Crane Reviews Zhang's Fiscal Citizenship And Taxpayer Privacy

Charlotte Crane (Northwestern; Google Scholar), Disclosing Tax Data: Maybe the Rich Are Different (JOTWELL) (reviewing Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar), Fiscal Citizenship and Taxpayer Privacy, 125 Colum. L. Rev. __ (2025)):

In Fiscal Citizenship and Taxpayer Privacy, forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, Alex Zhang explores ways of thinking about the effects of the disclosure of individual income tax returns. Disclosure of information about individual tax liabilities is one of those topics that won’t ever go away. Even if no imaginable contemporary Congress would reinstate a requirement that information about individual tax liabilities be publicly available, it is well worth thinking about the circumstances in which disclosure would be justified. After all, most state property tax systems include disclosure not just of the values subject to tax, but of taxpayer compliance. And, as Zhang describes, such disclosure was on more than one occasion a part of the administration of the federal income tax. Especially in light of this history, it is worth exploring whether an income tax—especially the individual income tax—should be so different.

The consensus answer seems to be that the intrusion on individual taxpayer privacy cannot be justified by the possibility of enhanced compliance, especially when research indicates that the impact of disclosure on compliance is ambiguous. Zhang’s critique of this response rests on the idea that increased knowledge of the way taxpayers—especially wealthy taxpayers—interact with the income tax system is the key to a more democratic and egalitarian tax system and therefore a more democratic and egalitarian fiscal polity. ...

One of the most significant take-aways from Zhang’s analysis is a strong sense of the contingent nature of any taxpayer’s claims to the income subject to tax, and to any claim of privacy with respect to the information involved in the application of that tax. Contrary to what may be a common perception, the claims to privacy of the very wealthy taxpayers are likely to be weaker than the privacy claims of taxpayers of lesser means.

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