Today's Law, Society, And Taxation Panel

Today's Law, Society, and Taxation panel at the 2025 Law & Society Association Annual Meeting in Chicago:

Justice, Equality, and Tax Law

• Diane Kemker (Southern; Google Scholar) (chair/discussant)

The tax code is used in a vareity of ways to enact or support social goals that are not necessarily explicitly tied to economic ends. The papers in this session will think about how tax and spending programs are used to achieve particular ends, and what those ends might be (or should be). Papers in the session will consider both intended and unintended consequences of the relevant provisions on the social outcomes of the individual taxpayers affected by the rules.

Alex Raskolnikov (Columbia), A New View of Formal Equality:

A long-held egalitarian view is that formal equality—the absence of formal legal distinctions based on the material resources of individuals—is regressive. If legal rules are the same for the rich and the poor, the rich benefit and the poor suffer. This Essay argues that this view is mistaken. Far from being synonymous with laissez-faire, a commitment to formal equality provides a counterweight to the key neoliberal maxim that regulation of market economy should focus on efficiency alone. Moreover, when fully embraced, formal equality leads reformers to favor predistribution over redistribution because explicit redistribution is formally unequal while predistribution can be achieved using only formally equal rules.

Samuel Brunson (Loyola-Chicago; Google Scholar), Immigrant Tax Privacy:

The IRS probably has more information about more Americans than any other agency in the United States. Historically, that has made the IRS a target for other administrative agencies that want to use that trove of information to pursue their mandates or, at times, pursue their enemies. In light of a number of scandals and perceived scandals, Congress has enacted laws to protect the privacy of taxpayer information and limit the ability of the President and of executive agencies to access and use that information.

Over about fifty years, that Congressionally-mandated confidentiality largely held. But over the last four months, it has begun to break down. In particular, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has signaled its desire to use taxpayer information to double-check the identities and addresses of undocumented immigrants it wants to deport, and the IRS has demonstrated a willingness to comply.

While it is not clear whether this agreement between ICE and the IRS will withstand judicial review, the very fact that the two agencies have entered into this agreement could have a significant impact on undocumented taxpayers’ willingness to pay taxes. In this article, I propose two modifications to the tax law that will better protect undocumented immigrants’ (and other taxpayers’) privacy from the type of overreach implicated in the current IRS-ICE agreement.

First, I propose that individual taxpayer identification numbers, provided to taxpayers who do not qualify for social security numbers, become indistinguishable from social security numbers. Currently, individual taxpayer identification numbers begin with the digit 9, while social security numbers do not. There is no need for this differentiation, though, and eliminating it will make it impossible to tell whether a taxpayer is documented or not just by looking at their tax return.

Second, I propose that taxpayers earning less than a certain amount be explicitly permitted to file their tax returns using a proxy address rather than their own. To the extent any executive agency wants the taxpayer’s physical address, that agency would need to obtain a judicial warrant.

These two changes to the law will provide a degree of taxpayer confidentiality more in line with Congress’s intent. It will allow undocumented taxpayers to file and pay their taxes without fear of deportation. And it will again allow the IRS to focus on its revenue-related mission.

Emily Cauble (Wisconsin; Google Scholar), Channels of Tax Law (Mis)Information, 2026  U. Ill. L. Rev. ___ :

This Article sheds light on a pervasive phenomenon. In a variety of contexts, third parties provide information about tax law to taxpayers. The information provided by these third parties may guide the tax planning and compliance decisions of taxpayers, some of whom may act upon the information without seeking advice from a tax professional. In some cases, the information is accurate and potentially helpful. In other cases, it is inaccurate and potentially misleading.

This Article describes concrete examples of real estate companies and home mortgage lenders providing information about the tax consequences of home ownership; car companies delivering information about tax credits available to purchasers of electric and hybrid vehicles; sellers of other products dispensing information about associated tax credits; drugstores and other sellers of health products distributing information about health flexible spending accounts; student loan providers broadcasting information about the deduction for student loan interest; debt collectors describing to debtors the tax consequences of nonpayment; employers, schools, and pediatricians providing information about potential benefits of tax filing; and more. The collection of examples is based, in part, on information gleaned from an examination of websites of leading companies in various industries. Some of the examples are taken from cases involving contract law or consumer protection law.

This Article discusses several important implications that follow from an examination of these examples. First, in many cases, third parties transmit information contained in informal IRS guidance. As a result, for better or for worse, they magnify the impact of informal IRS guidance, which underscores the need to ensure that informal IRS guidance does not steer taxpayers in the wrong direction. Second, many of the examples entail information that is, in substance, less accurate for taxpayers with lower incomes, which has troubling equity implications. Third, an examination of the examples suggests the need for an evaluation of existing legal doctrine. Fourth, some of the examples represent topics that the IRS could discuss when alerting taxpayers to tax misinformation. Finally, some modifications to existing law could amplify the positive impact of helpful information.

Charles Delmotte (Michigan State; Google Scholar), Equality Before Tax Law:

The income tax code is riddled with exceptions—exclusions, rate preferences, and deductions—that systematically reduce tax burdens for dominant majorities and influential interest groups. These carveouts now amount to an astonishing $1.9 trillion, equivalent to 75% of all federal income tax revenue. By granting policymakers discretion to allocate tax exceptions, the tax system not only invites capture but also the weaponization of taxation against disfavored economic and political groups. Despite the pervasive role of tax exceptions, tax scholarship has failed to articulate a foundational principle that mandates taxation according to general rules. Normative approaches to tax law–economic and philosophical–often contributed to a model in which the government is free to make distinctions and classifications among taxpayers in the pursuit of efficiency or justice.

This Article draws on philosophy of law to reveal an overarching tax principle that grounds the ideal tax system and the elimination of most exceptions. Equality before the law requires that laws apply to the broadest possible category of individuals. This Article examines how this principle reshapes the three fundamental choices in tax design: the choice of the tax base, the structure of the rate schedule, and the adoption of special provisions, such as deductions. First, the tax base should be broad and encompass general economic events or situations that anyone may encounter, e.g., income or consumption. Second, the rate structure should be uniform, applying the same tax schedule to every tax base. Third, there should be no deductions that reduce final tax liabilities between taxpayers.

This Article defends a normative principle that regulates the power to tax: Equality before Tax Law compels elites, interest groups, and voting blocks to “Tax Thy Neighbor as Thyself,” curbing tax law’s problematic array of exemptions, exclusions, and loopholes.

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