Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, March 24: Luís Carlos Calderón Gómez (Cardozo; Google Scholar) will present Coin Taxes, 16 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. __ (2025) (with Mitchell Kane (NYU; Google Scholar)), as part of the Columbia Davis Polk & Wardwell Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Michael Love. 

Tuesday, March 25: Janet Holtzblatt (Tax Policy Center) will present Measuring Success: New Performance Metrics for a New Internal Revenue Service as part of the Georgetown Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Brian Galle and Day Manoli. 

Thursday, March 27: Stephen Shay (Boston College; Google Scholar) will present The UTPR and Double Tax Treaties: Does the UTPR Violate OECD Model Capital Ownership Non-discrimination? as part of the Toronto James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Ben Alarie. 

Friday, March 28: Assaf Harpaz (Georgia; Google Scholar) will present Artificial Intelligence and Taxpayer Entity as part of the Case Western Journal of Law, Technology & the Internet (JOLTI) Symposium. If you would like to attend, please register here. 

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Tax Workshops: Zhang At Missouri, Thomas At Duke, Evans At Toronto

Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar) presents The Other Taxation at Missouri today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by David Gamage:

Native Americans pay taxes. The territories do not. Both live with the legacy of American imperialism. Both seek the elusive fiscal self-governance and autonomy promised by Congress. The Supreme Court—through preemption, the plenary-power doctrine, and tax interpretive principles—has hollowed out the Native tax base, forcing tribes to compete fiercely with Congress, states, and localities for revenue. By contrast, territorial residents pay no federal or state taxes by edicts of Congress and geography. This Article argues that the conceptual underpinnings of the divergent tax treatment of tribes and territories are unsound. Under a more robust vision of fiscal autonomy, judicial limits on Native tax sovereignty are misguided. The territories’ wide latitude in designing revenue streams merits heightened scrutiny. While imperfect, a uniform, nonrefundable federal income-tax credit for tribal and territorial taxes paid is a promising path forward. This Article thus provides the first systematic study of subfederal taxation beyond states and localities—the “other” American taxation often overlooked in scholarship.

Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (North Carolina; Google Scholar) presents Tax and the Myth of the Family Farm, 110 Iowa L. Rev. ___ (2024), at Duke tomorrow as part of its Tax Policy Seminar hosted by Larry Zelenak:

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Tax Workshops: Strain At Georgetown, Kysar At San Diego

Michael Strain (American Enterprise Institute) presents Protectionism is Failing and Wrongheaded: An Evaluation of the Post-2017 Shift Toward Trade Wars and Industrial Policy at Georgetown as part of the Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop hosted by Brian Galle and Day Manoli. 

The Trump–Pence and Biden–Harris administrations enthusiastically embraced protectionism. Each administration explicitly argued for a break from the bipartisan consensus of recent decades that has been generally supportive of free trade and of allowing markets to shape US industrial and employment composition. But the protectionism of the Trump and Biden administrations has not succeeded and likely will not succeed at meeting its goals: they have caused manufacturing employment to decline, not to increase; they have not reduced the overall trade deficit; they have not led to a substantial decoupling of the US and Chinese economies. More fundamentally, the goals that have not been met are wrongheaded: policymakers should not pay inordinate attention to manufacturing employment, and the trade deficit is a poor guide to economic policy. Finally, these wrongheaded goals often rest on fundamental economic misperceptions: free trade is not a policy to create jobs; it is a policy to increase productivity, wages, and consumption. The balance of the evidence suggests that free trade, including trade with China, has not reduced employment. Of course, trade has been disruptive. But populist policies adopted in response will hurt workers, not help them.

Rebecca Kysar (Fordham; Google Scholar) delivers the annual Richard Crawford Pugh Lecture on Tax Law & Policy at San Diego today on The Stakes of the Global Tax Deal For International Economic Governance, 77 Tax L. Rev. ___ (2024) (reviewed by Adam Rosenzweig (Washington University) here):

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Tuesday, March 18: Michael Strain (American Enterprise Institute) will present Protectionism is Failing and Wrongheaded: An Evaluation of the Post-2017 Shift toward Trade Wars and Industrial Policy as part of the Georgetown Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Brian Galle or Day Manoli. 

Tuesday, March 18: Rebecca Kysar (Fordham; Google Scholar) will deliver the Richard Crawford Pugh Lecture on Tax Law & Policy at San Diego on The Stakes of the Global Tax Deal For International Economic Governance. If you would like to attend, please register here. 

Wednesday, March 19: Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar) will present The Other Taxation as part of the Missouri Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact David Gamage. 

Wednesday, March 19: Heather Evans (Canadian Tax Foundation), Tim Fitzsimmons (Fasken, Martineau, DuMoulin) & Josh Jones (Blakes, Cassels & Graydon) will present a new paper as part of the Toronto James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Ben Alarie. 

Thursday, March 20: Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (North Carolina; Google Scholar) will present Tax and the Myth of the Family Farm, 110 Iowa L. Rev. ___ (2024), as part of the Duke Tax Policy Seminar. If you would like to attend, please contact Larry Zelenak. 

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Tax Workshops: Roh At Georgetown, Maynard At Missouri, And Holderness At UC-San Francisco

Sean Roh (IRS) presents Staying on the Wagon: Estimating Indirect Deterrence Effects from Filing and Payment Compliance Programs at Georgetown as part of its Georgetown Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop hosted by Brian Galle and Day Manoli:

Goldburn P. Maynard, Jr. (Indiana-Kelley; Google Scholar) presents Penalizing Precarity, 123 Mich. L. Rev ___ (2024) (with Clinton Wallace (South Carolina; Google Scholar) (reviewed by Emily Satterthwaite (Georgetown; Google Scholar) here), at Missouri today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by David Gamage:

Retirement policy in America is oriented around 401(k) plans and other employer-sponsored savings plans, which together will receive a whopping $1.5 trillion in tax subsidies over the next decade. This Article uncovers a harmful flaw in the policy governing withdrawals made prior to reaching retirement age: an unnoticed gap between the rules governing plan distributions and the rules imposing penalties on employees in certain situations. Employees are generally required to seek approval from their plan administrator to receive a “hardship distribution.” These requests are granted for employees who face an “immediate and heavy financial need,” such as eviction or an unexpected medical expense. However, even with this approval, these distributions are frequently subject to an “early withdrawal penalty,” under a separate regime that is not coordinated with the hardship distribution rules.

We document instances of employees who were able to survive financial calamity because of a hardship distribution only to learn that they now face a tax penalty—resulting in another cash crunch. Retirement plans disburse over $16 billion in hardship withdrawals each year, and the funds go to the most financially precarious households—ones that have fewer assets, lower incomes, and are more likely to be Black or Hispanic. Recognizing the existence of this gap also exposes a fundamental flaw in retirement savings policy: under the existing rules, some workers are made worse off by trying to make use of 401(k) plans. This Article introduces several reforms to protect against penalizing financial precarity by integrating hardship distributions with the early withdrawal penalty regime. We also explore broader reforms to effectively reduce financial precarity among lower-income and lower-asset households.

Hayes R. Holderness (Richmond) presents Multistate Tax Customs at UC-San Francisco today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by Manoj Viswanathan:

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Tax Workshops: Daly At Oxford, Zhang At Columbia

Stephen Daly (King's College London; Google Scholar) presents The Rule of Law in Comparative Tax Administration at the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation:

That the Rule of Law is an “essentially contested concept,” like Democracy, Human Rights and Legitimacy, prompts scholarly inquiry. Many scholars discuss the Rule of Law at a level of abstraction, sometimes entirely divorced from any particular field of law. Whilst there is value in such analyses, so too is there a place for sector specific studies of how the Rule of Law manifests itself. For this purpose, the rules governing tax administration in Germany, the UK and the US, specifically with regards those tax authorities’ management powers and collection powers, are chosen to articulate several arguments about the Rule of Law. First that Rule of Law compliance should be judged against the system as a whole as opposed to discrete aspects of a given system. Secondly, that Germany and the UK do exhibit fidelity to different accounts of the Rule of Law. Thirdly, nevertheless, that administrative tax systems can be differently constituted does not mean that they subscribe to different accounts of the Rule of Law.

Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar) presents The Other Taxation at Columbia today as part of its Davis Polk & Wardwell Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by Michael Love:

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, March 10: Stephen Daly (King's College London; Google Scholar) will present The Rule of Law in Comparative Tax Administration at the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation. If you would like to attend, please register. 

Monday, March 10: Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar) will present The Other Taxation as part of the Columbia Davis Polk & Wardwell Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Michael Love.

Tuesday, March 11: Sean Roh (IRS) will present Staying on the Wagon: Estimating Indirect Deterrence Effects from Filing and Payment Compliance Programs as part of the Georgetown Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Brian Galle or Day Manoli. 

Wednesday, March 12: Goldburn P. Maynard, Jr. (Indiana-Kelley; Google Scholar) will present Penalizing Precarity, 123 Mich. L. Rev __ (2024) (with Clinton Wallace (South Carolina; Google Scholar) (reviewed by Emily Satterthwaite (Georgetown; Google Scholar) here), as part of the Missouri Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact David Gamage. 

Wednesday, March 12: Hayes R. Holderness (Richmond) will present Multistate Tax Customs as part of the UC-San Francisco Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Manoj Viswanathan. 

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Tax Workshops: McCormack At Missouri, Bank At Duke

Shannon W. McCormack (University of Washington) presents America's Failure to Rescue Parents: A Narrative of Inequitable Tax "Reform", 76 U.C. L.J. ___ (2025), at Missouri today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by David Gamage:

Other developed nations provide a slew of direct benefits to parents, such as paid parental leave and affordable childcare. America instead takes a circuitous route, heavily relying on the Internal Revenue Code (the “Code”) to provide tax breaks to certain parents. In addition to being indirect and comparatively stingy, these “parental tax benefits” are not awarded equitably. Instead, they favor non poor one breadwinner families, ignore the plight of non poor working parents incurring substantial childcare and other work-related costs, exhibit an outright hostility towards poor parents and raise a host of other distributional concerns. This preferentialism is sticky––when Congress alters parental tax benefits, it rarely deviates from these patterns.

That is, until the COVID pandemic. Signed into law on March 11, 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act (the ARPA) provided much needed relief to parents attempting to maintain jobs and care for children during this global health crisis. As is America’s tendency, the ARPA leaned extensively on the Code to do so. But it abandoned its consistent preferentialism for non poor one breadwinner parents, expanding the various tax benefits available to non poor working parents and poor parents in historically significant ways.

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Tax Workshops: Fleischer At Columbia, Leenders At Oxford

Miranda Perry Fleischer (San Diego; Google Scholar) presents The Case for a Universal Child Allowance at Columbia today as part of its Davis Polk & Wardwell Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by Michael Love:

“Helping families” is a hot topic, with policymakers ranging from J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio on the right to Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren on the left unveiling proposals that would benefit families with children. And later this year, Congress will almost certainly revisit family-friendly tax benefits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC), discussing expansions and reforms. Yet once again, the same, seemingly intractable debate will likely ensue. Should aid be limited to children whose parents work, or should we help all low-income children? Should strings be placed on how parents spend aid, or should we trust parents to decide what is best for their child? A key contributor to this quagmire is that policymakers often conflate distinct goals—helping working families, alleviating poverty generally, or reducing the tax burden on low-income workers—when discussing these programs. What emerges is a mishmash of programs that, in trying to fulfill multiple goals at once, fail to achieve any single one particularly well. This lack of focus is especially troublesome when talk turns to reform. Policymakers compare apples to oranges, muddying discussions of program design.

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, March 3: Miranda Fleischer (San Diego; Google Scholar) will present The Case for a Universal Child Allowance as part of the Columbia Davis Polk & Wardwell Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Michael Love.  

Tuesday, March 4: Wouter Leenders (Ph.D. Candidate, UC-Berkeley; Google Scholar) will present Taxing High Wages: Evidence from the Netherlands at the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation. If you would like to attend, please register. 

Wednesday, March 5: Shannon W. McCormack (University of Washington) will present America's Failure to Rescue Parents: A Narrative of Inequitable Tax "Reform", 76 U.C. L.J. ___ (2025), as part of the Missouri Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact David Gamage. 

Thursday, March 6: Steven A. Bank (UCLA) will present Tax Dodging and Its Evolution as part of the Duke Tax Policy Seminar. If you would like to attend, please contact Larry Zelenak.

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Today's Tax Presentations: Rubin At Duke, Repetti At IFA

Richard Rubin (WSJ) presents Tax Legislation in 2025: Where We Are and Where We Are Headed at Duke today as part of its Tax Policy Seminar hosted by Larry Zelenak.

James Repetti (Boston College; Google Scholar) presents International Tax Policy’s Harm to Manufacturing and National Interests, 2023 Wisc. L. Rev. 1309 (reviewed by David Elkins (Netanya) here), as part of the International Tax Reform panel at today's IFA USA New England Region Annual Conference: 

Two tax regulations that permit U.S. multinational enterprises (MNEs) to use foreign contract manufacturers and to disregard their wholly owned foreign subsidiaries have created significant tax incentives for MNEs to move manufacturing outside the U.S. These tax incentives have contributed to the loss of 5 million manufacturing jobs and the closure of more than 91,000 plants since 1997.

The job losses increased racial and economic inequality and stressed our political system. But the losses arising from offshore manufacturing also extend to other areas. Offshore manufacturing increases U.S. exposure to supply chain disruptions, threatens U.S. national security, and decreases research and development efforts to improve production techniques. Also, as automated manufacturing increases, the use of offshore manufacturing hinders the ability of the U.S. to compete in that sector.

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Today's Tax Workshops: Galle At Missouri, Morgan At Toronto

Brian Galle (Georgetown; Google Scholar) presents How to Tax the Rich: Options for 2025 and Beyond at Missouri today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by David Gamage:

How should we pay for the future? This monograph describes and compares major proposals to reform federal individual income and transfer (that is, estate and gift) taxes. The Biden administration and senior Senate Democrats have outlined plans for a “minimum income tax” on multi-millionaires in which very wealthy households (generally those worth over $100 million) would be taxed on the value of appreciated but unsold property. The administration’s proposal was dubbed the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax, or BMIT. Yet some other Senators, and advocates outside government, have pointed to possible constitutional limits on that proposal, as well as offering critiques of its economic and political merits. ...

To briefly preview my findings, my central argument is that instead of any of these options, policy makers in search of revenue should adjust the capital gains tax so that its rate increases the longer the taxpayer holds an asset, which I call the fair share tax (FAST). For reasons I describe more below, the FAST in fact can be designed so that it is exactly economically equivalent to the other options, such as a BMIT, eliminating basis step-up at death, or deemed sales triggered by borrowing. But the FAST is much easier to implement, because it doesn’t suffer from the traditional challenges tax systems have struggled with when attempting to impose tax at times other than at sale. And there is little doubt that the FAST, which is just a choice of the tax rate, would be constitutional. 

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Today's Tax Workshops: Marian At San Diego, Bearer-Friend At Columbia

Omri Marian (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar) presents Income Taxation and the Regulation of Supreme Court Justices' Conduct, 110 Cornell L. Rev. __ (2025), at San Diego today as part of its Tax Law Speaker Series hosted by Michelle Layser:  

Last year, investigative journalists reported multiple instances where billionaires showered Supreme Court Justices with lavish gifts. Previously undisclosed luxury fishing trips, private jet travels, and yacht cruises ignited popular and scholarly debates about Congress’s role in regulating Justices’ conduct. This article explains how income taxation can, and should, be used to regulate judicial misconduct where rules of judicial conduct fail.

The article shows that in some instances income tax already serves as a backstop to rules of judicial conduct. Under current law, some of the “gifts” reported in recent press stories are likely taxable income to the Justices. If so, the Justices should have reported these amounts on their income tax returns and paid income tax on them. If the Justices indeed do so, many of the concerns raised in public and scholarly discourse on Justices’ conduct are mitigated. If the Justices did not report and pay tax on certain gifts, they should be audited, and be subject to the same consequences as any other taxpayer who fails to properly report income and pay taxes.

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, February 24: Jeremy Bearer-Friend (George Washington; Google Scholar) will present Sharing the Algorithm: The Tax Solution to Generative A.I. (with Sarah Polcz (UC-Davis; Google Scholar)) as part of the Columbia Davis Polk & Wardwell Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Michael Love. 

Monday, February 24: Omri Marian (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar) will present Income Taxation And The Regulation Of Supreme Court Justices' Conduct, 110 Cornell L. Rev. __ (2025), as part of the San Diego Tax Law Speaker Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Michelle Layser. 

Tuesday, February 25: Elira Kuka (George Washington; Google Scholar) will present Anomalous Unemployment Insurance During the Pandemic as part of the Georgetown Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Brian Galle or Day Manoli. 

Wednesday, February 26: Brian Galle (Georgetown; Google Scholar) will present How to Tax the Rich: Options for 2025 and Beyond as part of the Missouri Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact David Gamage. 

Wednesday, February 26: Robin Morgan (Toronto) will present Retrospective Wealth Taxation with Dynamic Portfolio Adjustments as part of the Toronto James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Ben Alarie. 

Thursday, February 27: Richard Rubin (WSJ) will present Tax Legislation in 2025: Where We Are and Where We Are Headed as part of the Duke Tax Policy Seminar. If you would like to attend, please contact Larry Zelenak. 

Thursday, February 27: James Repetti (Boston College; Google Scholar) will present International Tax Policy’s Harm to Manufacturing and National Interests, 2023 Wisc. L. Rev. 1309 as part of the IFA USA New England Region Annual Conference. If you would like to attend, please register here. 

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Tax Workshops: Zhang At Duke, Samms At Boston College

Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar) will present The Other Taxation at Duke tomorrow as part of its Tax Policy Seminar hosted by Larry Zelenak:

Native Americans pay taxes. The territories do not. Both live with the legacy of American imperialism. Both seek the elusive fiscal self-governance and autonomy promised by Congress. The Supreme Court—through preemption, the plenary-power doctrine, and tax interpretive principles—has hollowed out the Native tax base, forcing tribes to compete fiercely with Congress, states, and localities for revenue. By contrast, territorial residents pay no federal or state taxes by edicts of Congress and geography. This Article argues that the conceptual underpinnings of the divergent tax treatment of tribes and territories are unsound. Under a more robust vision of fiscal autonomy, judicial limits on Native tax sovereignty are misguided. The territories’ wide latitude in designing revenue streams merits heightened scrutiny. While imperfect, a uniform, nonrefundable federal income-tax credit for tribal and territorial taxes paid is a promising path forward. This Article thus provides the first systematic study of subfederal taxation beyond states and localities—the “other” American taxation often overlooked in scholarship.

Brakeyshia Samms (Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy) presents Tax Policy to Reduce Racial Retirement Wealth Inequality (with Carl Davis (Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy)) in Reducing Retirement Inequality: Building Wealth and Old-Age Resilience (Olivia Mitchell (Penn Wharton) & Nikolai Roussanov (Penn Wharton) eds., Oxford University Press 2024) at Boston College tomorrow as part of its Tax Policy Workshop hosted by James Repetti and Diane Ring:

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Bearer-Friend & Polcz Present Sharing The Algorithm: The Tax Solution To Generative A.I. Today At Missouri

Jeremy Bearer-Friend (George Washington; Google Scholar) & Sarah Polcz (UC-Davis; Google Scholar) present Sharing the Algorithm: The Tax Solution to Generative A.I. at Missouri today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by David Gamage:

This article argues that tax policy offers a core tool for mitigating the sweeping public policy challenges of generative Artificial Intelligence (“AI”). Specifically, we propose a tax that would allow the public to own a share of AI itself, not just through future income tax liabilities or new excise taxes, but a proposed ownership structure that requires a one-time tax payment by AI operators in the form of equity.

Fractional public ownership of AI would directly address four of the key harms of AI that have been well-documented in a deep and still expanding literature. 

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Love Presents Who Benefits From Partnership Flexibility? Today At Georgetown

Michael Love (Columbia; Google Scholar) presents Who Benefits From Partnership Flexibility? at Georgetown today as part of its Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop hosted by Brian Galle and Day Manoli:

Partnerships (including LLCs) account for more than one-third of US business profits. A key feature they offer owners and investors is unparalleled flexibility to divide up income and losses, but this creates opportunities to lower taxes—a well-recognized concern since the 1950s. Yet little is known about what happens in practice. Using anonymized tax records, I estimate over $300 billion of tax benefits associated with this flexibility between 2011-2020. But these benefits are narrowly concentrated in only 9% of firms, generally larger and more complex firms, while the vast majority of firms—especially smaller operating firms—do not utilize this flexibility at all.

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Today's Tax Workshops: Ring At San Diego, Harpaz At Columbia

Diane M. Ring (Boston College; Google Scholar) presents The Conflictual Core of Global Tax Cooperation (with Shu-Yi Oei (Duke; Google Scholar)) (reviewed by Blaine Saito (Ohio State; Google Scholar) here) at San Diego today as part of its Tax Law Speaker Series hosted by Michelle Layser:

It is widely argued that the world is in a new and distinctive era of global tax cooperation, as evidenced by the launch of a sweeping multilateral tax reform project spearheaded by the OECD and G20 to confront tax base erosion and profit shifting ("BEPS"). This Article argues, however, that this cooperation-centric account is overstated and masks fundamental conflicts between developing and developed countries' interests, conflicts that have recently culminated in a vote to shift the location of the reform work to the United Nations. This Article also argues that these conflicts constitute more than a random mélange of objections from losing parties in negotiations but instead reflect a coherent and unified set of developing country-centered concerns that extend far beyond tax policymaking.

This Article's highlights the conflictual elements inherent in the OECD/G20 BEPS project and presents an interpretative framework through which developing country-centered criticisms and their likely implications can be analyzed and understood. Fundamentally, these criticisms reflect concerns about the wide historical gulf in power and resources between developing and developed countries and how the BEPS reforms fail to address, and may even exacerbate, that gulf. Meanwhile, defenders of the BEPS reforms have largely missed this crux of the criticisms, focusing instead on the project's incremental short-term benefits for inter-developing country tax competition.

Our interpretation of these deep conflicts at the heart of contemporary global tax reform has important implications for accurately describing the state of asserted global tax cooperation and for appreciating both its promise and its risks.

Assaf Harpaz (Georgia; Google Scholar) presents Global Tax Wars in the Digital Era at Columbia today as part of its Davis Polk & Wardwell Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by Michael Love:

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, February 17: Assaf Harpaz (Georgia; Google Scholar) will present Global Tax Wars in the Digital Era as part of the Columbia Davis Polk & Wardwell Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Michael Love. 

Monday, February 17: Diane M. Ring (Boston College; Google Scholar) will present The Conflictual Core of Global Tax Cooperation (with Shu-Yi Oei (Duke; Google Scholar)) as part of the San Diego Tax Law Speaker Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Michelle Layser. 

Tuesday, February 18: Michael Love (Columbia; Google Scholar) will present Who Benefits From Partnership Flexibility? as part of the Georgetown Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Brian Galle or Day Manoli. 

Wednesday, February 19: Jeremy Bearer-Friend (George Washington; Google Scholar) & Sarah Polcz (UC-Davis; Google Scholar) will present Sharing the Algorithm: The Tax Solution to Generative A.I. as part of the Missouri Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact David Gamage. 

Thursday, February 20: Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar) will present The Other Taxation as part of the Duke Tax Policy Seminar. If you would like to attend, please contact Larry Zelenak. 

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Tuesday, February 11: Jesús Villero (Penn Wharton; Google Scholar) will present Tuition Effects of IDR Plans: Evidence from the Introduction of the PAYE Repayment Plan as part of the Georgetown Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Brian Galle. 

Wednesday, February 12: Ari Glogower (Northwestern; Google Scholar) & Andrew Granato (J.D.-Ph.D. Candidate, Yale; Google Scholar) will present Reforming The Taxation Of Life Insurance, 44 Va. Tax Rev. ___ (2025), as part of the Missouri Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact David Gamage. 

Thursday, February 13: Michael Graetz (Columbia; Google Scholar) will present The Power to Destroy - How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America (Feb. 13, 2024 Princeton University Press) as part of the UCLA Business Law Breakfast. If you would like to attend, please RSVP. 

Thursday, February 13: Amanda Parsons (Colorado; Google Scholar) will present Tax Law for Informational Capitalism as part of the Duke Tax Policy Seminar. If you would like to attend, please contact Larry Zelenak. 

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Jurow Kleiman Presents Redistributive User Fees Today At Duke

Ariel Jurow Kleiman (USC; Google Scholar) presents Redistributive User Fees at Duke today as part of its Tax Policy Seminar hosted by Larry Zelenak:

While theory suggests that redistribution should occur entirely through progressive income taxes, political and legal limits at the state and local levels render this ideal redistribution impossible. Public finance models offer user fees as an alternative revenue source that has the added benefit of improving allocative efficiency. The problem with fee-financing is that too many people can’t afford to pay fees for necessary or enriching public services. The result is deprivation and exclusion from vital state and local public services.

This Article identifies a middle way overlooked by the tax policy and public finance literatures: redistributive user fees. More accurately, these are fee-financed public services for which vulnerable users, like those with low-incomes or a disability, are exempt from paying the fee. These non-paying users receive a free service while paying users, in theory, pay a higher fee to subsidize them. The fees can appease Americans’ disdain for redistributive taxes while also minimizing the deprivation and exclusion that fee-financing often entails. 

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Clarke Presents Apportioned Direct Taxes Today At Texas

Conor Clarke (Washington University; Google Scholar) presents Apportioned Direct Taxes (with Ari Glogower (Northwestern; Google Scholar)) at Texas today as part of its Faculty Colloquium Series: 

The Constitution requires that Congress apportion any “direct” tax among the states by population. This once-dormant provision is now the most important constitutional limitation on Congress’s taxing power. Last year, in Moore v. United States, the Supreme Court seriously considered, for the first time in decades, whether to invalidate an Act of Congress as an unapportioned direct tax. While the law survived, Moore signals a new era in which scholars and policymakers must again take apportionment seriously. Yet the apportionment requirement remains poorly understood.

This Article provides a new account of apportionment by examining how Congress and Treasury actually designed and implemented apportioned direct taxes. 

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Osofsky Presents Wellness And The Tax Law Today At Missouri

Leigh Osofsky (North Carolina; Google Scholar) presents Wellness and the Tax Law, 59 Ga. L. Rev. ___ (2025) at Missouri today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by David Gamage:

The tax law has long provided extensive subsidies for "medical care." These subsidies cost the government hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The definition of medical care, which is at the heart of these subsidies, originated many decades ago, at a time when there was little to no conception of wellness. 

Times have changed in the medical world. Medical science now emphasizes that wellness practices, like exercise, meditation, and social connection, have an important impact on physical as well as mental health, including by playing a significant role in preventing and treating disease. Under the tax statute, medical care includes "treatment. .. or prevention of disease." The tax law nonetheless disallows subsidies for wellness expenditures under the theory that they are "merely beneficial to general health." This tension between medical science and tax law demands that we reappraise tax law's medical care subsidy. 

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Liscow Presents The Role Of Unrealized Gains And Borrowing In The Taxation Of The Rich Today At Georgetown

Zachary Liscow (Yale; Google Scholar) presents The Role of Unrealized Gains and Borrowing in the Taxation of the Rich (with Edward G. Fox (Michigan; Google Scholar) at Georgetown today as part of its Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop hosted by Brian Galle and Day Manoli:

As deficits rise and concerns about tax avoidance by the rich increase, we study how unrealized gains and borrowing affect Americans’ income taxes. We have four main findings: First, measuring “economic income” as currently-taxed income plus new unrealized gains, the income tax base captures 60% of economic income of the top 1% of wealth-holders (and 71% adjusting for inflation) and the vast majority of income for lower wealth groups. Second, adjusting for unrealized gains substantially lessens the degree of progressivity in the income tax, although it remains largely progressive. Third, we quantify for the first time the amount of borrowing across the full wealth distribution. Focusing on the top 1%, while total borrowing is substantial, new borrowing each year is fairly small (1-2% of economic income) compared to their new unrealized gains, suggesting that “buy, borrow, die” is not a dominant tax avoidance strategy for the rich. 

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Brounstein Presents Ecuador's Tax On Tax Haven Ownership Today At Oxford

Jakob A. Brounstein (Institute for Fiscal Studies; Google Scholar) presents The Three Body Problem: Ecuador's Tax on Tax Haven Ownership at Oxford today as part of its Centre for Business Taxation Seminars: 

Can a country reduce its exposure to tax havens, and what are the consequences? We analyze the effects of a corporate tax surcharge applied by Ecuador since 2015 to its domestic firms whose owners are in tax havens. This reform was made possible by the prior establishment of an ownership registry in 2012. We compare the behavior of firms with tax haven owners at baseline (``exposed firms''), versus other internationally-owned firms, in a difference-in-differences design. The reform induced 12 percent of exposed firms to reduce their tax haven ownership to zero, by substituting towards foreign non-haven owners. Newly reported owners are more likely to consist of individuals, rather than firms, thus raising beneficial ownership transparency. Exposed firms also increased their corporate tax payments by 15%, without reducing their employment and investment in Ecuador. Yet, transactions between exposed firms and tax haven parties did not decrease. 

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, February 3: Jakob A. Brounstein (Institute for Fiscal Studies; Google Scholar) will present The Three Body Problem: Ecuador's Tax on Tax Haven Ownership as part of the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation Seminars. If you would like to attend, please RSVP. 

Tuesday, February 4: Zachary Liscow (Yale; Google Scholar) will present The Role of Unrealized Gains and Borrowing in the Taxation of the Rich (with Edward G. Fox (Michigan; Google Scholar) as part of the Georgetown Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Brian Galle and Day Manoli. 

Wednesday, February 5: Leigh Osofsky (North Carolina; Google Scholar) will present Wellness and the Tax Law, 59 Ga. L. Rev. ___ (2025) (reviewed by Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar) here) as part of the Missouri Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact David Gamage. 

Thursday, February 6: Thomas Brennan (Harvard) will present The Structure of Accrual Taxation as part of the Toronto James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Ben Alarie. 

Thursday, February 6: Ariel Jurow Kleiman (USC; Google Scholar) will present Redistributive User Fees as part of the Duke Tax Policy Seminar. If you would like to attend, please contact Larry Zelenak. 

Thursday, February 6: Michael Graetz (Columbia; Google Scholar) will present The Power to Destroy—How The Antitax Movement Hijacked America (2024) as part of the San Diego Tax Speaker Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Michelle Layser. 

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Lawsky & Lederman Present Deductions’ Limits Today At Missouri-Columbia

Sarah Lawsky (Northwestern; Google Scholar) & Leandra Lederman (Indiana-Maurer; Google Scholar) present Deductions’ Limits at Missouri-Columbia today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by David Gamage:

U.S. federal income tax law allows individuals to take various deductions in computing their tax liabilities. Many deductions are limited only by overall income. However, the law also limits the amount of certain deductions in additional ways. This Article first categorizes deductions along two axes: (1) the type of deduction—expense or loss—and (2) the deduction’s context: business, investment, or personal. It then develops an original typology of “tools” that the tax law uses to limit deductions. The Article also identifies patterns in how these tools apply—including with respect to whether a capped deduction is subject to carryover to another year. These patterns reveal three outliers: statutes that deviate from the Internal Revenue Code’s general patterns. 

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Christians Presents Minimum Tax, Maximum Governance Today At Toronto

Allison Christians (McGill; Google Scholar) presents Minimum Tax, Maximum Governance at Toronto today as part of its James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop hosted by Ben Alarie:

The OECD’s Pillar Two project aimed to establish a global minimum tax for large multinationals, but its most enduring impact will likely be maximum governance: an increasingly complex and fragmented transnational tax order. As non-OECD member countries seek to expand their influence on global tax relations through the UN while continuing to engage with the OECD’s anti-BEPS agenda, we can expect a proliferation of committees, meetings, negotiations, and collaboration among governmental and nongovernmental organizations amplifying the already intricate politics of global tax policymaking. Whether this period of expansion will result in better, more equitable policies or simply reinforce the status quo cannot be foretold. 

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Gordon Presents Carbon Accounting As Tax Law Today At Georgetown

Jeff Gordon (Yale) presents Carbon Accounting as Tax Law at Georgetown today as part of its Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop hosted by Brian Galle and Day Manoli: 

This Article provides the first comprehensive account of the reconstruction of energy tax law that occurred under the Biden administration. In the past, federal energy policy offered carrots and sticks aimed selectively at specific sources of emissions (e.g. power plants) and specific green alternatives (e.g. solar and wind), even as academics urged the use of universal sticks like a carbon tax. But Congress has now charted a new path: universal carrots, or tax credits for any and all zero-emission energy technologies. The only way to implement universal carrots is to estimate the carbon intensity of every subsidy applicant. This is the task of carbon accounting. The Article makes two main arguments about the emergence of carbon accounting inside tax law. First, carbon accounting is surprisingly well-suited to tax law, because it will be informed by tax law’s experience with parallel normative and analytical principles, including a comprehensive tax base, additionality, liability shifting, and rate blending. But second, just as the income tax is susceptible to “tax shelters,” so too will firms develop “carbon shelters” that qualify for green subsidies while covertly making use of high-emission energy. 

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Grewal Presents Tax Regulations After Loper Bright Today At Missouri

Andy Grewal (Iowa; Google Scholar) presents Tax Regulations After Loper Bright, 2025 Mich. St. L. Rev. ___, at Missouri-Columbia today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by David Gamage:

After decades of uncertainty, the Supreme Court, in Mayo v. United States, finally resolved a conflict over the proper deference standard for tax regulations. The Chevron doctrine, not the National Muffler doctrine, would govern whether a tax regulation properly interpreted a statute.

This period of calm would last for only a little over a decade. Through Loper Bright, the Court has now killed any form of judicial deference to agency regulations. Loper Bright upsets not only Chevron, but nearly a century’s worth of tax-specific precedents that extended deference to Treasury regulations.

This Article, prepared for the Michigan State Law Review’s Tax & Policy Symposium, explores the new administrative review framework for tax regulations. It divides the analysis between general authority and specific authority regulations. They will now face markedly different review standards. Though the sky will not fall, the new review frameworks pose difficult interpretive challenges that will take decades to resolve. 

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, January 27: Andy Grewal (Iowa; Google Scholar) will present Tax Regulations After Loper Bright, 2025 Mich. St. L. Rev. ___ as part of the Missouri-Columbia Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact David Gamage. 

Tuesday, January 28: Jeff Gordon (Vanderbilt) will present Carbon Accounting as Tax Law as part of the Georgetown Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Brian Galle. 

Wednesday, January 29: Allison Christians (McGill; Google Scholar) will present Minimum Tax, Maximum Governance as part of the Toronto James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop. If you would like to attend, please contact Ben Alarie. 

Wednesday, January 29: Sarah Lawsky (Northwestern; Google Scholar) & Leandra Lederman (Indiana-Maurer; Google Scholar) will present Deductions’ Limits as part of the Missouri-Columbia Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact David Gamage. 

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Brauner Presents Mobility, Territory And Exclusive Source Taxation Today In Austria

Yariv Brauner (Florida; Google Scholar) presents You Play, You Pay! Mobility, Territory and Exclusive Source Taxation in the 21st Century at the Institute of Austrian and International Tax Law today as part of its Colloquium on Current Developments in European and International Tax Law: 

The demise of residence as an appropriate basis for taxation in the 21st century requires a rethinking of the international tax regime. This article continues the exploration of (both individual and corporate tax) reform based on exclusive source taxation. Demonstrating that such reform is possible and desirable for the survival of the international tax regime is the primary contribution of this article. The other main contributions are an explanation of the benefits of a single rather than dual basis for income taxation, and a detailed analysis of the existing source rules and their potential reforms. The latter have come under criticism as ineffective and incompatible for the realities of the 21st century. The article explains that the critique of the content of the existing source rules should not automatically count against the principle of source taxation.

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Dagan: Substantive Tax Sovereignty Under Globalization

Tsilly Dagan (Oxford; Google Scholar), Substantive Tax Sovereignty Under Globalization, 29 Tilburg L. Rev. 1 (2024):

Tax sovereignty stands for the ability of a political community to design its fiscal system in ways that support its collective self-determination. This article argues that substantive sovereignty is not merely about power, rather, it is about legitimate authority. It addresses the impact of globalisation on such sovereignty, considering the impact it has on the ability of the state to provide public goods, to promote distributive justice, and to respect political participation and membership in a political community.

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Hickman Presents A Study Evaluating OIRA Review Of Treasury Regulations Today At San Diego

Kristin Hickman (Minnesota; Google Scholar) presents A Study Evaluating OIRA Review of Treasury Regulations (with Bridget C.E. Dooling (Ohio State; Google Scholar)) at San Diego today as part of its Tax Law Speaker Series hosted by Michelle Layser:

The second term of the Trump Administration portends significant changes to federal policy, many of which have received large amounts of heated attention both in public and in private. A lesser-known change is the anticipated reinstatement of centralized review of tax regulations by the Office of Information of Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). 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. It was a rare retreat from the expansive approach to presidential authority that dominates the modern era.

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Next Week’s Tax Workshop

Monday, January 13: Kristin Hickman (Minnesota; Google Scholar) will present A Study Evaluating OIRA Review of Treasury Regulations (with Bridget C.E. Dooling (Ohio State; Google Scholar)) as part of the San Diego Tax Law Speaker Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Michelle Layser. 

For individual tax workshop posts, see here.

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Raskolnikov Presents A New View Of Formal Equality At The Italian Society Of Law And Economics

Alex Raskolnikov (Columbia) presented A New View of Formal Equality at Sapienza University of Rome yesterday as part of its 20th Annual Conference of the Italian Society of Law And Economics:

When it comes to equality under the law, the contemporary focus is decidedly on substance rather than form. This is especially so when economic inequality is concerned. Formal equality of law—understood as the absence of formal legal distinctions based on the material resources of individuals—has few defenders. At least since Rawls, formal equality has been viewed as a cause of material inequality, a foundation of laissez-faire capitalism, a fig leaf of sorts designed to give a veneer of justice to the unjust exploitation of the weak in a market economy. Whatever equality under the law means in contemporary view, formal equality is not it.

This Essay argues that the contemporary view is mistaken. Legal reforms consistent with formal equality of law may, indeed, lead to more inequality, but they may also lead to less. In fact, a commitment to formally equal law offers a counterweight to the key neoliberal maxim that regulation of a market economy should aim only at maximizing economic efficiency.

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Raskolnikov Presents Taxes And Tournaments Today At The Italian Society Of Law And Economics

Alex Raskolnikov (Columbia) presents Taxes and Tournaments, 2025 Mich. St. L. Rev. ___, at Sapienza University of Rome today as part of its 20th Annual Conference of the Italian Society Of Law And Economics:

What is the best way to reduce economic inequality? Economists, lawyers, political philosophers and politicians have pondered this question for decades. Yet there is another group of savvy and highly motivated individuals who have been thinking about redistribution for just as long. Commissioners of the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball together with team owners and player unions have been inventing and reinventing ways to redistribute resources, and they continue to do so today. The same is true of the President of National Collegiate Athletic Association along with the heads of Big Ten, Big Twelve and other powerful athletic conferences. This Article asks what we can learn from their experiences.

The answer, it turns out, is that we can learn quite a bit. Key tax policy questions-whether it is better to have one tax base or many, whether non-tax rules should take distributional effects into account, whether it is better to redistribute in cash or in kind, whether redistribution should take place at the national or local level, and whether predistribution is superior to redistribution all arise in major sports competitions.

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Glogower Presents Apportioned Direct Taxes Today At UC-Irvine

Ari Glogower (Northwestern; Google Scholar) presents Apportioned Direct Taxes (with Conor Clarke (Washington University; Google Scholar) at UC-Irvine today as part of its Tax Law & Policy Colloquium hosted by Natascha Fastabend:

In the 2024 case of Moore v. United States, the Supreme Court seriously considered, for the first time in the modern era, whether an Act of Congress should be invalidated as a “direct tax” subject to the Constitution’s rule of apportionment. While the law at issue survived, the Court’s decision brought renewed attention to the scope of the Constitution’s enigmatic tax provisions. Moore signals a new era in which legal scholars and practitioners must again take these long-dormant constitutional categories seriously—and an era in which the history of practice under these categories will likely be of increasing importance to the Supreme Court.

This Article provides an original overview of how apportioned direct taxation was practiced in the early Republic. Apportionment is today regarded as an insurmountable hurdle to federal tax legislation—especially progressive taxation. But this was not always so.

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Raskolnikov & Zelenak Present Tax Papers Today At Michigan State

Alex Raskolnikov (Columbia) presents Taxes and Tournaments, 2024 Mich. St. L. Rev. __: 

What is the best way to reduce economic inequality? Economists, lawyers, political philosophers and politicians have pondered this question for decades. Yet there is another group of savvy and highly motivated individuals who have been thinking about redistribution for just as long. Commissioners of the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball together with team owners and player unions have been inventing and reinventing ways to redistribute resources, and they continue to do so today. The same is true of the President of National Collegiate Athletic Association along with the heads of Big Ten, Big Twelve and other powerful athletic conferences. This Article asks what we can learn from their experiences.

The answer, it turns out, is that we can learn quite a bit. Key tax policy questions-whether it is better to have one tax base or many, whether non-tax rules should take distributional effects into account, whether it is better to redistribute in cash or in kind, whether redistribution should take place at the national or local level, and whether predistribution is superior to redistribution all arise in major sports competitions. Running sports tournaments, it turns out, has more than a little in common with running a tax-and-transfer system. And the general approach reflected in the design of real-world tax systems and professional sports tournaments turns out to be the same: adopt many plausible solutions instead of searching for a perfect one.

Lawrence Zelenak (Duke; Google Scholar) presents Moral Duty or “Mere Cant”? Tax Protesting Through the Looking Glass, 2024 Mich. St. L. Rev. __:

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Morrow Presents The Income Tax As A Market Correction At Boston College

Rebecca Morrow (Wake Forest; Google Scholar) presented The Income Tax as a Market Correction at Boston College yesterday as part of its Tax Policy Collaborative hosted by Jim Repetti and Diane Ring:

I confess. As a tax professor, it has long hurt my feelings that economists label tax as a market distortion. My field is summed up as an impurity on the otherwise pristine complexion of the economist’s pure market. I like to think that tax scholars are not so disparaging of economics. We do not view economically-motivated action as a distortion to our tax system, but a component of it. It is tax planning. This Article proposes that tax should be viewed as a component of a market system. Just as tax scholarship acknowledges that an imagined world in which tax is imposed in isolation does not and cannot exist, might economic scholarship similarly concede that it lacks a robust basis to characterize tax as a distortion to the market, as opposed to a component of it? After all, could a market exist without government enforcement of market rules, and could a lasting, functioning government exist without tax?

This Article argues that an income tax is the vestibular system of our market economy. It can balance the market and help send better information to our brains. Without an income tax to balance the otherwise harmful effects of excessive risk aversion, narrow framing, and the disposition effect, transactions would be made by brains that are preoccupied with avoiding loss.

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Thursday, November 21: Alex Raskolnikov (Columbia) will present Taxes and Tournaments, 2024 Mich. St. L. Rev. ___, and  Lawrence Zelenak (Duke; Google Scholar) will present Moral Duty or “Mere Cant”? Tax Protesting Through the Looking Glass, 2024 Mich. St. L. Rev. __, as part of the Michigan State Law Review Symposium. 

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Loayza Jordán Presents Contesting The Neoliberal Social Contract Today At APPEAL Reading Group

Fernando Loayza Jordán (Drexel; J.S.D. 2025, Yale; Google Scholar) presents Contesting the Neoliberal Social Contract today as part of the What is Capitalism? Reading Group hosted by the Association for the Promotion of Political Economy and the Law: 

The paper argues that progressive policymakers are often too quick to make discursive concessions to neoliberal understandings of taxation, with long-term consequences that may overshadow the short-term distributive wins. These discursive concessions can affect the possibility of future progressive tax policies, reinforcing antidemocratic understandings of citizenship and the democratic social contract generally. The paper presents a framework to assess the gravity of discursive concessions and proposes that progressive tax policymakers should consider democracy as an independent tax policy goal.

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Calderón Gómez Presents Too Hard To Insure Today At UC-Irvine

Luís Carlos Calderón Gómez (Cardozo; Google Scholar) presents Too Hard to Insure at UC-Irvine today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by Natascha Fastabend:

New kinds of private money—such as stablecoin—are thriving, with increasing circulation, growing acceptance, and rapid technological innovation. But this new money has an old problem: its vulnerability to runs. Bank runs can destabilize even well-regulated and healthy banks, and their spread can catalyze and amplify a system-wide financial crisis. Since the 1930s, policymakers have sought to protect our financial system from bank runs through public deposit insurance and other emergency response mechanisms. Those historically effective policy tools, however, are unavailable or ineffective in stopping bank runs on these new types of money. The Article proposes a new, if unconventional, solution to the financial contagion risks of these new kinds of money: taxation. A Pigouvian tax—unlike banking regulation or traditional response mechanisms—can reduce the risk of financial contagion by forcing private money issuers to internalize the social costs of contagion in their private decision-making.

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Zhang Presents Fiscal Citizenship And Taxpayer Privacy Today At NYU

Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar) presents Fiscal Citizenship And Taxpayer Privacy, 125 Colum. L. Rev. __ (2025) at NYU today as part of its Tax Policy and Public Finance Colloquium hosted by Daniel Shaviro:

Inequality has reached record levels, and the public shares a common belief that the ultra-rich—while accumulating enormous capital—have not borne their fair share of tax burdens. In response, commentators have called for transparency in the tax records of the wealthy and the powerful. The most dramatic illustration was the fight over former President Trump’s tax returns. It ended with the House Ways and Means Committee obtaining those returns—under the quiet blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court—and releasing them to the public. Even more consequential was the leak of ultra-wealthy taxpayers’ records to ProPublica in 2021. Those records revealed that the richest Americans exploited loopholes and tax doctrine to reduce, often to zero, their income-tax liabilities. The leak prompted lawsuits and congressional investigations over what some see as a major breach of the statutory guarantee of tax privacy. But secrecy has not always been the rule. At three critical junctures—the Civil War, the 1920s, and the 1930s—Congress made certain tax records available for public inspection, and newspapers published the incomes of the billionaires of the time. Today, Finland, Norway, and Sweden all allow a significant degree of disclosure of individual tax data.

This Article intervenes in the tax-confidentiality debate by building a novel analytical framework of fiscal citizenship.

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Tuesday, November 12: Luís Carlos Calderón Gómez (Cardozo; Google Scholar) will present Too Hard to Insure as part of the UC-Irvine Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please RSVP here. 

Tuesday, November 12: Alex Zhang (Emory; Google Scholar) will present Fiscal Citizenship And Taxpayer Privacy, 125 Colum. L. Rev. __ (2025), as part of the NYU Tax Policy and Public Finance Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please contact Daniel Shaviro.

Friday, November 15: Rebecca Morrow (Wake Forest; Google Scholar) will present The Income Tax as a Market Correction as part of the Boston College Tax Policy Collaborative. If you would like to attend, please contact Jim Repetti, or Diane Ring.

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Harpaz Presents Global Tax Wars And The Shift To Source-Based Taxation Today At Alabama

Assaf Harpaz (Georgia; Google Scholar) presents Global Tax Wars and the Shift to Source-Based Taxation at Alabama today as part of its Junior/Senior SEC Workshop:

Current debates in international taxation often center on how to fairly allocate taxing rights among different jurisdictions. When an enterprise earns income abroad, the country of residence (where the taxpayer resides) and the country of source (where income is generated) have legitimate, competing claims to tax that income. The question is further complicated in a digital economy where tax avoidance and profit shifting practices are abundant.

The international tax system has traditionally favored residence-based taxation. Now, international taxation is at a crossroads with intergovernmental organizations battling to redefine the principles of cross-border taxation. The regime has been dominated by the Global North through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which has drawn backlash due to its undemocratic procedure and unfavorable outputs for developing countries. The United Nations has held a relatively peripheral role in global tax governance, though this could change with an upcoming UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation – an initiative overwhelmingly supported by developing countries.

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Galle Presents How To Tax The Rich: Options For 2025 And Beyond Today At Emory

Brian Galle (Georgetown; Google Scholar) presents How to Tax the Rich: Options for 2025 and Beyond at Emory today as part of its Faculty Colloquium Series:

How should we pay for the future? This monograph describes and compares major proposals to reform federal individual income and transfer (that is, estate and gift) taxes. The Biden administration and senior Senate Democrats have outlined plans for a “minimum income tax” on multi-millionaires in which very wealthy households (generally those worth over $100 million) would be taxed on the value of appreciated but unsold property. The administration’s proposal was dubbed the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax, or BMIT. Yet some other Senators, and advocates outside government, have pointed to possible constitutional limits on that proposal, as well as offering critiques of its economic and political merits. ... 

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Kysar Presents Sunrise Legislation Today At UC-Irvine

Rebecca Kysar (Fordham; Google Scholar) presents Sunrise Legislation at UC-Irvine today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by Natascha Fastabend:

Certain philosophers and legal scholars have advocated for the increased use of “sunrise legislation,” which takes effect only after a delay. In their view, sunrise legislation can obscure the identify of those whom the law benefits and burdens, thereby achieving a “veil of ignorance” effect that can facilitate public-minded reforms. In another context, sunrise legislation has not fared as well, with scholars questioning its function, as well as that of other devices like grandfathering, in mitigating the losses sustained by private parties because of legal reform. This “legal transition” literature generally concludes that the government need not, and should not, compensate for harms caused by legal reforms because doing so induces actors to engage in inefficient behavior.

In recent decades, lawmakers are increasingly using sunrise laws, typically to delay tax increases. They do so not to mask the identify of those burdened by the law or to provide transition relief but to comply with budget rules and meet fiscal pressures.

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Tuesday, October 29: Rebecca Kysar (Fordham; Google Scholar) will present Sunrise Legislation as part of the UC-Irvine Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please RSVP. 

Wednesday, October 30: Brian Galle (Georgetown; Google Scholar) will present How to Tax the Rich: Options for 2025 and Beyond as part of the Emory Faculty Colloquium Series. 

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Ryan Presents Mothers In Jails: A Taxing Matter Today At Cumberland

Kerry A. Ryan (St. Louis) presents Mothers in Jails: A Taxing Matter at Cumberland today as part of its Tax Policy Speaker Series hosted by Tracey Roberts:

This year, about 200,000 women will spend a day in prison or jail, separated from their families. Women are disproportionately confined in local jails, as opposed to state or federal prisons. A majority of women in jails have not been convicted of a crime and are awaiting trial, and most of these women are mothers (and most are single mothers). Many women, particularly primary caregivers, simply cannot afford bail so must await trial in jail. Even once convicted, women are more likely to be serving a sentence in jail rather than prison.

Prior literature detailed the devastating economic and personal consequences of incarceration on mothers. In addition, several recent articles detail the negative tax and social benefit effects of working while confined in state or federal prisons. This article contributes to both of those literatures by focusing on the unique tax issues faced by single mothers incarcerated in local jails, as opposed to state or federal prisons. This article will demonstrate that the short-term nature of most jail confinements and the existence of pre-trial detainees in the jail population impacts the availability of certain family-related tax benefits to detained (or previously detained) single mothers.

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