Schenk Delivers Pugh Lecture Today At San Diego On Horizontal Equity Redux

Deborah Schenk (NYU) delivers the annual Richard Crawford Pugh Lecture on Tax Law & Policy at San Diego today on Horizontal Equity Redux:

For many decades, tax policy scholars have defined “equity” in terms of “horizontal equity” and “vertical equity.” In recent years the concept of horizontal equity has come under attack on two grounds: first, that it has no content independent of vertical equity, and second, that its classic definition preferences pretax income without any justification. Yet, the concept has remarkable staying power. All major law casebooks reference horizontal equity, as do many scholarly articles. This lecture explores why that is so and offers both an explanation and a justification for its continued use as a principle of tax policy.

Previous Richard Crawford Pugh Lectures on Tax Law & Policy:

• Chief Judge Maurice B. Foley (San Diego), Mountains And Mentors: My Path To The Tax Court (2022)
• Anne Alstott (Yale), Child Care Reform After The Pandemic (2021)
• Rosanne Altshuler (Rutgers), The International Tax Landscape: Past, Present and Future (2020)
• Lily Batchelder (NYU), Optimal Tax Theory and Distributive Justice (2019)
• Deborah Schenk (NYU), Horizontal Equity Redux (2017)
• Michael Graetz (Columbia), Tax Reform Beyond the Headlines (2015)
• Edward Kleinbard (USC), Progressive Tax or Progressive Fiscal System? (2014)
• Stephen Shay (Harvard), Coherence in International Income Taxation (2013)
• M. Carr Ferguson (Davis Polk, New York), Simplifying the Corporate Income Tax (2011)
• Eric Solomon (Steptoe, Washington, D.C.), A Framework for Tax Reform (2010)

For more on Dick Pugh, see here.