Speakers
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MARK RIBAS is the president and director of Pennsylvania Tax Institutes, Inc. He retired in 2012 from his position as an Internal Revenue Service agent after 38 years with the IRS. Mark is a Certified Public Accountant licensed in the state of West Virginia and has taught the Land Grant University Tax Seminar for West Virginia University, Virginia Tech, and Texas A&M University. He has also served as an adjunct professor of accounting for Fairmont State University and presented at several Tax Executive Institute and Working Together conferences.
SUSAN HARPER is also an officer of Pennsylvania Tax Institutes, Inc. and has over 30 years of experience as an IRS agent. Before her current position as Fraud Technical Advisor, Susan specialized in examinations of abusive tax transactions. She has also instructed the Land Grant University Tax Seminars for West Virginia University, Virginia Tech, and Texas A&M since 2000.
KRISTINE TIDGREN, J.D. is the director of the Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation at Iowa State University and is also an adjunct assistant professor in the Agricultural Education & Studies Department. As a child, she grew up on a farm in west central Iowa; today, her work focuses on studying and interpreting laws impacting the agricultural industry, specifically focusing on agricultural taxation.
Kristine has written hundreds of articles and blog posts to keep tax professionals, practicing attorneys, producers, and agribusiness professionals informed about legal developments impacting their business. She writes technical chapters for the National Income Tax Workbook as well as regular articles for farm publications.
Kristine gives talks each year to professionals and producers on tax and agricultural law topics, and also plans and provides instruction for CALT seminars, including the annual federal income tax schools.
Kristine teaches AgEds 451, a four-credit agricultural law class to upper-level undergraduate students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She also regularly collaborates with other agricultural law and tax professionals throughout the country, including those from the Rural Tax Education Committee, the American Agricultural Law Association, and the Land Grant University Tax Education Foundation.
Before joining Iowa State University, Kristine worked for a legal publishing company and as a practicing attorney. She is licensed to practice law in Iowa and Missouri, and is a member of the Iowa Bar Association. She received her J.D., Order of the Coif, from the University of Texas at Austin and her Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Iowa State.
DR. TAMARA LEE CUSHING is an Extension Forest Business Specialist joining us from the University of Florida. She works to educate landowners, foresters, and tax professionals about the economics of growing trees and how tax interacts with forestry.
Dr. Cushing brings an extensive knowledge of the entire tax system with a focus on federal income tax code and making it easier to understand and navigate. She also specializes in landowner succession planning, an often-overlooked task that can help keep land forested. Through her role as a teacher and extension specialist, she has experience in cash flow analysis, forest economics, and forest management.
She also serves as an advisor to the Society of American Foresters student chapter and the logging sports team. Dr. Cushing is a graduate of the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Science in forest resources, and of Mississippi State University with a Master of Forest Economics and a Master of Taxation. Before joining the University of Florida, Tammy was the Starker Chair of Private and Family Forestry at Oregon State University and has previously worked at Clemson University, University of Kentucky, and for F&W Forestry Services in Georgia as a forest economist. She earned a Ph.D. in forest finance at the University of Georgia and teaches an undergraduate course in forest economics while supervising graduate student research.