Christopher Hanna (SMU) has recently published a new article, forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, titled “A New View of Taxation.” Here’s the abstract:

Tax scholars have made a number of breakthrough discoveries in tax law going back to at least Thomas Hobbes and his observations on a consumption tax almost 400 years ago. In more recent times, in the 1970 and 1980s, a number of tax law scholars made very important contributions in understanding the similarities and differences between an income tax, a consumption tax and a wage tax, as well as developing a greater understanding in a related area-the time value of money. It seems, however, that in the last 30 years or so, the only breakthrough or significant discovery in tax law is in the area of taxing “super-normal returns,” sometimes referred to as “excess profits,” “excess returns,” or the economic term of “rents,” and applying this greater knowledge to various areas of tax law. This has resulted, in some cases, questioning what has been generally accepted tax theories and policies.