, I readily agreed and quickly found that I loved tax—the research, the writing, and especially the intellectual stimulation of grappling with the text of the Code. This led me to enrolling full time in NYU’s Tax LLM program the following academic year so that I would be better prepared for practice. The Tax LLM program only deepened my interest in tax law, and I’ve never looked back since—or regretted my decision to keep an open mind about my career path, which is something that I’ve tried to impart to my students.
ATT: And what drew you into a teaching career?
PI: I had always been interested in teaching. When I was in college, I was a double major in Russian language and French literature. My Russian professor was eager for me to follow in her footsteps. So, during my senior year, she gave me the opportunity to teach some of the lower-level classes when she was away for school-related work. I really enjoyed teaching and the ability to help others learn about something that fascinated me. Even though I eventually decided to go to law rather than graduate school, I always had the idea of teaching in the back of my mind while I was in practice. Eventually, I decided to go on the teaching market to see if I could make a go of transitioning from practice into teaching, and I was lucky enough to land a job at the University of Pittsburgh, where I’ve been ever since.
ATT: How did you first get involved in the Tax Section?
PI: I first became involved in the Tax Section after I began teaching. Attending Section meetings wasn’t a real possibility while I was an associate. But after I started teaching, I was invited to speak on a panel and really enjoyed the conference and connecting with other tax law teachers through the Teaching Tax committee. That got me coming back to meetings, which led to becoming a vice chair and then chair of the Teaching Tax committee. After that, I was asked to join Council and now serve as Vice Chair for Pro Bono & Outreach. I’ve really enjoyed my involvement in the Section, which has helped me to keep in touch with what is going on in the world of tax practice (especially so many years after leaving practice to teach!) and to make connections with tax lawyers around the country. I’ve met some great people through the Section that I would otherwise probably not have met.
ATT: You’ve done some really interesting research and writing on unique tax law concepts, such as critical tax theory. What does that term mean, and why is that topic important to you?
PI: Critical tax theory means different things to different people. For some, it means employing different methodologies for engaging in scholarly work than what you traditionally encounter in law review articles. Personal narrative is one example of a methodology that I and other critical tax scholars have used and that you don’t normally encounter in traditionally dispassionate law review articles written in the third person. For others, critical tax is about bringing the perspective of outsiders— those marginalized by society—into the conversation. Some write about the impact of the tax system along lines of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, immigration, or disability (to name a few axes of subordination in American society). My focus has been on the impact of the tax system on the LGBTQ+ community, but I have also written about critical tax theory more generally as well as about the impact of the tax system along the lines of race and gender, particularly in my forthcoming book The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America (NYU Press forthcoming Spring 2025). So, for me, critical tax is really a combination of bringing a different perspective to tax as well as exploring different methodologies for examining and explaining the connections between tax law and society.
ATT: Can you please give me an example of comparative tax law and why tax practitioners should care about the concept?
PI: Like any other form of comparative law, comparative tax law entails the comparison and contrast of different tax systems. My interest in comparative tax law stems both from my language background and my interest in critical tax theory, which, at bottom, is deeply concerned with the relationship between tax law and society. For instance, I brought my interests in critical tax theory and comparative law together in Our Selfish Tax Laws: Toward Tax Reform That Mirrors Our Better Selves (MIT Press 2018), where I used comparative law case studies to show just how closely tied tax law is to the society that creates it. More recently, I incorporated significant comparative perspectives in Tax and Time: On the Use and Misuse of Legal Imagination (NYU Press 2022).
But my interest in comparative tax law dates to before I entered academia. While I was in practice, I often worked in the international tax area—and exclusively so during the two years before I left practice to begin teaching. Lawyers engaged in international tax planning naturally must gain some knowledge of and appreciation for other countries’ tax systems. This exposure to other countries’ tax systems helps to open one’s eyes to the different possibilities for addressing the issues and problems that those creating tax systems face everywhere. Anyone dedicated to improving the tax system—whether practicing attorney, academic, or everyday citizen—should be keenly interested in learning about the universe of possible approaches and solutions to problems. Comparative tax law thus provides a means for us to learn from the experience of others so that we can be more effective as we constantly tinker with our own tax system.
ATT: And what are you writing on next?
PI: Now that my book on taxation and slavery is in the hands of the publisher, I’ve begun work on another project exploring the intersection of tax and racism. This project concerns the use of tax law in British Columbia during the second half of the nineteenth century as a means of both stemming the immigration of Chinese laborers to the province and to force out those who were already there. There has (rightfully) been a lot of focus on Canada’s imposition of an exclusionary head tax on Chinese immigrants at the federal level beginning in the 1880s, but a part of the story that has received less attention is the ease with which taxation was used as a tool for advancing a racist and xenophobic agenda at the provincial level and its persistent weaponization in the years leading up to the enactment of the federal head tax.
ATT: It’s not uncommon for practicing lawyers to serve as adjunct faculty at various law schools on tax subjects within their expertise. What should attorneys think about if they are serious about going into full-time academia?
PI: Teaching as an adjunct is a great way to pay it forward by helping the next generation of tax lawyers prepare for practice. For those interested in transitioning into a career in teaching, however, it is important to understand that being a professor is a full-time, year-round job and not simply a few hours each week in the classroom and the occasional faculty meeting. Good, effective teaching takes time—and a lot of it. Scholarship is also an important part of the job, and one that takes up a great deal of your nonteaching time. A real, sustained commitment to research and writing is a must for anyone interested in landing a spot on the permanent faculty at a law school. The remainder of a professor’s job involves service activity—both within the law school and at the university level as well as to the local, state, and national communities and the profession.
Anyone in the Section who is interested in teaching—and especially those interested in a career in teaching—should make a point to attend the Teaching Tax committee’s programming at a Section meeting. Many professors attend. We are a welcoming group and always more than happy to speak with those interested in teaching about what our job is like and about the different paths into academia.
ATT: When you’re not busy thinking about tax, what do you do to unwind? How important is it to maintain balance for mental health?
PI: Balance is definitely important. Not only to unwind but also to better focus when I am working, I exercise every day, including going on many walks with the family dog that give me the opportunity to clear my head when I walk him on my own or to talk with my partner and our daughter when we take him on a walk together in the evenings. Additionally, I’ve always derived a great deal of joy from cooking and baking for others, so you will find me in the kitchen most days. And in the evening after things have quieted down, you will find me knitting, which I took up while anticipating the birth of our daughter so that I could make things for her.
Editor’s Note: Anthony “Tony” Infanti is a professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Professor Infanti teaches a variety of tax courses at Pitt Law, including Federal Income Tax, Corporate Tax, and International Tax. He is a prolific author, with scholarly work focusing on comparative tax law, critical tax theory, and the intersections between these two fields of study. He received degrees from New York University (LL.M. Taxation), University of California Berkeley (J.D.), and Drew University (B.A.), and is an elected member of the American Law Institute, the American College of Tax Counsel, and the American Bar Foundation.
