Victor Fleischer is a professor of law at University of California, Irvine School of Law known for raising awareness of the carried interest tax loophole.

Biography

Fleischer grew up in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...

, the son of now retired academics, and earned a B.A. from Columbia College in 1993 and a J.D. from

Columbia Law School Columbia Law School (CLS) is the Law school in the United States, law school of Columbia University, a Private university, private Ivy League university in New York City. The school was founded in 1858 as the Columbia College Law School. The un ...

in 1996. He worked at Davis Polk & Wardwell and clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Ninth Circuit before entering academia in 2001. He taught at the

UCLA School of Law The University of California, Los Angeles School of Law (commonly known as UCLA School of Law or UCLA Law) is the law school of the University of California, Los Angeles. History Founded in 1949, the UCLA School of Law is the third oldest of t ...

, University of Illinois College of Law, University of Colorado Law School, the University of San Diego School of Law, chairing the law school's tax programs, before joining the University of California, Irvine School of Law in 2018. His research has focused on the fields of tax policy and corporate tax. Fleischer was known for his 2006 article, which highlighted the inequity of the tax treatment whereby private equity firms would classify the money it makes from on the future profits of their deals, also known as "carried interest," as capital gains, rather than as ordinary income, thereby paying a long-term capital gains tax rate that is 17 percentage points lower than the federal income tax rate. He argued that the loophole could cost the government as much as $130 billion over the next decade and said that the

private equity Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public; instead it is offered to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the co ...

industry should pay higher taxes, urging the U.S. government to fix the tax loophole. He was credited for popularizing the concept and turning into a political cause. In 2016, Fleischer joined the

United States Senate Committee on Finance The United States Senate Committee on Finance (or, less formally, Senate Finance Committee) is a standing committee of the United States Senate. The committee concerns itself with matters relating to taxation and other revenue measures generall ...

staff as the co-chief tax counsel to the Democratic Party and served in that position until 2017.

Personal life

Fleischer is married to Miranda Perry Fleischer, a professor of tax law at the

University of San Diego The University of San Diego (USD) is a Private university, private Catholic Church, Catholic research university in San Diego, California, United States. Chartered in 1949 as the independent San Diego College for Women and San Diego University ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fleischer, Victor Living people Columbia College (New York) alumni Columbia Law School alumni University of San Diego faculty University of Illinois faculty University of California, Irvine faculty Davis Polk & Wardwell lawyers American legal scholars University of Colorado Law School faculty UCLA School of Law faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Scholars of tax law