UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND'S SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY HOSTS TAX PANEL'S SEVENTH MEETING ON APRIL 18th ~WITNESS LIST ANNOUNCED~

WASHINGTON, DC - Senators Connie Mack and John Breaux, Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, today announced that University of Maryland's School of Public Policy will host the Panel's seventh meeting to be held on Monday, April 18, 2005, at 12:30 pm. The meeting will be held at the Inn and Conference Center, University of Maryland University College, 3501 University Boulevard East, Adelphi, Maryland.

This meeting will focus on how state tax systems work, how they interact with the Federal tax system, and lessons about tax reform that can be learned from the experience of the states. In addition, the Panel will examine how our tax system affects decisions by American businesses to make investments in technological innovation and to acquire new tools and equipment.

Panel I: How Taxes Affect Business Investment

Testimony of Andrew Lyon
Principal, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

Testimony of Kevin Hasset
Resident Scholar and Director of Economic Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute

Panel II: How the Tax Code Interacts with State and Local Tax Systems

Testimony of R. Bruce Johnson
Commissioner, Utah State Tax Commission

Testimony of Harley Duncan
Executive Director, Federation of Tax Administrators

Testimony of Robert Schwab
Professor of Economics and Associate Dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Maryland

About the Tax Reform Panel:

The President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform was established by President Bush on January 7, 2005. President Bush has charged the bipartisan panel with recommending reforms to the tax code that will make the U.S. tax system simpler, fairer and more growth oriented.

Panel Members

Connie Mack III (Chairman), former U.S. Senator. Senator Mack served as Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee and was a member of the Finance and Banking committees. He is a Senior Advisor at King & Spalding LLP.

John Breaux (Vice-Chairman), former U.S. Senator. Senator Breaux served on the Finance Committee and the sub-committee on Taxation and IRS Oversight. He is Senior Counsel at Patton Boggs LLP.

William E. Frenzel, former Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Frenzel served on the Budget Committee and the Ways and Means Committee. Mr. Frenzel is a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution.

Elizabeth Garrett, Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics and Political Science, University of Southern California. Ms. Garrett served as Legislative Director and Tax and Budget Counsel to former U.S. Senator David L. Boren.

Edward P. Lazear, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution and Professor of Human Resources, Management and Economics, Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. Mr. Lazear is the founding editor of the Journal of Labor Economics.

Timothy J. Muris, Foundation Professor, George Mason School of Law and Of Counsel, O'Melveny & Myers LLP. Mr. Muris served as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission from 2001 to 2004.

James M. Poterba, Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Poterba serves as Associate Department Head. He has taught at MIT since 1982.

Charles O. Rossotti, Senior Advisor, The Carlyle Group. Mr. Rossotti served from 1997 to 2002 as Commissioner of Internal Revenue. He formerly served as the President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of American Management Systems.

Liz Ann Sonders, Chief Investment Strategist, Charles Schwab. Ms. Sonders joined U.S. Trust, a division of Charles Schwab, in 1999 as a Managing Director and member of its Investment Policy Committees.

Biographical Information for Witnesses Scheduled to Participate in the Sixth Meeting of The President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform April 18, 2005

Andrew Lyon is a Principal in the National Economic Consulting group of the Washington National Tax Services office of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Previously, Dr. Lyon was on the faculty of University of Maryland's economics department. From 2001 to 2003, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis with the Department of Treasury. Dr. Lyon has also served on the staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. Dr. Lyon received an A.B., with distinction and Phi Beta Kappa, from Stanford University, and earned his Ph. D. in economics from Princeton University.

Kevin A. Hassett is Director of Economic Policy Studies and Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Before joining AEI, Dr. Hassett was a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and an associate professor of economics and finance at the Graduate School of Business of Columbia University. He has served as an economic adviser to several political campaigns and as a policy consultant to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

R. Bruce Johnson has been a Tax Commissioner in the State of Utah since October 1998. In this role he administers and supervises all of the tax laws of the state, including property tax, income tax, franchise tax, sales tax and all miscellaneous taxes. Prior to his appointment, he was a partner at the law firm of Holme Roberts & Owen LLC. He is a former Chair of the American Bar Association Tax Section State & Local Tax Committee and is the current Chair of the Multistate Tax Commission. He graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in accounting, cum laude, and is a Certified Public Accountant. He received his law degree, magna cum laude, from Brigham Young University, where he was a J. Reuben Clark Scholar.

Harley Duncan has been Executive Director of the Federation of Tax Administrators (FTA) since August 1988. He served the previous five years as Secretary of the Kansas Department of Revenue. Prior to that, he was the Assistant Director of the Kansas Division of the Budget. He has held positions with the South Dakota state government, the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, and the National Governors' Association. FTA is an association representing the principal state revenue collection agencies in each of the 50 states, D.C., and New York City.

Robert M. Schwab joined the University of Maryland faculty after receiving his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1980. He was appointed Associate Dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences in 2004. His primary field of research is public economics with an emphasis on state and local government.

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