Hickman Presents Delay, Politics, And Expertise In OIRA Tax Review Today At Columbia

Kristin Hickman (Minnesota; Google Scholar) presents Delay, Politics, and Expertise in OIRA Tax Review, 44 Va. Tax Rev. __ (2025) (with Bridget C.E. Dooling (Ohio State; Google Scholar)) at Columbia today as part of its Davis Polk & Wardwell Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by Michael Love:

Among the many changes to federal policy undertaken by the second Trump Administration, a lesser-known change is the reinstatement of centralized review of tax regulations by the Office of Information of Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Reports suggest that OIRA review for regulations issued by independent agencies may be next.

For many years, most tax regulations were exempt from OIRA review. That changed in the first Trump Administration when the Treasury Department (Treasury) and OIRA signed a memorandum of agreement bringing more tax regulations within OIRA’s oversight sphere. In the Biden administration, Treasury and OIRA reversed course, this time clearly and unequivocally exempting all tax regulations without exception. Now the script has flipped again, as a new Trump executive order has reinstated OIRA review of tax regulations.

OIRA review of tax regulations is controversial, with critics complaining of long delays in the publication of important regulatory guidance and increased political meddling in decisions that ought to be made by tax experts. This Article documents the first and only effort to study OIRA review of tax regulations comprehensively and empirically by analyzing the preambles of every notice of proposed rulemaking and Treasury Decision proposing and adopting temporary and final tax regulations published from 2016 through June 2023—434 documents in all, across three presidential administrations. From the data, although we acknowledge individual examples reflecting concerns raised about OIRA review, we conclude that complaints that OIRA review leads to lengthy delays and politicization of tax policy more systematically are overblown. We additionally offer preliminary findings regarding OIRA’s contributions to transparency, and potentially to regulation quality.

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