U.S. Tax Court's Tax Trailblazers: Sam Thompson

U.S. Tax Court's Diversity & Inclusion Series, Tax Trailblazers: Mentoring the Next Generation:

Please join the United States Tax Court for the second in a series of monthly programs celebrating diversity and inclusion in tax law. Moderated by Chief Judge Maurice B. Foley, March’s webinar will focus on Samuel C. Thompson, Jr., Director of the Center for the Study of Mergers and Acquisitions at Penn State Law. Today at 7:00-8:15 PM EST (register here).

Samuel C. Thompson, Jr. directs Penn State’s Center for the Study of Mergers and Acquisitions. He is also a Professor of Law and the Arthur Weiss Distinguished Faculty Scholar. He teaches mergers and acquisitions, focusing on corporate, securities, tax, accounting, and antitrust aspects of these very complex transactions. He also teaches several tax courses. Beginning with the Spring semester 2021, he is teaching a course entitled: The Lawyer’s Role in Helping Close the Minority-White Gap in Business Ownership.

Professor Thompson has served in two governmental tax policy positions, one in the U.S. Treasury’s Tax Legislative Counsel’s Office and one as the tax policy advisor, on behalf of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Tax Assistance Office, to the South African Ministry of Finance in Pretoria, South Africa. In that second role he assisted with the revision of South Africa’s income tax system.

He has served as a consultant on merger and acquisition issues to the Federal Trade Commission, a professor in residence at the European Commission’s Antitrust Merger Taskforce in Brussels, and an Attorney Fellow in the Office of Mergers and Acquisitions of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He has presented tax policy testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Treasury, and the IRS.

Professor Thompson has been a full professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and the UCLA School of Law, and he was the dean of the University of Miami School of Law. He also served as the Jacquin D. Bierman Visiting Professor of Taxation at the Yale Law School. He was formerly the partner in charge of the Tax Division of Schiff Hardin.

Professor Thompson is the author of over twenty books, including two treatises published by the Practicing Law Institute. He is also the author of more than seventy-five articles on corporate and international tax, and on corporate, antitrust, and securities issues relating to mergers and acquisitions.

He has a B.S. from West Chester University, where he was on the varsity football team; an M.A. in Business and Applied Economics from the Graduate School at the University of Pennsylvania; a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Law School; and an LLM in taxation from the NYU School of Law. From 1966 to 1969 he served in the USMC, rising to the rank of captain and receiving the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat V for service in Vietnam.

Tax Trailblazers:

• Loretta Collins Argrett (February 2021)
• Samuel Thompson, Jr. (March 2021)
• Glenn Carrington (April 2021)
• Chief Judge Foley and Judges Ashford, Marshall, Toro, and Vasquez (May 2021)
• Judges Joseph Gale And Albert Lauber (June 2021)
• Praveen Ayyagari, Andre Barnett, and Tiffany Smith (July 2021)
• Judge Juan Vasquez (September 2021)
• George Yin (October 2021)
• Justice Shawna Baker (November 2021)
• Judge Mary Ann Cohen (January 2022)
• Chief Judge Roger Gregory (February 2022)
• Ron Sweeney (April 2022)
• Alice Abreu (October 2022)