He co-founded the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, in 2002. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis at the Treasury from 1998 to 2000 and Senior Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office from 1988 to 1997. He is past-president of the National Tax Association (NTA) and 2016 recipient of the NTA’s Davie-Davis Award for Public Service.

Professor Burman is the coauthor with Joel Slemrod of “Taxes in America: What Everyone Needs to Know” and author of “The Labyrinth of Capital Gains Tax Policy: A Guide for the Perplexed”, and co-editor of several books. He is often invited to testify before Congress and has written for scholarly journals as well as media outlets such as the Washington Post, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota and a B.A. from Wesleyan University.