Sarah B. Lawsky (Northwestern; Google Scholar), Tax Law and Flexible Formalizations, 91 U. Chi. L. Rev. Online 1 (2024):

Changing technologies render tax law’s intricacy legible in new ways. Advances in large language models, natural language processing, and programming languages designed for the domain of tax law make formalizations of tax law that capture much of its substance and structure both possible and realistic. These new formalizations–what one might call flexible formalizations–will make law subject to computational analysis. 

This Essay builds upon existing work in computational law and digitalizing legislation to look at various possible outcomes of flexible formalizations for tax law including improving statutory drafting; developing and preventing abusive tax shelters; reducing costs for administrators; simplifying currently time-consuming tasks; increasing transparency; and making complexity more manageable.

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