Penn State Dickinson professor is awarded prestigious Atax Research Fellowship

Penn State Dickinson professor Bill Barker has been awarded an Atax Research Fellowship for summer 2006 to examine whether new and expansive theories of statutory interpretation can be useful in accomplishing the purposes of General Anti-Avoidance Legislation.

Each year, Atax, the tax institute of the School of Law of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, awards up to two fellowships to visiting academics or practitioners who will advance Atax’s worldwide research program in taxation and related fields.

Atax, the largest tax research institute in Australia, is also part of the steering group of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) International Network for Tax Research whose mission is to conduct research that will assist OECD and non-OECD countries to formulate international and domestic tax policy. The network is composed of several leading universities including Harvard Law School, Cambridge University, the Sorbonne and the University of Leiden.

Barker, who also has a standing appointment as visiting professor of law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, is an expert on income taxation and is one of a small group of United States legal scholars who has focused his research and writing on international and comparative taxation. In 2003, Professor Barker received a Fulbright grant to research and teach in South Africa at the Universities of Cape Town, Free State and Witwatersrand. In 2005, he was awarded his second Fulbright grant to teach and consult in Latvia at the Riga Graduate School of Law.