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:
Historic and ongoing discrimination have created stark racial disparities in the US, and the racial retirement wealth gap is one such example. This chapter examines inequality in retirement wealth across race and ethnic groups and discusses various aspects of federal and state tax law with an eye toward their impact on this inequality. It advances a few guiding principles that can aid in the construction of more racially equitable tax laws, including the benefits of credits over deductions, the need for meaningful limits on the use of tax subsidized retirement accounts, and a reminder that the core function of tax policy is to raise revenue, not subsidize private behavior. We also provide evidence that retirement savings exemptions predominately favor upper-income White households. Tax reform has immense potential to reduce racial retirement wealth inequality through robust funding of social security, reorienting retirement savings incentives toward moderate-income families, taxing retirement income streams across the states, and ensuring appropriate taxation of real estate wealth in retirement.
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