Sarkar Presents Internal Revenue’s External Borders Today At Georgetown

Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis; Google Scholar) presents Internal Revenue’s External Borders at Georgetown today as part of its Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop hosted by Emily Satterthwaite and Dayanand Manoli:

The mandate of tax agencies seems clear: to secure revenue for the government and ensure taxpayer compliance. Yet for decades, tax agencies have regularly facilitated immigration enforcement. While scholars and the public have paid significant attention to the use of state and local police for immigration enforcement, this conscription of the taxman as a foot soldier has largely been overlooked.

This paper aims to correct that oversight. Building on the emerging critiques of the tax system’s role in perpetuating racial inequities, I first describe tax-agency participation in immigration raids, holding the dry mechanics of the agency procedures against stark examples of IRS complicity in mid-raid civil rights violations. I then address several reasons to be concerned about tax-agency involvement in immigration enforcement before considering existing constraints on that involvement. My review of those constraints begins with a reminder of the tax-law origins of immigration raids’ constitutional exceptionalism, before assessing the residual constraints on agency participation: taxpayer privacy, regulatory suppression, and civil rights torts.

Finally, I identify several proposed reforms to better align tax-agency efforts with their revenuegenerating mission and to provide relief to immigrants still caught in the crosshairs. Those reforms include interagency agreements, immigration relief, and revitalizing constitutional suppression.