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Joshua D. Blank

Professor of Law
Director of the UCI Law in NYC Program
Joshua D. Blank

Expertise:

Tax Administration and Compliance, Administrative Agency Communication, Taxpayer Privacy and Tax Transparency, Taxation of Business Entities

Background:

Joshua Blank is a Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.  Prior to joining UCI Law in 2018, Blank was a member of the full-time faculty of NYU School of Law, where he served as Professor of Tax Law, Vice Dean for Technology-Enhanced Education, and Faculty Director of its Graduate Tax Program.

Professor Blank is an internationally recognized tax law scholar and expert on tax administration and compliance, tax privacy and tax transparency, and administrative agency explanations of the law.  His books include Untaxed: The Rich, the IRS, and a New Approach to Tax Compliance (with Ari Glogower) (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Automated Agencies: The Transformation of Government Guidance (with Leigh Osofsky) (Cambridge University Press, 2025).  His articles have appeared in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, NYU Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Tax Law Review, Yale Law & Policy Review, and the Harvard Journal on Legislation, among other journals.  Blank is a frequent contributor to Bloomberg, CNN, Fortune, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among others.

Blank received a 2020 Teacher of the Year Award from the Association of American Law Schools, the 2017 Legal Teaching Award from the NYU School of Law Alumni Association, and the Podell Distinguished Teaching Award from NYU School of Law in 2014. In 2021, Blank was selected by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) (with his co-author, Professor Leigh Osofsky) to conduct a study of U.S. federal government agencies’ use of automated tools, such as chatbots and virtual assistants, to explain the law to the public. In 2022, ACUS voted to adopt twenty policy recommendations based on his co-authored report, which were then published in the Federal Register and circulated to the federal agencies.

In 2024, Blank was appointed to serve as Chair of the Teaching Taxation Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association, one of the largest organizations of tax law professors in the U.S.  Blank is an elected member of the executive committee of the International Fiscal Association (USA Branch) and is a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel and the American Bar Foundation.

Blank previously served as an assistant professor of law at Rutgers School of Law – Newark, and was an acting assistant professor of tax law in the NYU Graduate Tax Program. He has taught tax law as a visiting professor at Hebrew University, Bocconi University, IDC Herzliya and the Internal Revenue Service. Prior to academia, Blank was a tax lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

Blank received his B.A., summa cum laude, from NYU, College of Arts and Science; his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School; and his LL.M. in taxation from NYU Law.

Prior Courses:

Corporate Tax, Federal Income Tax, Tax Practice & Procedure

(Log in to view full course descriptions in the UCI Law Course Catalog)

Prof. Blank's Scholarly Papers on SSRN

Books

  • Automated Agencies: The Transformation of Government Guidance (with Leigh Osofsky; under contract, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 2025)
  • Untaxed: The Rich, The IRS, and a New Approach to Tax Compliance (with Ari Glogower; Cambridge University Press, 2024).
  • Corporate Taxation:  Examples & Explanations (with Cheryl D. Block and Ari Glogower, Wolters Kluwer, 5th ed. (2022)).
  • The Income Tax Map: A Bird’s-eye View of Federal Income Taxation for Law Students (with Shari Motro, West Academic, 17th ed., 2019; 18th ed., 2020; 19th ed. 2021; 20th ed., 2022; 21st ed., 2023).

Articles

  • Democratic Accountability and Tax Enforcement, 61 Harv. J. on Leg. 251 (2024) (with Leigh Osofsky)
  • Democratizing Administrative Law (with Leigh Osofsky), 73 Duke L.J. 1616 (2024)
  • Automated Agencies (with Leigh Osofsky), 107 Minn. L. Rev. 2118 (2023).
  • The Tax Information Gap at the Top (with Ari Glogower), 108 Iowa L. Rev. 1597 (2023).
  • When Should Means Matter? The Case of Tax Compliance (with Ari Glogower), 42 Va. Tax Rev.241 (2022)
  • Simplicity Lost (with Leigh Osofsky), 20 Pitt. Tax Rev. 105 (2022) (symposium contribution). 
  • The (Uncertain) Future of Corporate Tax Shelters (with Ari Glogower), in Research Handbook on Corporate Taxation (Reuven Avi-Yonah, ed., Edward Elgar Publishing, forthcoming, 2023). 
  • Redesigning Automated Legal Guidance (with Leigh Osofsky), Regul. Rev. (2023). 
  • The Inequity of Informal Guidance (with Leigh Osofsky), 75 Vand. L. Rev. 1093 (2022). 
  • Automated Legal Guidance at Federal Agencies, Draft Report to the Administrative Conference of the United States (with Leigh Osofsky), Mar. 25, 2022. 
  • The Trouble with Targeting Tax Shelters (with Ari Glogower), 74 Admin. L. Rev. 69 (2022). 
  • United States National Report on Mandatory Disclosure Rules, in Mandatory Disclosure Rules (International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation, 2022). 
  • Presidential Tax Transparency, 40 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. 1 (2021). 
  • Progressive Tax Procedure (with Ari Glogower), 96 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 668 (2021).
  • Automated Legal Guidance (with Leigh Osofsky), 106 Cornell L. Rev. 179 (2020).
  • Legal Calculators and the Tax System (with Leigh Osofsky), 15 Ohio St. Tech. L.J. 73 (2020).
  • Corporate Tax Privacy and Human Rights, in Tax, Inequality and Human Rights (ed. Philip Alston and Nikki Reisch, Oxford University Press, 2019).
  • The Timing of Tax Transparency, 90 S. Cal. L. Rev. 449 (2017).
  • Simplexity: Plain Language and the Tax Law, 66 Emory L.J. 189 (2017) (with Leigh Osofsky).
  • United States National Report on Exchange of Information, in Proceedings of 2014 Congress of European Association of Tax Law Professors (2015) (with Ruth Mason).
  • Collateral Compliance, 162 U. Pa. L. Rev. 719 (2014).
  • Reconsidering Corporate Tax Privacy, 11 N.Y.U. J. L. & Bus. 31 (2014).
  • Avoidance Transactions in the United States, in The Common Law Doctrine of the Sham: Reality and Pretence in Law (ed. Edwin Simpson and Miranda Stewart, Oxford University Press, 2013) (with Nancy Staudt).
  • United States National Report on Tax Privacy, in Tax Secrecy and Tax Transparency - The Relevance of Confidentiality in Tax Law (Peter Lang GmbH – Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Frankfurt, Germany) (2013).
  • Corporate Shams, 87 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1641 (2012) (with Nancy Staudt).
  • In Defense of Individual Tax Privacy, 61 Emory L.J. 265 (2011).
  • When Is Tax Enforcement Publicized?, 30 Va. Tax Rev. 1 (2010) (with Daniel Z. Levin).
  • What’s Wrong With Shaming Corporate Tax Abuse, 62 Tax L. Rev. 539 (2009).
  • Overcoming Overdisclosure: Toward Tax Shelter Detection, 56 UCLA L. Rev. 1629 (2009).
  • Confronting Continuity: A Tradition of Fiction in Corporate Reorganizations, 2006 Colum. Bus. L. Rev. 1.
  • June 5, 2025
  • Discussant, Columbia Tax Workshop, Columbia Law School, New York, NY
  • May 22, 2025
    Presenter, The Future of Automated Legal Guidance (with Leigh Osofsky), Law & Society Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois
  • February 11, 2025
    Presenter, Untaxed: The Rich, the IRS, and a New Approach to Tax Compliance (with Ari Glogower), Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Chicago, Illinois 
  • December 2, 2024
    Presenter, Untaxed: The Rich, the IRS, and a New Approach to Tax Compliance (with Ari Glogower), The Tax Club, New York, NY 
  • June 5, 2024
    Presenter, Automated Agencies: The Transformation of Government Guidance (with Leigh Osofsky), International Conference on Taxpayer Rights, Center for Taxpayer Rights, University of Antwerp, Belgium
  • April 18, 2024
    Discussant, The Moore Case and the Future of the Realization Doctrine, 6th Annual UCI-Taylor Nelson Amitrano LLP Tax Symposium, Irvine, CA
  • March 2024
    Presenter, Democratizing Administrative Law (with Leigh Osofsky), Duke Law School, Durham, NC
  • November 8, 2023
    Presenter, Untaxed: The Rich, The IRS, and a New Approach to Tax Compliance (with Ari Glogower), Intellectual Life Workshop, University of California, Irvine School of Law, Irvine, CA
  • November 7, 2023
    Co-presenter, Untaxed: The Rich, The IRS, and a New Approach to Tax Compliance (with Ari Glogower), Tax Policy and Economic Inequality Workshop, University of Chicago Law School, Chicago, IL 
  • November 2, 2023
    Presenter, Democratic Accountability and Tax Enforcement (with Leigh Osofsky), 116th Annual Conference on Taxation, National Tax Association, Denver, CO
  • June 1, 2023
    Presenter, Automated Agencies (with Leigh Osofsky), Center for Taxpayer Rights, Washington, DC 
  • May 4, 2023
    Presenter, Automated Agencies (with Leigh Osofsky), American Bar Association Tax Section, Washington, DC 
  • April 17, 2023
    Discussant, Taxation of Crypto-Assets, 5th Annual UCI-Taylor Nelson Amitrano LLP Tax Symposium, Irvine, CA (April 17, 2023)
  • February 10, 2023:
    Presenter, The Tax Information Gap at the Top, Teaching Taxation Committee Panel, American Bar Association Tax Section, San Diego, CA 
  • Chair of the Teaching Taxation Committee of the American Bar Association Tax Section (August 2022)
  • Member of Executive Committee of International Fiscal Association (June 2022)
  • Selected by Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) to Study Automated Legal Guidance at Federal Agencies, 2021-2022
  • National Reporter for the United States, Mandatory Disclosure Rules Conference, Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria, 2021
  • Teacher of the Year Award, Association of American Law Schools, 2020
  • American College of Tax Counsel, Fellow (2018, by election)
  • Legal Teaching Award, NYU School of Law Alumni Association, 2017
  • >Podell Distinguished Teaching Award, NYU School of Law, 2014
  • National Reporter for the United States, Congress of the European Association of Tax Law Professors, Istanbul, Turkey, 2014
  • National Reporter for the United States, Tax Secrecy and Tax Transparency Conference, Austria, Vienna University of Economics and Business and Orebro University, 2012
  • Vice Chair, Teaching Taxation Committee, American Bar Association Tax Section (2009, by election)