John M. Samuels is the Chairman of Global Tax at Blackstone.
Before joining the firm, Mr. Samuels worked at General Electric as the Vice President and Senior Counsel for Tax Policy and Planning for almost 30 years and was responsible for the company’s global tax policy, tax planning and tax compliance operations. Mr. Samuels is a Chairman of the Alliance for Competitive Taxation (ACT), Chairman of the International Tax Policy Forum, and is the George W. and Sadella D. Crawford Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School, where he teaches U.S. taxation of international transactions. Prior to joining GE, Mr. Samuels was a partner in the law firm of Dewey, Ballantine and served in the administrations of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan as the Deputy Tax Legislative Counsel and Tax Legislative Counsel of the U.S. Department of Treasury. Mr. Samuels is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel, a Trustee of the American Tax Policy Institute, and received the Tax Foundation’s Distinguished Service Award for his contributions to tax policy.
Mr. Samuels is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and the University of Chicago Law School, and received an LLM in Taxation from NYU Law School.