Bloomberg, Texas Tax Loophole Wrangler Has $1 Trillion List for Congress:

University of Texas law professor Calvin Johnson has been rummaging through the U.S. tax code with a goal of finding at least $1 trillion in annual revenue that could be raised without increasing rates. … “When Congress is ready to raise revenue, this is the best way to do it,” Johnson said, referring to the detailed provisions, which he collectively calls the Shelf Project [see proposals by subject, by revenue estimate] because they reside on a shelf, ready for use by lawmakers. … President Barack Obama’s deficit reduction plan, intended to trim $1.5 trillion from the budget over 10 years, includes a handful of the items on Johnson’s list such as taxing carried interest as wages instead of capital gains and repealing the last-in, first-out method of inventory accounting, which allows businesses to artificially lower tax liability.

Johnson collects ideas to investigate on trips to Washington, where he is a fellow at the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. He publishes his proposals in Tax Notes, a trade publication from the non-partisan Tax Analysts. Johnson has written about two-thirds of the proposals presented so far. Other academics and tax lawyers have written the rest. …

At least one person doesn’t like what he sees in the proposals. Los Angeles accountant Kip Dellinger said Johnson and his colleagues are “tax-and-spend people” and are misrepresenting themselves as being non-partisan.

Ed Kleinbard, a law professor at the University of Southern California, said Johnson’s work is a much-needed contribution from tax scholars, who have tended to focus on theoretical aspects of tax policy at the expense of contributing practical ideas to the debate in Washington.