John Taylor

John Taylor spent seven years in private legal practice before becoming an academic in 1985. Since then he has periodically acted as an academic consultant for tax divisions of major accounting firms and for an investment bank. His research and professional activities are focussed on the taxation of business entities, international taxation and on capital gains taxation.

He has been a visiting scholar at: the International Tax Program at Harvard University; the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge; the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation in Amsterdam; the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario; the Faculty of Law at Leiden University, the Netherlands; and at the Plunkett Foundation for Co-operative Studies, the United Kingdom. He has given lecturers and seminars in the Harvard International Tax Program, the LL M Program in International Taxation at Leiden University, and at the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation in Amsterdam.

John is the author of Capital Gains Tax: Business Assets And Entities (LBC 1994) and a co-author of Understanding Taxation Law: An Interactive Approach (Lexis Nexis 2002, 2004, 2009, and 2010) and of Butterworths Blackletter Law Series: Income Tax Law (Butterworths 1991) and has contributed commentary to Australian Income Tax Law And Practice (Butterworths) and to ATP’s ITAA 1997 Commentary (ATP).

In 2005 he was appointed as the Inaugural Honorary Research Fellow of the Taxation Institute of Australia. In 2006 and 2007 he was a consultant to the Department of the Treasury of the Commonwealth of Australia.

In 2002 he wrote the report for the Australian branch of the International Fiscal Association on 'Form and Substance in Tax Law' which was subsequently published in Cahiers De Droit Fiscal International. His paper 'An Old Tax Is A Simple Tax: A Back To The Future Suggestion For The Simplification Of Australian Corporate-Shareholder Taxation' won the Best Senior Paper award at the 2006 Australasian Tax Teachers Association Conference. His paper 'The Twilight Of The Neanderthals, Or Are Bi-Lateral Double Tax Treaty Networks Sustainable' won the Best Theme Paper award at the 2009 Australasian Tax Teachers Association Conference. He has also written numerous articles, conference papers and educational materials and taxation and commercial law matters.