Richard C.E. Beck
Professor of Law Emeritus
Founding Director, Graduate Tax Program
Contact Information
E richard.beck@nyls.edu
Education
New York University, LL.M. (Taxation) 1984; Yale, J.D. 1980; University of Chicago, Ph.D. 1973, B.A. 1963; Fulbright Fellowships, University of Calcutta Sanskrit College 1967–68, University of Paris 1965–66
Profile
Richard C.E. Beck grew up in Chicago and earned a B.A. and Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Chicago, where he also taught for a year. He then taught Indo-European linguistics and Sanskrit at Brown for seven years before turning to the study of law at Yale.
After practicing law in New York City for five years, Professor Beck published a tax article that reignited his academic interests, finding that the tax code, with its multitudinous rules and layers of exceptions, had parallels in the study of languages. He went back to teaching and has taught in Paris at the Sorbonne, at the University of Osnabrück, and at the Wirtschaftsuniversität in Vienna.
An expert in federal individual income tax who has testified for reform of spousal liability for income taxes before the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, Professor Beck has taught Individual Tax, Tax Policy, International Tax, Taxation of Property Transactions, and Corporate and Partnership Tax.
While an assistant professor at the University of Denver College of Law, he taught in an LL.M. program in tax and he was Co-Director of a similar program at New York Law School, which he founded.
Professor Beck co-authored a casebook on taxation of business enterprises, and has published numerous articles on a wide variety of income tax issues.
He loves New York City and lives with his wife in the Village.
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