Lily Batchelder, the Robert C. Kopple Family Professor of Law at NYU School of Law, is one of the nation’s leading voices on tax law and policy. She is an affiliated professor at the NYU Wagner School of Public Service, faculty director of the Furman Public Policy Program, and co-founder and co-faculty director of the NYU Tax Law Center.
Batchelder was nominated and confirmed by the Senate to be Assistant Secretary of Tax Policy for the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2021 and served in that role until February 2024. She also led the Biden-Harris Treasury transition team’s work on tax policy and IRS modernization. As Assistant Secretary, she played a pivotal role in advancing some of the Biden administration’s most far-reaching legislative and regulatory initiatives. She led Treasury’s Office of Tax Policy (OTP), which is responsible for developing legislative proposals, issuing tax regulations in conjunction with the IRS, negotiating tax treaties, advising on tax policy aspects of tax administration, and providing revenue and distributional estimates for the Executive Branch. During her tenure, OTP issued guidance clarifying and implementing more than $1 trillion of tax provisions in landmark pieces of legislation, including the Inflation Reduction Act, American Rescue Plan, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. OTP also played an increasingly robust role in furthering uptake of credits by eligible taxpayers, conducted distributional analysis of tax provisions by race and ethnicity for the first time, and closely collaborated with the IRS on their modernization efforts. Starting in the transition, Batchelder was part of a team that laid the groundwork for the historic agreement among 140 countries to establish the OECD Inclusive Framework global minimum tax.
In 2020, Batchelder co-founded the NYU Tax Law Center (TLC). From 2014 to 2015, Batchelder served as Deputy Director of the White House National Economic Council and Deputy Assistant to the President under President Obama. From 2010 to 2014, she served as Majority Chief Tax Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.
Batchelder’s scholarship spans a wide array of topics in taxation and social policy, including the efficient and equitable design of tax expenditures, business tax reform, retirement savings policy, wealth transfer taxes, optimal tax theory, and the effects of fiscal policy on income and wealth disparities, and intergenerational mobility. Her work has been published in books, and major law reviews, journals, and press outlets. She regularly advises policymakers on fiscal policy matters, and has testified numerous times before Congress. Batchelder received an AB with honors and distinction from Stanford University, an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a JD from Yale Law School.
