George Plesko

Professor

Department Head

Accounting

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Education

• Ph.D., Economics, University of Wisconsin – Madison, 1985
  • Major Field: Public Economics; Minor Fields: Economic Theory and Mathematical Economics /Econometrics, Industrial Organization
• M.S., Economics, University of Wisconsin – Madison, 1982
• B.A., Economics, The George Washington University, 1980

Expertise

• Tax Policy, Business Taxation

Biography

George Plesko is a Professor of Accounting and the Department Head at the University of Connecticut, and past Associate Dean for Graduate Programs and Research in the School of Business. His research, which focuses on corporate tax policy, organizational form, and the interactions of financial and tax reporting, has appeared in leading academic journals including The Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, the Review of Accounting Studies, the Tax Law Review, the National Tax Journal, and the Journal of the American Taxation Association.  Plesko has testified before Congress on a variety of business tax issues and was the co-recipient of the 2005 American Accounting Association/Deloitte Wildman Medal, which recognizes research “likely to make the most significant contribution to the advancement of the public practice of accountancy.”  The American Taxation Association awarded him the 2022 Ray M. Sommerfeld Outstanding Tax Educator Award in recognition of his broad contributions to the field.

Plesko is a past-president of both the American Taxation Association and the American Tax Policy Institute and has been a member of the boards of the National Tax Association, the American Taxation Association, and the New England Economic Partnership.  He has served on a variety of advisory committees of the Internal Revenue Service, including the Commissioner’s Advisory Council on the Tax Gap, the Information Reporting Program Advisory Council, along with his long-serving membership on the Internal Revenue Service’s Statistics of Income Consultant’s Panel.  He is actively engaged with policy analysts within the Executive and Legislative branches, most recently on a project with the Congressional Budget Office to improve corporate forecasting.

An award-winning teacher; at UConn he teaches undergraduate, masters, and Ph.D. students, focusing on financial and managerial accounting, taxation, and financial statement analysis and valuation. He led the development of the department’s two minors, and has been heavily involved in the design and implementation of the School’s new Personal Brand Entrepreneurship minor, focusing on the financial planning implications of NIL income for athletes, artists, and entrepreneurs.

Plesko holds a B.A. in Economics from the George Washington University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. In addition to the University of Connecticut, Plesko has held appointments at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Northeastern University, the U.S. Department of Treasury, and visiting appointments at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, the International Tax Program of the Harvard Law School, and as a Visiting Fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.