SCHOOL OF LAW

Calvin H Johnson

Andrews & Kurth Centennial Professor

JD Stanford
BA Columbia University

Calvin H. Johnson has been a member of the University of Texas Law School faculty since 1981. He received his undergraduate degree from Columbia College (New York) in Philosophy and his law degree from Stanford. Before entering teaching, he was a tax lawyer with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison in New York City and with the U.S. Department of Treasury in Washington, D.C. He has been Visiting Professor with Chief Counsel of the IRS, a member of the IRS Commissioner's Advisory Group, a member of the Academic Advisers to the U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Taxation, and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He has served as Chairman of the American Bar Association Tax Section Committee on Tax Structure and Simplification and as Chairman of the American Association of Law School, Tax Section.

Professor Johnson manages the Shelf Project, which is a collaboration of tax professionals to create and develop proposals to raise revenue to close the $1.4 trillion deficit without raising tax rates. See, The Shelf Project: Revenue Raising Projects that Defend the Tax Base, 117 TAX NOTES 1077 (2007)[ http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/calvinjohnson/shelf-project.pdf]. As a part of the shelf project he has recently published proposals, Taxing the Publically Traded Stock in a Corporate Acquisition, 124 TAX NOTES 1363 (2009); Simplification by Repeal of the One-Year Rule for Prepayments, 124 TAX NOTES 809 (2009); Capitalize Costs of Software Development, 124 TAX NOTES 809 (2009); Percentage Depletion of Imaginary Costs, 122 TAX NOTES 1619 (2009); Codification of General Disallowance of Artificial Losses, 122 TAX NOTES 1389 (2009)(with Larry Zelenak); Taxation of the Really Big House, 122 TAX NOTES 915 (2009); Tax on Insurance Buildup, 122 TAX NOTES 665 (2009) (with Andrew Pike and Eric Lustig). Outside of the shelf project he has recently published The Effective Tax Ratio and the Undertaxation of Intangibles, 121 TAX NOTES 1289 (2008); Taxing the Consumption of Capital Gains, 28 VIRGINIA TAX REV. 477 (2009); and Why Do the Venture Capital Funds Burn their Research and Development Deduction?, 29 VIRGINIA TAX REV. -- (2009). Professor Johnson recently testified at the invitation of the committees before the U.S. Senate Finance Energy & Natural Resources Subcommittee on the Obama Administration proposals as to oil and gas and before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Hearings on the U.S. Tax Shelter Industry.

Professor Johnson’s Righteous Anger at the Wicked States: The Meaning of the Founders Constitution (Cambridge University Press 2005) is a history of the adoption of the Constitution in terms of what the Founders were attempting to accomplish. In the constitutional area, he as recently published States Rights? What States’ Rights?: Implying Limitations on the Federal Government from the Overall Design, 57 BUFFALO L. REV. 225 (2009) and Really Cool Stuff: Digital Searches into the Constitutional Period, 25 CONST. COMMENTARY 51 (2008).