Emily Satterthwaite is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law. Professor Satterthwaite’s speciality is the law of taxation, and her research sheds light on areas of the tax law in which tax choices and taxpayer compliance obligations may have regressive equity implications. She uses experimental, qualitative and quantitative empirical methods to study how the design of elective provisions in tax statutes and tax agency enforcement policies plays out “on the ground,” with a particular focus on entry-level entrepreneurs and self-employed individuals.
Professor Satterthwaite’s recent articles explore the impact of value-added tax registration thresholds on micro-entrepreneurs, the relationship of new firms’ legal and tax status choices to their chances for survival, and how audit policies can be presented to taxpayers to improve their post-audit compliance behaviour. Her research findings have been profiled online in Forbes and were included in the literature review of the U.S. Taxpayer Advocate Service’s 2016 Report to Congress. Professor Satterthwaite’s research has been published or is accepted for publication in leading Canadian law reviews and U.S. tax journals, including Columbia Journal of Tax Law, Florida Tax Review, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, McGill Law Journal, Queen’s Law Journal, Pittsburgh Tax Review and Public Finance Review. She currently organizes the James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop at the Faculty of Law, and has been awarded research funding from the Connaught Fund and the Foundation for Legal Research.
Professor Satterthwaite received a B.A. from Yale College, a J.D. from Stanford Law School, an LL.M. from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and an M.A. (Economics) from the University of Toronto. Prior to joining the Faculty of Law in 2014, she served as the Assistant Director of the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Law School, where she supervised students in their legal representation of early-stage businesses launched by low-income entrepreneurs. Professor Satterthwaite also worked for three years as a tax associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in New York and Chicago. She is admitted to the bar in New York and Illinois.
Download Professor Satterthwaite’s research from SSRN
