Current employer/job title: Iowa State University’s Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation, visiting professor.
Phil Harris, an emeritus professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is serving the center in a part-time role as visiting professor. He retired from the University of Wisconsin last spring.
Harris will augment the center staff’s efforts, assisting with analysis, writing and instruction on tax issues important to Iowa and agriculture. He also will work closely with center staff members to help address tax issues.
Harris has a national reputation among land-grant university agricultural tax specialists. He brings 37 years of experience with the University of Wisconsin in extension and research on business and tax issues important to agricultural producers. His extension program focused on farm income tax issues, farm business arrangements, farm transfer and estate planning.
He has written or coauthored many books on agricultural tax and business issues, including, most recently, the 2016 National Income Tax Workbook published by the Land Grant University Tax Education Foundation. He is a founding—and current—member of the American Agricultural Law Association, serving as its president from 1987 to 1988.
Harris is an Iowa State alumnus, earning his bachelor’s degree in economics in 1973. He earned both a master’s in economics and Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago.
The Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation, established by the Iowa Board of Regents in 2006, provides timely, objective information to agricultural producers, professionals and agribusinesses on the application of important developments in agricultural law and taxation, and is a primary source of professional educational training in agricultural law and taxation. One of the center’s programs is the annual farm income tax schools, which Iowa State has conducted for nearly 45 years.