Amanda Athanasiou (Tax Notes), The Whiteness of Tax and How to Narrow the Race Gap:
Tax is probably not at the top of anyone’s list of the most diverse legal professions, nor should it be.
The 2020 U.S. census revealed a more racially diverse population than was measured a decade earlier, with Black or African American individuals accounting for 12.4 percent — 14.2 percent if you include those identifying as Black or African American in combination with another racial group. But just 1.4 percent of American Bar Association Section of Taxation members identified themselves as Black or African American, according to the ABA’s "2021 Goal III Report." That’s the lowest percentage of any of the ABA’s 22 sections.
“The contrast with other areas of the law — which have become more diverse, more progressive in different ways — is just stark,” Steven Dean of Brooklyn Law School told Tax Notes. …
The race gap in tax matters — not just for the sake of the diversity of the tax bar or the quality of legal and public services but also because the law depends on it. "Who it is that is helping to craft the law is important, and I think tax lawyers of color are underrepresented in those areas,” Alice Abreu of Temple University’s Beasley School of Law told Tax Notes. Abreu and Richard Greenstein, also a Beasley law professor, queried in their 2018 Denver Law Review article “Rebranding Tax/Increasing Diversity” whether the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act might have favored a more diverse population if the tax bar weren't so white.
“There are more people who would make excellent tax lawyers than do it,” Dean said, singling out former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, a classmate of his at Yale Law School who started as a tax lawyer at Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan. …
There is a school of thought that tax law is one of the legal industry’s purest meritocracies. Tax is race- and gender-blind, making it a good field for minorities, the argument goes.
Dorothy Brown, professor of tax law and critical race theory at Emory University School of Law, said in her book The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans — And How We Can Fix It that she went into tax law to escape racism and assumed that race would have nothing to do with her work. She had never been more wrong, she learned. …
Sources offered myriad suggestions for how to improve the situation, from the addition of tax as an introductory law school course to more effective recruiting and retention efforts. Clients can apply pressure to law firms, and the firms can apply pressure to the schools they recruit from, they said. Stakeholders at all levels have roles to play.
Tax faculties in law schools are almost universally tiny, and it’s hard to aim for racial balance in a group of one or two, but in schools with bigger tax faculties and graduate tax programs, “I think that is a place where the needle could be moved and firms could apply pressure,” Dean said. Law firms can ask tough questions about the tax faculty makeup at schools they’re hiring from, as well as what the schools are doing to make sure that faculty is racially diverse, he said. “There are tons of qualified folks out there; they just have to make the effort.” …
“I don’t think the race problem in tax is a function of any bad faith or any ill will or any animosity. I think it’s just a giant collective-action problem, and the question is where to stick that lever,” Dean said. “The good news is that you can do such small things and have such a big impact.”
