This week, Sloan Speck (Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Brian D. Galle (UC Berkeley, Google Scholar), Consumption Taxes and the Constitution, 103 Wash. U. L. Rev. _ (forthcoming 2026).

The Supreme Court’s decision in Moore v. United States breathed new life into long-dormant constitutional questions about tax law’s realization doctrine. These questions not only implicate the structure and mechanics of current law. As Brian Galle demonstrates in a forthcoming essay, they also have significant import for the parameters of fundamental reform. Specifically, Galle examines well-pedigreed consumption-tax proposals, including value-added taxes, wage taxes, and Andrews-style cash-flow consumption taxes, and finds each lacking in light of the constitutional specter raised by Moore.

Why might each of these reforms fail? For Galle, a national VAT, as an excise tax, would avoid a constitutional realization requirement but would do little to tax the ultrarich (though a VAT might address some of the United States’ revenue needs, which isn’t nothing). By contrast, a wage tax would encourage conversion strategies, in which taxpayers find ways to recharacterize labor income as returns to capital—a pervasive issue under current law in contexts from S corporations to carried interests to the now-permanent § 199A pass-through deduction. Rules targeting these strategies would test a putative post-Moore constitutional realization standard; at the very least, conversion strategies call for clarity about the constitutional status of antiabuse provisions. Finally, cash-flow consumption taxes require taxing both borrowing proceeds (net of investment and payments) and imputed income (including, Galle argues, from the social benefits of ultrawealth). These structural requirements raise realization issues and therefore face pressure from an expansive understanding of Moore.

In bringing Moore’s trajectory to these longstanding reform proposals,Galle makes an important and agenda-setting contribution. As constitutional adjudication returns to taxation after a seventy-year hiatus, there’s a need to revisit the many innovations in tax instrument technology over these decades. Galle’s essay also presses on where this new constitutionalism will go in the future. For the current Court, realization almost certainly has some sort of constitutional relevance. But the definition of income may go deeper, especially as applied to imputed income and borrowing or under the Sixteenth Amendment’s original public meaning. An item may be realized but not otherwise income, income but not until realized, or neither income nor realized. Reformers will need to navigate this terrain under the substantial uncertainty created by Moore.

Galle’s essay and his Roosevelt Institute report emphasize that, for some households, wealth (and especially ultrawealth) confers consumption value by virtue of its accumulation, rather than its use. Wealth brings power—social capital, political influence, the ability to shape markets—without impinging on (or perhaps even enhancing) that store. For Galle, this consumption must be taxed, and a constitutional realization requirement would complicate any reasonable mechanism for taxing this consumption. But wealth also yields value when deployed in market transactions. If an ultrawealthy person, say, buys a newspaper, the newspaper may enhance that person’s political or social voice but also generates economic returns (or, more likely, massive losses). This second (economic) component has a relationship with the first (political or social) component, and, to me, it’s not entirely clear how to deal with this continuum. Wealth isn’t just one thing or another, and taxing these dual uses appropriately isn’t easy. Galle does great work in surfacing the issue, establishing the stakes, and (elsewhere) designing a tax instrument that reaches ultrawealth. But the underlying tension warrants further exploration.

Finally, inequality and tax systems both may change over time, and their relative horizons for durability matter when making major reforms. If the current moment of inequality is transient, while tax instruments are persistent, then policymakers should account for those instruments’ effects over this second period—especially if consumption taxes are less fair than income taxes. This dynamic carries particular weight if reform is intended to solve a problem—inequality—that may self-perpetuate through intergenerational transfers as well as emerge organically through the economy’s structure. To the extent that successful reform reduces self-perpetuation, the optimal tax instrument may focus more on organic emergence of ultrawealth. This possible need for nimbleness should be an express consideration in reform proposals.

Overall, Galle’s essay adds meaningfully to his larger project on taxing the ultrawealthy. Legal scholars and economists interested in inequality should find Galle’s essay illuminating, as should policymakers looking for reform proposals in the current era of economic change.

Here is the rest of this week’s SSRN Tax Roundup:

Reuven S. Avi-Yonah (Michigan), Can a Corporate Wealth Tax Happen?, U. Mich. L. & Econ. Rsch. Paper (forthcoming, May 7, 2026)

Janis Berzins (BI Norwegian Bus. Sch.), Nicolas Gavoille (Stockholm Sch. Econ., Riga) & Anna Zasova (U.N. U. World Inst. for Dev. Econ. Rsch.), Off the Books, Off the Hook? COVID-19, Labor-Tax Evasion, and Firms’ Employment Response (Apr. 28, 2026)

Chelsea Xiaoqing Chen (Unaffiliated), Balancing Settlor Control and Trustee Fiduciary Duty: Structural Approaches for Business-Holding Trusts in Switzerland (June 10, 2025)

Ruoying Chen (Austl. Nat’l U.), Property Law: Comparative, Empirical and Economic Analysis (Feb. 27, 2025)

Tian Deng (CUHK, Shenzhen), Sterling Huang (NYU) & Liandong Zhang (Singapore Mgmt. U., Sch. Acct.), Does Tax Deductibility Affect Executive Compensation? Evidence from Obamacare (May 2, 2026)

Sigrid Hemels (Erasmus U. Rotterdam), References to Dynamic International Standards and the Tax Legality Principle (May 2, 2026)

Sarah B. Lawsky (Illinois), Direct File as Formalization, 23 Pitt. Tax Rev. _ (forthcoming 2026)

Antonio Lopo Martinez (U. Coimbra, Inst. L. Rsch.), Algorithmic Tax Auditing and Due Process: Accountability, Transparency, and Taxpayer Rights in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (May 4, 2026)

Eashwar Nagaraj (Florida, Fisher Sch. Acct.), Shadow Lobbying During Tax Audits (Oct. 21, 2025)

Kalu Nnanna Nwonyuku (Fed. Inland Rev. Serv., Nigeria), The Evolution of Corporate Sustainability: From Peripheral Stewardship to Systemic Financial Integration—The Ledger as a Sentinel for National Resource Sovereignty (May 7, 2026)

Zia ur Rehman (Quaid-i-Azam U., Sch. Econ.) & Zahid Asghar (Quaid-i-Azam U.), Provincial General Sales Tax on Services After Pakistan’s 18th Amendment: Reform Lessons from Balochistan (Oct. 3, 2025)

Dauda Ridwan Sarumi (G. Elias & Co.) & Kanzullahi Hibatullahi (G. Elias & Co.), Assessing the Validity of the Taxes and Levies (Approved List for Collection) Act, 1998 in the Light of the Decision in A.G. Abia State v. Imo Trans. Co. Ltd. (2025) (Apr. 30, 2026)

Poonam Khaira Sidhu (Michigan), Facebook v. Commissioner: “Like” on New Regulations, but “It’s Complicated” on Valuations (June 16, 2025)

Poonam Khaira Sidhu (Michigan), Switching on the PPT: India’s ITAT on SC Lowy and Sky High Leasing (Sept. 9, 2025)

Alejandro Díaz Silva (Independent), The Constitutional and Economic Case Against Recurrent Property Taxation on Primary Residences: A Critical Analysis of Chile’s Impuesto Territorial in Comparative Perspective (May 3, 2026)

István Simon (Eötvös Loránd U.), The Ability-to-Pay Principle in Hungarian Context (Feb. 15, 2024)

István Simon (Eötvös Loránd U.), Constitutional Foundations of Hungarian Tax Law, Annales Universitatis Scientiarum Budapestinensis de Rolando Eötvös Nominatae Sectio Iuridica 237 (2025)

Mark Turner (Unaffiliated), The Bot Tax: Why AI Systems Should Pay Social Security on the Wages They Replace—A Labor Displacement Levy Proposal with Empirical Case Study (May 6, 2026)

Karl T. Ulrich (Wharton), The Satoshi Overhang: Why the Bear Case Is Bounded (Apr. 15, 2026)

Xinyun Zhou (U. Wollongong), Liangbo Ma (U. Wollongong, Sch. Bus.) & Shiguang Ma (U. Wollongong, Sch. Acct., Econ. & Fin.), When Do Effective Tax Rates Measure Tax Avoidance? Evidence from Reporting-Induced Variation in Book Income (May 2, 2026)