Professor Alan Schenk
"I have taught in the U.S. at five other law schools, including Harvard and the University of Michigan, in Canada, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. I always look forward to returning to my students at Wayne Law. We have a most interesting and diverse student body."
How did you happen to start teaching business planning? My colleague and friend Stephen Schulman taught corporate and securities law, and I taught tax and worked as a CPA before going to law school. We were developing our business curriculum and noticed that we had a hole in our curriculum. That hole was a capstone business planning course. We also saw a need for our students to have some advantage in competing for jobs with the large and mid-size Michigan corporate law firms. The early classes were terrific, so the class became a permanent part of our curriculum. Many of our former business planning students are leaders in the bar today.
Now that you are team-teaching the Business Planning course with your former student and corporate/securities expert Peter Sugar, how has that course changed? Peter was one of the students in the very first business planning classes. After Stephen died, I stopped teaching the course for several years. When I decided to start teaching it again, it was natural for me to teach it with Peter. He had been teaching securities law and corporate finance for us for years. He has had extensive experience practicing what we want to train our students to do. It includes practical skills and ethics. Peter has been a perfect fit.
What other courses do you teach? I teach the basic taxation course, Accounting for Lawyers (an increasingly important area for our students to understand, no matter what area of law they choose to practice), and Value Added Tax (VAT).
How did you get involved with value added tax, since the United States does not have one? In 1968, as a young professor, I was looking for topics for my scholarly agenda. I went to Washington and talked to Jerry Kurtz, then at Treasury, and later the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. He said that the hottest political issue in the next five years was going to be value added tax. So in the summer of 1969, I spent two months in Europe, discussing VAT with the Ministries of Finance in several countries. In 1970, President Nixon wanted to propose a VAT and have the VAT revenue finance education in states that agreed to eliminate the property tax used to finance public education. Nixon's advisors told him that he could not propose a VAT because none of the American tax professionals were familiar with that tax. The American Bar Association then established a committee on VAT and I was appointed to that committee. I went down into the valley of VAT and never climbed back out.
What are the chances that the United States will introduce value added tax? I think that the U.S. Congress may consider a VAT as an alternative or additional revenue source if it gets serious about raising revenue to either (a) pay down our national debt, or (b) fund a national health care system. This year I am a member of a group of international scholars and practitioners that is considering what kind of VAT it should be.
Can you briefly describe your scholarly work on value added tax? I have written several books and many articles on VAT. I served as reporter for a model VAT on behalf of the American Bar Association Section of Taxation Committee on Value Added Tax. I also write scholarly papers for international conferences on value added tax.
You do quite a bit of traveling internationally. In addition to your scholarship on value added tax, what work have you done in that field? It was my scholarship that brought me to the attention of the International Monetary Fund. The legal department of the IMF provides technical assistance to a country that wants to reform its tax systems. If that reform includes the enactment of a value added tax, the legal department asks me or one of a few others to work with the country in drafting the VAT law. I have drafted VATs for a number of African and Caribbean countries.
How do you share this kind of experience with students in the classroom? I generally prepare a seminar to teach tax officials about the new law that I drafted for their country. This preparation alerts me to the problems that my students face in learning tax law for the first time.
What have you been doing recently? Recently, on behalf of the IMF, I have been helping a couple of African countries draft Tax Administration Acts.
What kinds of career opportunities are available to those specializing in tax law? The Michigan economy, and now the national economy, have hit a speed bump that has reduced the number of jobs available to practice law with a law firm. There still are opportunities for students interested in and prepared for a business practice. We also have to be more creative in helping students find other opportunities where they can use the talents they developed through our business curriculum.
You visited at a number of law schools and worked in Washington for the Chief Counsel of the IRS. Why did you always come back to WSU? A person has a tendency to return to a place he or she enjoys. Well, for me, that place is Wayne Law. I enjoy our diverse student body. Our current students and alumni are terrific. I enjoy the collegial atmosphere at the Law School. It has an environment conducive to scholarly activity.