This week, Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar) reviews Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (UNC; Google Scholar), Taxing Attention, Emory L.J. (forthcoming).

Thomas offers an important contribution to one of the most difficult tax debates created by the digital economy. For years, much of the legal and tax literature has treated data as the core commodity exchanged when users access digital platforms for “free,” but in this Article Thomas argues that attention provides the better framing. That shift is far more than semantic, because it changes the legal analysis, sharpens the economic story, and produces a more workable tax framework. In my view, that is the Article’s main strength.

The Article’s major claim is clear and persuasive: users are not best understood as selling data to social media platforms, but rather as selling their attention in exchange for platform services. Before reading this Article, I had not considered the issue through that lens. Thomas develops this point carefully by showing that advertisers do not generally pay platforms because they want raw personal data in the abstract, but because platforms are able to capture, hold, and direct user attention toward advertisements. Data remains important in the background because it helps target and optimize that process, but it is not the actual product. Attention is. That reframing is persuasive because it aligns the tax analysis more closely with the platforms’ actual revenue models.

Part I strengthens the argument by reconstructing the current data-centered literature and taking it seriously on its own terms, rather than rushing to Thomas’s conclusion. That matters because the Article does not just state its disagreement with the current scholarship, but explains why the data model became dominant, what problems it was trying to solve, and where it begins to break down. In particular, the discussion of barter theory, data valuation, and geographic source shows why a data-based account creates persistent tax difficulties, since data is hard to value, hard to locate, and hard to conceptualize as property. By working through that literature carefully before turning to a different framework, the Article makes the shift to attention convincing rather than simply stated.

Part II is where Thomas builds the Article’s conceptual framework, drawing on attention-economy scholarship and the business logic of social media platforms to show that attention, unlike data, is scarce. This matters because scarcity is what gives a resource its economic significance. Information can be copied, shared, and reused at near zero marginal cost. Human attention cannot. There are only so many hours in a day and only so much cognitive bandwidth that can be directed toward content, advertisements, and algorithmically selected prompts. Thomas also shows how platforms intentionally design features such as endless feeds and social feedback to maximize the time users spend scrolling.

The Article’s second major contribution is doctrinal. Once the transaction is reframed as the sale of attention, the tax consequences become easier to describe because attention is better understood as the sale of time, or something close to personal services, rather than the transfer of a novel intangible asset. That shift matters because it reduces the need for elaborate and complex arguments about the valuation of digital data and the location of intangible property, which are precisely the kinds of arguments I found myself making as well before reading this Article. The Article’s analogies, including focus groups, seat fillers, and other compensated time-based arrangements, are especially effective in showing that tax law already has tools for handling exchanges in which a person gives time and receives value.

Thomas also develops the attention framework into a concrete tax proposal, arguing for taxing platforms rather than users through a Pigouvian tax tied to time spent on social media. That proposal fits the Article’s theory very well. If the relevant social harm arises from business models designed to maximize and monetize user attention, then time is not only the right conceptual unit, but also a sensible tax base for a corrective levy. The discussion of an alternative excise tax is also useful, both because it reflects sensitivity to administrability and political feasibility and because it offers a practical bridge between theory and implementation for readers who may be less persuaded by the Pigouvian design.

Another strength of the Article is the close fit it draws between tax design and social harm. Rather than simply treating social media as profitable and therefore taxable, Thomas connects the proposed tax response to the specific negative externalities generated by platforms whose business model depends on keeping users engaged for as long as possible. The discussion of addictive design, mental health costs, and polarization helps explain why social media, rather than the broader digital economy as a whole, warrant particular attention.

Overall, I think this is an excellent Article that makes a real contribution to tax scholarship on the digital economy. Its insight is elegant, its policy implications are meaningful, and, most importantly, it offers a better way to describe what is actually being exchanged in the social media marketplace. Once that changes, much of the tax analysis changes with it, because the Article does not merely propose a new tax, but offers a new way of understanding the taxable event in the first place. For scholars working on digital taxation, platform regulation, or the legal consequences of the attention economy, this is an important and highly worthwhile piece.

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

Ayyan Ali (U. Auckland), The Price of Reform: Corporate Financing Responses to the 2017 U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (Nov. 17, 2025)

Bridget J. Crawford (Pace), OnlyFans, More Than Taxpayers: Toward a Compliance Aesthetic in the Gig Economy (Feb. 19, 2026)

Ronald B. Davies (U. College Dublin), Margarita Lopez-Forero (Banque de France), Benjamin Michallet (Paris Sch. Econ.) & Johannes Scheuerer (Norwegian U. Life Sci.), Hidden Profits, Lost Jobs? Tax Havens and Employment Decisions (Mar. 5, 2026)

Md Omar Faruq Khan (Griffith U., Griffith Bus. Sch.), Brett Freudenberg (Curtin U.), Ingrid Millar (Griffith U., Griffith Bus. Sch.) & Melissa Belle Isle (Griffith U.), Tax Reporting Under GRI 207: An Exploratory Case Study of Shell PLC, 23 eJournal Tax Rsch. 263 (2025)

Miranda Perry Fleischer (San Diego), Equality of Opportunity and the Case for a Universal Child Allowance, 100 S. Cal. L. Rev. (forthcoming)

Johannes J. Gaul (Leibniz Ctr. Eur. Econ. Rsch. (ZEW)) & Inga Schulz (U. Mannheim, Acct. & Tax’n), The Effect of Global Anti-Tax Avoidance Efforts on Sub-National Profit Shifting (Mar. 05, 2026)

David Gamage (Missouri) & Goldburn Maynard Jr. (U. Conn.), Confronting the Tax-and-Oligarchy Catch-22, U. Ill. L. Rev. (forthcoming)

Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos (Indiana), Margaret Tarkington (Indiana) & Bridget J. Crawford (Pace), Spousal Economic Abuse: Tax Complicity and Solutions (Feb. 11, 2026)

Sourav Kumar Gupta (KPMG, Chicago), International Tax Reform and Multinational Corporate Behavior: Conceptual Insights from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Feb. 14, 2026)

John T. Holden (Indiana U., Kelley Sch. Bus.), Matthew C. Turk (Indiana U.), Marc Edelman (CUNY, Baruch College, Zicklin Sch. Bus.), Regulating Sports Prediction Markets, U. Ill. L. Rev. (forthcoming)

Ngoc Tu Ho (Independent), Corporate Tax and Foreign Direct Investment in Viet Nam, Social Sciences & Humanities Open (Mar. 5, 2026)

Saksham Jain (Symbiosis L. Sch., Pune), Input Tax Credit—A Loophole in Indian Legislation and Mechanism (Jan. 15, 2026)

Neha Kesarwani (Changu Kana Thakur Arts, Comm. & Sci. C.) & Ashok Wagh (Changu Kana Thakur Arts, Comm. & Sci. C.), Impact of GST on the Cost Structure and Pricing of Textile Products (Dec. 3, 2025)

Aaron Lichter (Ropes & Gray LLP, New York), Reform the Personal Holding Company Tax, 188 Tax Notes Fed. 2105 (Sept. 29, 2025)

Lawrence J. Liu (Stanford) & Alex Zhang (Emory), Tariffs and the Progressive Fiscal Constitution, 103 Wash. U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2026)

Nicholas A. Mirkay (Hawaii), Infusing Tax Policymaking with Economic Dignity, U. Hawai’i Richardson Sch. L. Rsch. Paper (Feb. 3, 2026)

Leopoldo Parada (King’s College London), The SbS Package and the Irony of Global Tax Cooperation, 9 Caribbean Tax L.J. 11 (2026)

Katherine Pratt (Loyola L. Sch., Los Angeles), Making the Best of Long-Term Care for Seniors, in Law and the 100-Year Life: Transforming Our Institutions for a Longer Lifespan (Anne Alstott et al. eds. 2025)

Richard Pomp (U. Conn.) & Monika Gradzki (U. Szczecin), Sales Taxes in the United States—Historical Development and Policy Analysis, 5 Warsaw L. Rev. 86 (2006)

Samantha J. Prince (Penn. St.), Vesting Villainy: The Call to Ban 401(K) Vesting Schedules, U. Penn. J. Bus. L. (forthcoming)

John Quinby (Independent), The Bitcoin Dismantlement Framework: Neutralizing Fractional Reserve Lending, Cantillon Effects, K-Shaped Polarization, and Tax Incentives: A Counter-Framework to the Fiat Stratification Feedback Model (Mar. 6, 2026)

Harshit Sangwan (Amity U.), Reforming Tax or Reshaping Rights? A Critical Analysis of the Income Tax Bill, 2025 (Nov. 3, 2025)

Andy Salazar (Independent), Structural Breaks in the Distributional Incidence of U.S. Federal Fiscal Policy, FY2000–FY2025 (Feb. 21, 2026)

Michael D. Sousa (Denver) & L. Alexis Whitley (Denver), The United States Health Care Crisis, Private Health Savings Accounts, and Bankruptcy, 34 Am. Bankr. Inst. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2026)

Firew Terefe (Aston U., Bus. Sch.), Sajid Mukhtar Chaudhry (Aston U., Fin. & Acct. Group) & Antonis Ballis (Aston U., Bus. Sch.), Corporate Income Taxation, Risk-Weighted Capital, and Bank Intermediation (Mar. 7, 2026)

Shann Turnbull (Int’l Inst. for Self-Governance), Reformatting Ostrom Design Principles to Make Corporations a Common Pool Resource: Using System Science to Extend Ostrom Scholarship Globally (June 19, 2024)

Wanru Wang (Capital U. Econ. & Bus.), Ying Li (Capital U. Econ. & Bus.) & Qinyuan Xue (Capital U. Econ. & Bus.), Tax Incentives and Tax Compliance During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in China (Mar. 6, 2026)