York University Professor Emeritus Neil Brooks was named the recipient of the Canadian Tax Foundation (CTF) Lifetime Contribution Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the foundation.
The Lifetime Contribution Award is the most prestigious award given by the Canadian Tax Foundation. It honours individuals who, over their careers, have made substantial contributions to the CTF and its purposes through their volunteer efforts and body of work over a number of years.
Brooks was a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, where he taught tax law and policy for more than 35 years. His research interests included tax law and policy, corporate and international tax, and financing the welfare state.
He published extensively on income tax issues and was the editor of Canadian Taxation, Osgoode Hall Law Journal and the Canadian Tax Journal. He also co-authored The Trouble with Billionaires (2010) with Linda McQuaig.
Brooks has been a consultant on tax policy and reform issues to several departments in the government of Canada, and to the governments of New Zealand, Australia and several Canadian provinces. He was co-vice chair of the Ontario Fair Tax Commission and has been on several advisory committees for the Auditor General of Canada and Revenue Canada.
In 2002, Brooks was awarded the Canadian Association of Law Teacher’s Award for Academic Excellence.
He is a frequent speaker and public commentator on current public finance issues, and over the past few years, he has participated in capacity-building projects relating to taxation in a number of low-income countries, including Lithuania, Vietnam, China, Mongolia, South Africa, Bangladesh, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and Botswana.
In previous years, three other Osgoode professors – the late Tim Edgar, Scott Wilkie and Jinyan Li – have received the Lifetime Contribution Award, demonstrating the strength of the law school’s tax faculty.