John F. O'Hare

John F. O'Hare has more than 20 years experience analyzing the impact of tax and economic policy at the federal, state and local level. He has been responsible for the designa and development of large-scale microsimulation models for both the individual and corporate tax sectors for use in assessing the effects of alternative policy scenarios on revenues, income distribution, tax burden and economic growth.

Mr. O'Hare's areas of scpecialization include capital gains and losses, estate and gift taxation, consumption and savings decisions of individuals, taxation of insurance companies and products, and portfolio choice under uncertainty.

As an economist with the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, Mr. O'Hare introduced dynamic simulation modeling for use in assessing the effects of tax reform on the property and casualty insurance industry. He extended this approach to more general models of corporate and individual decision making.

Judy Xanthopoulos

Judy Xanthopoulos is an economist providing independent consulting and research. She is also a principal in Quantria Strategies, LLC, where she works developing micro simulation models for tax and pension policy analysis. Prior to founding her own businesses, she spent nearly ten years with the Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S. Congress as an economist analyzing tax policy and legislative proposals. In addition, she has approximately five years combined experience working for the National Center for Health Services Research and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

She earned a PhD in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park, with an emphasis in corporate taxation and depreciation policy. She has a MS in Mathematical Economics from Tulane University and a BA in Economics and Accounting from Lafayette College.

Mary M Schmitt

Mary M. Schmitt left her position as Deputy Chief of Staff with the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation in 2004 after 22 years of service on Capitol Hill. Ms. Schmitt has extensive experience in all areas of Federal tax policy, with an emphasis on issues relating to retirement plans and employee benefits, individual income tax, and insurance companies and products. In her position as Deputy Chief of Staff for the Joint Committee, Ms. Schmitt oversaw all substantive work done by the staff on Federal tax legislation. In addition to the staff's day to day work, she was responsible for coordinating a number special projects completed by the Joint Committee, including a three-volume report on simplification of the Federal tax system, a three-volume report relating to a Congressional investigation of the Enron Corporation, a study on reporting and disclosure, and an investigation of the handling of exempt organization matters by the Internal Revenue Service.

Prior to joining the Joint Committee in 1982, Ms. Schmitt worked for five years for the Internal Revenue Service, first in a key district office reviewing the first round of ERISA determination letter requests and later writing employee benefit regulations in the Office of Chief CounselMs. Schmitt has a BS in Mathematics from South Dakota State University, a JD from the University of Minnesota, and an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center.