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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Tahk: A Tale Of Two Credits

Susannah Camic Tahk (Wisconsin; Google Scholar), A Tale of Two Credits: 

This Essay considers the relationship between the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit in an era where the child tax credit has taken center stage. Accounts of the U.S. welfare state often conceive of its political support as inherently limited. Programs with anti-poverty missions face a restricted supply of legislative interest and public regard. In the CTC and the EITC though, the tax code currently incorporates two major anti-poverty programs. To what extent do the two programs compete for political resources? Insofar as they do, which is winning, and why? How might we expect their relative trajectories to move in the future? This Essay investigates those questions using legislative history, program data, and a novel survey experiment.

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Teaching Law In The Age of Generative AI

John Bliss (Denver; Google Scholar), Teaching Law in the Age of Generative AI, 64 Jurimetrics 111 (2024): 

With the rise of large language models capable of passing law school exams and the Uniform Bar Exam, how should legal educators prepare their students for an age of transformative technological change? As text-generating AI is being integrated in legal research platforms and word processing software, which automate the drafting of legal documents based on human prompts, lawyers are increasingly adopting this technology as a standard tool of legal research and writing. This Article explores the implications of these developments for legal education, focusing on pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment.

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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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Wallace & Davis: Brief Of Amici Curiae Tax Professors In South Carolina Amazon Case

Clint Wallace (South Carolina; Google Scholar) & Tessa Davis (South Carolina), Brief of Amici Curiae Tax Law Professors for the South Carolina Supreme Court in Support of Respondent: 

In this appeal, Petitioner Amazon Services, LLC challenges the holding of the Administrative Law Court, as affirmed by the Court of Appeals, that Amazon is a “retailer” or “seller” under the South Carolina tax statute that was in effect prior to 2019. That holding properly confirmed the authority of Respondent South Carolina Department of Revenue to collect sales tax from Amazon for retail sales of third-party merchant-owned products on Amazon’s website.

Amazon has attempted to advance an ahistorical, one-size-fits-all litigation and business strategy that has worked for Amazon in other states—but it has done so here with little or no regard for the specific legal context in South Carolina.

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Saito Posts Two Tax Papers On SSRN

Blaine Saito (Ohio State; Google Scholar), Tax Contrarians, 58 U. Mich. J.L. Reform ___ (2026): 

Taxation is an important part of democratic society, and recent work has focused on how tax aids democracy and the lack of democratic processes in the development of tax policy. One of the concerns is that a loss of democracy in tax policy making processes amplifies certain voices that in turn bend the tax system to their desires and further entrench their power.

But much of the discussion on democracy has focused on areas outside the important development of administrative guidance. This article proposes an intervention to address these concerns. Drawing on some of the literature in administrative law and democratic governance, it proposes a substantive regulatory contrarian within the Department of Treasury organized around the ideals of democratic equality and engaging those who are currently not heard in the process of developing administrative guidance. The contrarian would occupy a role of both advocate and bridge, communicating with these outside groups of matters within the agencies and noting when certain asks are unworkable. It also would be required to consult with the IRS and Treasury before they issue regulations and have the ability to comment on administrative guidance. Furthermore, should the contrarian provide clear reasoning and demonstrate strong engagement with outside groups, and should Treasury and the IRS adopt significant parts of the contrarian’s proposals, it should serve as a means to persuade courts in supporting Treasury’s outcomes. 

While it is a partial and moderate solution, the contrarian could increase participation and likely shift outcomes, especially when paired with interventions other scholars and advocates have proposed. This proposal helps to increase the democratic values within our tax system and its policy making process. 

Endowing Democratic Equality in Taxation, 63 Hous. L. Rev. __ (2026): 

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Infanti: Taxation And Slavery In Colonial America

Anthony C. Infanti (Pittsburgh; Google Scholar), The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America (NYU Press 2025): 

The Human Toll documents how the American colonies used tax law to dehumanize enslaved persons, taxing them alongside valuable commodities upon their forced arrival and then as wealth-generating assets in the hands of slaveholders. Anthony C. Infanti examines how taxation also proved to be an important component for subjugating and controlling enslaved persons, both through its shaping of the composition of new arrivals to the colonies and through its funding of financial compensation to slaveholders for the destruction of their “property” to ensure their cooperation in the administration of capital punishment. The variety of tax mechanisms chosen to fund slaveholder compensation payments conveyed messages about who was thought to benefit from―and, therefore, who should shoulder the burden of―slaveholder compensation while opening a revealing window into these colonial societies.

While the story of colonial tax law is intrinsically linked to advancing slavery and racism, Infanti reveals how several colonies used the power of taxation as a means of curtailing the slave trade. Though often self-interested, these efforts show how taxation can be used not only in the service of evil but also to correct societal injustices. Providing a fascinating account of slavery’s economic entrenchment through the history of American tax law, The Human Toll urges us to consider the lessons that fiscal history holds for those working in the reparations movement today.

Reviews

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Brooklyn Symposium: Brad Borden And Section 1031

• Bradley T. Borden (Brooklyn; Google Scholar), Tax-Law Analysis Applied to Section 1031 Exchanges & Proximate Business Transactions, 18 Brook. J. Corp. Fin. & Com. L. 351 (2024)
• Bradley T. Borden (Brooklyn; Google Scholar), Tax-Law Analysis, 18 Brook. J. Corp. Fin. & Com. L. 385 (2024)
• Bradley T. Borden (Brooklyn; Google Scholar), The Section 1031 Exchange Requirement, 18 Brook. J. Corp. Fin. & Com. L. 407 (2024)

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

There is quite a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with new papers debuting on the list at #3, #4, and #5.

1. [623 Downloads]  The Role Of Unrealized Gains And Borrowing In The Taxation Of The Rich, by Edward Fox (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Zachary Liscow (Yale; Google Scholar)
2. [365 Downloads]  The Legality of Charitable Remedial Discrimination, by Roger Colinvaux (Catholic University)
3. [209 Downloads]  Public International Law and Tax Law: A Fair and Equitable Nexus in International Taxation, by Pasquale Pistone (IBFD, Vienna; Google Scholar), Sam van der Vlugt (IBFD, Erasmus; Google Scholar) & Mariya Serafimova (European Court of Justice)
4. [195 Downloads]  The Tariffs Are Coming! The Tariffs Are Coming!, by Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar)
5. [166 Downloads]  Stock Dividends, The Supreme Court, And The Great Crash Of 1929, by John Brooks (Fordham; Google Scholar) (reviewed by Blaine Saito (Ohio State; Google Scholar) here)

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a daily email with links to tax posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.

Viswanathan: Damage Award Taxation And Distributive Justice

Manoj Viswanathan (UC-San Francisco; Google Scholar), Damage Award Taxation and Distributive Justice, 109 Cornell L. Rev. __ (2025):

Damage awards are often intended to make plaintiffs whole, yet their tax treatment often undermines this goal. Plaintiffs frequently face unfavorable tax consequences that reduce the net value of their awards, leaving them worse off relative to the position they would have occupied absent the defendant’s wrongful conduct. Despite their significant impact, the tax costs of damage awards remain an overlooked issue in both legal scholarship and judicial decision-making. 

This Article makes several contributions to the discourse on damage award taxation. First, it develops a novel taxonomy of unfavorable tax consequences, systematically categorizing the ways in which tax liabilities can undermine “make whole” remedies. While prior scholarship has primarily focused on the effects of progressive taxation in employment discrimination claims, this Article demonstrates that unfavorable tax consequences affect a much broader range of legal claims. Second, it highlights the disproportionate impact of unfavorable tax consequences on low-income plaintiffs, who are significantly more vulnerable to progressive tax rates and the loss of critical, means-tested tax benefits.

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Richard Pomp Receives University Of Connecticut Distinguished Faculty Research Scholar Award

UConn Today, Office of the Provost Honors Professor Richard Pomp: 

The UConn Office of the Provost has honored UConn Law Professor Richard Pomp with the 2024 Distinguished Faculty Research Scholar Award.

The recognition is among the Provost Awards for Excellence in Community-Engaged Scholarship, which celebrate every year the significant efforts of faculty, staff, students, teams, and community partners who work to address critical community issues through collaborative, mutually beneficial, and creative exchange of knowledge and resources.

The award is the latest of several recent high-level honors for Pomp, the Alva P. Loiselle Professor of Law and a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor. In 2023, he was inducted as a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel and received the Distinguished Service Award from the University of Connecticut Law School Alumni Association.

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Eyal-Cohen Reviews Harpaz's Global Tax Wars In The Digital Era

This week, Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Assaf Harpaz (Georgia; Google Scholar), Global Tax Wars in the Digital Era, 75 Am. U. L. Rev. __ (2025).

Global tax has long been a tag-a-war in the international policy battleground for competing economic interests, but the rise of digitalization has intensified these tensions. The international tax system was designed for an economy built on factories and physical assets, not one where trillion-dollar businesses derive profits from digital services that transcend borders. As governments struggle to capture fair tax revenues from multinational companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon that generate billions in revenue across borders without physical presence, traditional tax rules—rooted in the early 20th century—are increasingly inadequate.

In this Article, Harpaz delves into this evolving conflict unpacking the “tax wars” between the Global North and Global South. He argues for a fundamental shift in how global tax rights are allocated toward source-based taxation and proposes a significant economic presence doctrine to modernize the rules governing international tax. 

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AALS Call For Papers: Reflecting On The Journal of Legal Education

AALS, A Symposium Issue of the Journal of Legal Education

The Journal of Legal Education is the official scholarly journal of the AALS and in that role it has and continues to play an important role in chronicling the development of legal education in the United States. For a special symposium issue dedicated to analyzing that role, the editors invite submissions of articles that reflect on one or more articles published in the journal which at the time of publication discussed the future of United States legal education and then assess how the events in the years following the publication exhibited the arguments put forward by the authors. For example, publication of the McCrate and Carnegie reports inspired articles on the what the future should hold in light of those studies. How prescient were the authors of those articles? Other articles have discussed and assessed what at the time were new developments in pedagogy, scholarship, and the profession in general. Have those developments simply continued, flourished, or withered away?

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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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Brooks & Gamage: The Original Meaning Of The Sixteenth Amendment

John R. Brooks (Fordham; Google Scholar) & David Gamage (Missouri-Columbia; Google Scholar), The Original Meaning of the Sixteenth Amendment, 102 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1 (2024) (reviewed by Jonathan H. Choi (USC; Google Scholar) here):

The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution enshrines Congress’s “power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived.” Challenges to the exercise of that power have typically turned on whether the thing being taxed is “income” or not. In the most recent example, the 2023 Supreme Court case of Moore v. United States, taxpayers have argued that the Sixteenth Amendment only authorizes taxation of realized income—this is, that gain from appreciated property can only be taxed as “income” when there has been a sale or conversion of that property.

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Math Symbols In The Tax Code

Will Danielson Lanier (J.D. & LL.M. 2024, NYU), Note, Math Symbols in the Tax Code, 99 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1793 (2024):

Our tax code is stuck in the Middle Ages. The Internal Revenue Code (“the Code”), codified at 26 U.S.C., uses the concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, as one might expect of a tax code. But, disdaining the 1500s invention of the elementary math symbols ‘+,’ ‘–,’ ‘×,’ and ‘÷,’ the Code instead uses complicated English constructions such as “any amount of X which bears the same ratio to that amount as Y bears to Z.”

I propose that we use these elementary math symbols in our tax laws. To see whether this would increase the laws’ legibility, I conducted a preregistered, randomized, controlled trial involving 161 participants. One group received the actual Code, the other, a translation using math symbols. Both groups were asked to solve the same two Code-based tax problems. For the first problem, use of the translation with math symbols increased answer accuracy from 25% to 70%. For the second problem, answer accuracy increased from 11% to 50%.

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Blank & Osofsky: Automated Agencies: The Transformation Of Government Guidance

Joshua D. Blank (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar) & Leigh Osofsky (North Carolina; Google Scholar), Automated Agencies: The Transformation of Government Guidance (Cambridge University Press, 2025): 

Automated Agencies is the definitive account of how automation is transforming government explanations of the law to the public. Joshua D. Blank and Leigh Osofsky draw on extensive research regarding the federal government's turn to automated legal guidance through chatbots, virtual assistants, and other online tools. Blank and Osofsky argue that automated tools offer administrative benefits for both the government and the public in terms of efficiency and ease of use, yet these automated tools may also mislead members of the public. Government agencies often exacerbate this problem by making guidance seem more personalized than it is, not recognizing how users may rely on the guidance, and not disclosing that the guidance cannot be relied upon as a legal matter. After analyzing the potential costs and benefits of the use of automated legal guidance by government agencies, Automated Agencies charts a path forward for policymakers by offering detailed policy recommendations.

Reviews

‘Blank and Osofsky thoughtfully explore the pitfalls of the federal government's use of automated guidance tools to answer questions about legal rights and obligations. A cautionary tale for those inclined to trust the advice such tools provide. Essential reading for anyone interested in making government really work for ordinary people.'—Kristin E. Hickman, University of Minnesota Law School

‘Both timely and foundational, this book reveals how the US government already uses computers to provide automated legal guidance and shows the promise and pitfalls of this approach. This careful book is neither starry-eyed nor dismissive about automated legal guidance; rather, Automated Agencies provides a realistic picture of where such guidance stands now and suggests a path forward that allows the government to take advantage of these powerful tools while still protecting those who use the tools. Automated Agencies is essential reading.'—Sarah Lawsky, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law

‘No topic in administrative law has been as understudied, relative to its real-world significance, as the ways in which agencies explain the law to the general public. The topic is becoming ever more important, as agencies develop methods of providing online automated guidance. With Automated Agencies, Professors Blank and Osofsky have provided the foundational work on the subject, examining it from every angle and concluding with thoughtful recommendations for agencies to follow. Like the best automated guidance, Automated Agencies is written in reader-friendly plain English, while scrupulously avoiding the perils of ‘simplexity.'—Lawrence A. Zelenak, Duke Law School

‘AI is the next great challenge for governance. Automated Agencies, written by two of the nation's leading scholars on the subject, does a masterful job of capturing the pitfalls in how administrative agencies use AI to provide legal guidance to the public and of charting a path forward that is fairer and more effective.'—Christopher J. Walker, University of Michigan Law School

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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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Pittsburgh Tax Review Publishes New Issue

The Pittsburgh Tax Review has published Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024):

• Blaine G. Saito (Ohio State; Google Scholar), Participatory Antipoverty Tax Coordination, 22 Pitt. Tax Rev. 1 (2024)
• Lynn D. Lu (CUNY; Google Scholar), Fighting Poverty Everywhere All at Once, 22 Pitt. Tax Rev. 23 (2024)
• Kathryn Menefee & Amy Matsui (National Women’s Law Center), “Welfaring” The Child Tax Credit: How Racial and Gender Stereotypes Have Blocked Expansions to the CTC and Undermined Its Ability to Reduce Poverty, 22 Pitt. Tax Rev. 43 (2024)

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New Tax Articles

• Emily Cauble (Wisconsin; Google Scholar), Administering Facts-And-Circumstances-Based Tax Tests, 76 Baylor L. Rev. 249 (2024)
• Shawn Xiaoguang Chen (University of Western Australia), Vulnerability to Tax Enforcement and Spillovers of Corruption: Cross-Industry Evidence from China, 40 J. L. Econ. & Org. 289 (2024)
• Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama; Google Scholar), Tax Incentives for Investment Crowdfunding: A Comparative Analysis, 22 Colo. Tech. L. J. 235 (2024) (reviewed by David Elkins (Netanya;  Google Scholar) here)
• Michael J. Graetz (Columbia; Google Scholar), Sovereignty, Sins, and the Reassertion of Primary Taxing Rights by the United States, 186 Tax Notes Fed. 1399 (Feb. 24, 2025)
• Adam Kern (San Diego; Google Scholar), Reports of Pillar 2’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated, 186 Tax Notes Fed. 1471 (Feb. 24, 2025)

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Elkins Reviews Hemel's Law And The New Dynamic Public Finance

This week, David Elkins (Netanya, Google Scholar) reviews Daniel Hemel (NYU; Google Scholar), Law and the New Dynamic Public Finance, 43 Yale J. Reg. ___ (2026).

In this week’s feature article, Professor Daniel Hemel takes us on a fascinating journey through the new dynamic public finance (NDPF), explaining its teachings and describing how they might be applied in the legal discourse.

NDPF focuses on the recognition that individuals’ skill or capacity to earn income (described in the literature as ϑ) and government policy both change over time. Prior models implicitly assumed these to be static. For example, in a groundbreaking paper (before he himself become a founding father of NDPF) Mirrlees argued that the optimal progressivity of income taxes is a function of the distribution of ϑ in society (at the extreme, were ϑ equally distributed, the government could raise revenue through a lump sum tax and avoid the distortions of an income tax) and of the elasticity of labor (the more responsive that labor-leisure choices are to the tax rate, the less we would want to tax).

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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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The Tax Lawyer Publishes New Issue

The Tax Lawyer has published Vol. 78, No. 1 (Fall 2024): 

• Allison Christians (McGill; Google Scholar) & Tarcisio Diniz Magalhaes (Antwerp; Google Scholar), 17 Ways to Regulate Big Tech with Tax, 78 Tax Law. 1 (2024) 
• Michael Hatfield (Washington; Google Scholar), Tax in Law Schools, 78 Tax Law. 71 (2024) 
• Grayson M. P. McCouch (Florida), Grantor Trust Gambits, 78 Tax Law. 117 (2024) 

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

This week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads is the same as last week's list, with some reshuffling of the order within the Top 5.

1. [577 Downloads]  The Role Of Unrealized Gains And Borrowing In The Taxation Of The Rich, by Edward Fox (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Zachary Liscow (Yale; Google Scholar)
2. [336 Downloads]  The Legality of Charitable Remedial Discrimination, by Roger Colinvaux (Catholic University)
3. [304 Downloads]  A Roadmap to NIL and Taxation, by Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) & Yariv Brauner (Florida; Google Scholar)
4. [279 Downloads]  Tax Treaties Do Not Protect Overseas Americans, by Laura Snyder (Association of Americans Resident Overseas), Karen Alpert (FixTheTaxTreaty.org) & John Richardson (TaxResidentAbroad.com)
5. [274 Downloads]  Sustainable Tax Governance: A Shared Responsibility, by Hans Gribnau (Tilburg)

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a daily email with links to tax posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.

Call For International Tax Papers

Call For Papers: 

The Master of Taxation Program at the University of Akron College of Business invites submissions for the Second Akron Symposium on International Tax and Tax Policy, to be held on May 2, 2025.

We welcome submissions from tax scholars addressing a broad range of international tax and tax policy issues. While all topics within this field are encouraged, we are particularly interested in papers exploring the intersection of AI and taxation, including but not limited to:

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Colinvaux: The Legality Of Charitable Remedial Discrimination

Roger Colinvaux (Catholic), The Legality of Charitable Remedial Discrimination, 135 Yale L.J. __ (2025):

The Article considers whether a charity may engage in affirmative action by using race or other identity-based criteria in providing charitable assistance. Until recently, charities enjoyed the freedom to determine their mission and render appropriate charitable assistance, including by taking positive race conscious steps to fix the harmful effects of racial discrimination. In a groundbreaking ruling, however, American Alliance for Equal Rights v. Fearless Fund, a divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit forced a charity to stop awarding grants to Black women-owned businesses, finding that doing so likely violated the Civil Rights Act of 1866. If the 11th Circuit panel’s unprecedented interpretation is correct, an interpretation now backed rhetorically by the Trump Administration, it will upend decades of precedent in charity law, place at risk millions of dollars of charitable funds set aside for the benefit of racial groups, including at religious charities, and undermine the principle of philanthropic freedom, namely that charities exist as an alternative to government in support of pluralism, innovation, and private association.

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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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Jensen: Why College (And Law School) Endowments Should Not Be Taxed

University of Texas Civitas Institute:  Why Endowments of Educational Institutions Shouldn't be Taxed, by Erik M. Jensen (Case Western):

In the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, Congress enacted the “endowment tax”—a tax on the “net investment income” from the endowments of some private colleges and universities. This essay briefly describes the tax, points out some of its defects, and considers whether Congress could expand the taxation of educational institutions, as the Trump administration has proposed. ...

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How The Income Tax Affects Black, Hispanic, And White Households

William Gale (Tax Policy Center; Google Scholar), Oliver Hall (Tax Policy Center) & John Sabelhaus (Tax Policy Center; Google Scholar): The Same But Different: How the Income Tax Affects Black and White Households:

The federal income tax does not explicitly take race or ethnicity into account; any two tax filing units with identical sources and level of income, deductions, and credits will face the same tax liability, regardless of group identity.

But there still may be disparate outcomes across groups because factors that affect liability may be correlated with group identity. For example, Black, Hispanic, and white households have different marriage rates, number of children, labor earnings, and wealth accumulation patterns, and these differences translate directly into income tax differences.

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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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Hemel: Law And The New Dynamic Public Finance

Daniel J. Hemel (NYU; Google Scholar), Law and the New Dynamic Public Finance, 43 Yale J. on Regul. __ (2026):

In recent years, economists working in public finance and related fields have applied a new set of models and methodologies to the problems of inequality and economic insecurity. This innovative approach—often known as “the new dynamic public finance”—emphasizes the challenges posed by productivity changes across the lifecycle and policy changes over time. The new dynamic public finance has generated important insights that often cut against the conventional wisdom in classical optimal tax theory, suggesting—for example—that capital income should be taxed and that higher capital income taxes can incentivize investment under certain circumstances. Mainstream economics has assimilated many of these insights, but with fleetingly few exceptions, legal scholars have yet to engage with the new dynamic public finance literature.

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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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Lesson From The Tax Court: After Loper-Bright, Hold The Mayo?

How much deference should courts give Treasury regulations?  Until 2011, courts answered that question differently from how they evaluated deference to regulations issued by other federal agencies.  In that year, however, the Supreme Court decided that Treasury regulations should be treated the same way as all federal regulations. Mayo Foundation v. United States, 562 U.S. 44 (2011).  That meant that Treasury regulations would be evaluated under the standard the Supreme Court had created in 1984 in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Nat'l Res. Def. Council, 467 U.S. 837 (1984).

Last year the Supreme Court decided to change it’s general approach to how and when it would defer to regulations issued by federal agencies.  In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024), the Court said it would no longer follow the approach it had adopted 40 years prior in Chevron.  [Snark: not that the Supreme Court has ever really followed Chevron.  For an excellent demonstration of how Chevron was honored more in the breach than in the execution, see Ann Graham, Searching For Chevron In Muddy Watters: The Roberts Court And Judicial Review Of Agency Regulations, 60 Admin. L. Rev. 229 (2008) (reviewing all cases in a single term).

So what is Loper-Bright’s impact on how courts should review Treasury regulations?  That’s the lesson we learn in Judge Weiler’s thoughtful opinion in Alan Hamel and Estate of Suzanne Hamel v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2025-19 (Feb. 15, 2025) (Judge Weiler).  There the taxpayers asked the Tax Court to reconsider a prior opinion where it had upheld a Treasury regulation under the Chevron standard.  In the course of rejecting the request, Judge Weiler teaches us how the Tax Court seems poised to interpret Loper-Bright as returning the law to it’s pre-Mayo status.  Tax exceptionalism alert!

Details below the fold.

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

This week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads is the same as last week's list, with some reshuffling of the order within the Top 5.

1. [361 Downloads]  The Role Of Unrealized Gains And Borrowing In The Taxation Of The Rich, by Edward Fox (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Zachary Liscow (Yale; Google Scholar)
2. [313 Downloads]  The Legality of Charitable Remedial Discrimination, by Roger Colinvaux (Catholic University)
3. [296 Downloads]  A Roadmap to NIL and Taxation, by Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) & Yariv Brauner (Florida; Google Scholar)
4. [266 Downloads]  Sustainable Tax Governance: A Shared Responsibility, by Hans Gribnau (Tilburg)
5. [261 Downloads]  Tax Treaties Do Not Protect Overseas Americans, by Laura Snyder (Association of Americans Resident Overseas), Karen Alpert (FixTheTaxTreaty.org) & John Richardson (TaxResidentAbroad.com)

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a daily email with links to tax posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.

Tax Prof Presentations At The Northeastern Junior Scholars Conference

Tax presentations at the two-day Northeastern Junior Scholars Conference (program): 

Assaf Harpaz (Georgia; Google Scholar), Artificial Intelligence and the Taxpayer Entity: 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the world and presents numerous challenges to legal and regulatory frameworks. The evolving, complex yet still ambiguous concept demands reconsidering longstanding doctrines that are at risk of obsoleteness. These tensions are highlighted in federal income taxation, which generally compartmentalizes taxpayers into individuals and business entities. Technological developments such as generative AI upend these conceptions given their capacity to create value and operate autonomously, interacting with the economy in ways that combine both human and non-human attributes.

Under current U.S. law, even the most advanced AI models are not directly subject to the income tax regime, as they are neither individuals nor separate business entities. AI is poised to dramatically reshape the tax base by altering both the sources of income (from humans to robots) and the type of that income (from labor to capital) that is subject to tax.

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Speck Reviews Hatfield's Tax In Law Schools

This week, Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Michael Hatfield (Washington; Google Scholar), Tax in Law Schools, 78 Tax Law. 71 (2024).

The 2025 law school application cycle promises the largest—and perhaps the deepest—pool of potential law students since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This welcome news, however, has unclear implications for specialized fields in legal education, including tax law. In Tax in Law Schools, Michael Hatfield draws on a decade of data from flagship public law schools to describe and discuss recent trends in tax course enrollment against a broader backdrop of changes in legal education. Although this article predates the current application cycle, Hatfield’s novel and compelling empirical analysis sheds light on how faculty can leverage this year’s burgeoning student interest in law school to build tax knowledge across the profession. As Hatfield argues, the stakes are civic and systemic, as well as personal to the faculty and students with interests in the area of law, policy, and practice.

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NYU-UCLA Tax Policy Symposium: The Earned Income Tax Credit At Fifty

NYU hosts a joint Tax Policy Symposium with UCLA today on The Earned Income Tax Credit at Fifty (agenda): 

NYU Law is pleased to host the 2025 NYU-UCLA Tax Policy Symposium, featuring a full day of panel discussions, along with a keynote address by Robert Greenstein, Visiting Fellow at The Brookings Institution and President Emeritus of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Panels, featuring a range of academics and policy makers, will evaluate the success of the Earned Income Tax Credit on distributional and efficiency grounds, while contemplating alternate approaches.

Panel 1: The First Fifty Years 

• Michelle Drumbl (Washington & Lee)
• Dylan Matthews (Vox)
• Erica Williams (DC Fiscal Policy Institute)
• Kirk Stark (UCLA) (moderator) 

Panel 2: The Short- and Long-Term Effects of the EITC

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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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Houston Hosts Energy Tax Conference Today

The University of Houston Law Center hosts the 7th Annual Denney L. Wright International Energy Tax Conference and 25th Annual Houston Business and Tax Law Journal Symposium today on International Energy Investment Challenges (in person or virtual):

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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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Ayres, Bankman & Hemel: The Law And Economics Of Guilt And Shame

Ian Ayres (Yale; Google Scholar), Joseph Bankman (Stanford) & Daniel J. Hemel (NYU; Google Scholar), The Law And Economics Of Guilt And Shame, 92 U. Chi. L. Rev. ___ (2025):

The negative moral emotions of guilt and shame impose real social costs but also create opportunities for policymakers to engender compliance with legal rules in a cost-effective manner. We present a unified model of guilt and shame that demonstrates how legal policymakers can harness negative moral emotions to increase social welfare. The prospect of guilt and shame can deter individuals from violating moral norms and legal rules, thereby substituting for the expense of state enforcement. But when legal rules and law enforcement fail to induce total compliance, guilt and shame experienced by noncompliers can increase the law’s social costs. We identify specific circumstances in which rescinding a legal rule will improve social welfare because eliminating the rule reduces the moral costs of noncompliance with the law’s command. We also identify other instances in which moral costs strengthen the case for enacting legal rules and investing additional resources in enforcement because deterrence reduces the negative emotions experienced by noncompliers. We end by exploring the implications of our framework for legal policy across “guilt cultures” and “shame cultures,” for the debate over shaming sanctions, and for other moral emotions such as resentment and virtue. ...

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Florida Tax Review Publishes New Issue

The Florida Tax Review has published Vol. 27, No. 2 (Spring 2024): 

• Eduardo A. Baistrocchi (London School of Economics; Google Scholar), Global Tax Hubs, 27 Fla. Tax Rev. 407 (2024) 
• Bryan Camp (Texas Tech; Google Scholar), The Impact of SEC v. Jarkesy on Civil Tax Fraud Penalties, 27 Fla. Tax Rev. 478 (2024) 
• Emily Cauble (Wisconsin; Google Scholar), Phantom Tax Loopholes, 27 Fla. Tax Rev. 519 (2024) 
• Jonathan Farrar (Wilfrid Laurier University; Google Scholar) & Harjot Mehmi (Toronto Metropolitan University), The Association Between Fairness and Judicial Decision-Making, 27 Fla. Tax Rev. 586 (2024) 

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New Tax Papers

• Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.; Google Scholar), Unpacking the Most Important Paragraph in Loper Bright
• Douglas Berman (Ohio State; Google Scholar), Jana Hrdinova (Ohio State) & Dexter Ridgway (Ohio State), Tinkering with Taxes: Contextualizing Proposals to Alter Ohio's Marijuana Tax Rate and Revenue Allocations
• Jennifer Blouin (Penn), Linda Krull (Oregon) & Leslie Robinson (Dartmouth), The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and Internal Capital Market Efficiency: The Role of Accounting
• Roger Colinvaux (Catholic University), The Legality of Charitable Remedial Discrimination
• Jeff Gordon (Yale; Google Scholar), Carbon Shelters: Carbon Accounting as Tax Law, 114 Calif. L. Rev. ___ (2026)

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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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The Top Five New Tax Papers

This week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads is the same as last week's list, with some reshuffling of the order within the Top 5.

1. [344 Downloads]  The Role Of Unrealized Gains And Borrowing In The Taxation Of The Rich, by Edward Fox (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Zachary Liscow (Yale; Google Scholar)
2. [289 Downloads]  A Roadmap to NIL and Taxation, by Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) & Yariv Brauner (Florida; Google Scholar)
3. [276 Downloads]  The Legality of Charitable Remedial Discrimination, by Roger Colinvaux (Catholic University)
4. [265 Downloads]  Sustainable Tax Governance: A Shared Responsibility, by Hans Gribnau (Tilburg)
5. [255 Downloads]  Tax Treaties Do Not Protect Overseas Americans, by Laura Snyder (Association of Americans Resident Overseas), Karen Alpert (FixTheTaxTreaty.org) & John Richardson (TaxResidentAbroad.com)

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a daily email with links to tax posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.

Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Saito Reviews Brooks's Stock Dividends, The Supreme Court, And The 1929 Crash

This week, Blaine Saito (Ohio State; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by John R. Brooks (Fordham; Google Scholar), Stock Dividends, the Supreme Court, and the Great Crash of 1929:  

Technical rules are often seem “small.” Their effects are usually confined to certain areas, even if they are important. But in his piece Stock Dividends, the Supreme Court, and the Great Crash of 1929, John R. Brooks shows how seemingly minor technical can burst into a wider reach. It shows how confusion of such rules and how they interact with broader social circumstances can create major problems.

Brooks shows how in the 1920s, stock dividends led to phantom income. The creation of that phantom income aided the frothiness that eventually led to the Great Crash of 1929–30. While today we think of a stock dividend as akin to a stock split, at the time there was a significant difference. 

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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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SSRN Tax Professor Rankings

SSRN has updated its monthly ranking of 750 American and international law school faculties and 3,000 law professors by (among other things) the number of paper downloads from the SSRN database.  Here is the new list (through February 1, 2025) of the Top 25 U.S. Tax Professors in two of the SSRN categories: all-time downloads and recent downloads (within the past 12 months):

		All-Time			Recent
1	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	241,007	1	Jonathan Choi (USC)	14,026
2	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	137,513	2	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	12,982
3	David Gamage (Missouri-Columbia)	131,089	3	Amy Monahan (Minnesota)	8,754
4	Dan Shaviro (NYU)	130,393	4	Zachary Liscow (Yale)	6,831
5	Lily Batchelder (NYU)	129,419	5	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	4,768
6	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	123,016	6	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	4,748
7	David Kamin (NYU)	116,105	7	Kim Clausing (UCLA)	4,606
8	Cliff Fleming (BYU)	109,760	8	Kristin Hickman (Minnesota)	4,575
9	Ari Glogower (Northwestern)	106,240	9	D. Dharmapala (UC-Berkeley)	3,966
10	Manoj Viswanathan (UC-SF)	105,626	10	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	3,761
11	Rebecca Kysar (Fordham)	105,354	11	David Gamage (Missouri-Columbia)	3,705
12	Mitchell Kane (NYU)	102,120	12	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	3,631
13	D. Dharmapala (UC-Berkeley)	56,514	13	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	3,546
14	Michael Simkovic (USC)	51,796	14	David Weisbach (Chicago)	3,539
15	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	45,972	15	Steve Johnson (Florida State)	3,470
16	Jonathan Choi (USC)	45,312	16	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	3,293
17	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	43,255	17	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	3,265
18	Paul Caron (Pepperdine)	42,887	18	Michael Simkovic (USC)	2,882
19	Richard Ainsworth (Boston Univ.)	41,286	19	Kyle Rozema (Northwestern)	2,779
20	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	37,102	20	Brian Galle (Georgetown)	2,519
21	Amy Monahan (Minnesota)	36,438	21	Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.)	2,434
22	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	35,877	22	Ed Fox (Michigan)	2,366
23	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	34,677	23	Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo)	2,363
24	Kim Clausing (UCLA)	33,271	24	Yariv Brauner (Florida)	2,210
25	Vic Fleischer (UC-Irvine)	31,797	25	Edward McCaffery (USC)	2,178

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