TaxProf Blog

Charles Delmotte (Michigan State; Google Scholar), Beyond the Wealth Tax, 76 Ala. L. Rev. 325 (2024):

The increased emphasis on economic equality has led to an emerging popularity of a federal wealth tax. Prominent tax scholars and economists advocate imposing a 1% or 2% levy on households with assets exceeding a net worth of $50 million. A wealth tax attempts to tax capital owners on the market value of their assets and businesses in the absence of transactions determine such value. The proposal thus rests upon a dominant underlying assumption: that determining the market value of assets worth trillions of dollars is a surmountable and administrable task. Yet in reality, wealth taxes fail to satisfy the goals of tax policy, namely administrability, efficiency, and equity.

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Charles Delmotte (Michigan State; Google Scholar), Beyond the Wealth Tax, 76 Ala. L. Rev. 325 (2024):

The increased emphasis on economic equality has led to an emerging popularity of a federal wealth tax. Prominent tax scholars and economists advocate imposing a 1% or 2% levy on households with assets exceeding a net worth of $50 million. A wealth tax attempts to tax capital owners on the market value of their assets and businesses in the absence of transactions determine such value. The proposal thus rests upon a dominant underlying assumption: that determining the market value of assets worth trillions of dollars is a surmountable and administrable task. Yet in reality, wealth taxes fail to satisfy the goals of tax policy, namely administrability, efficiency, and equity.

(more…)

Bridget J. Crawford (Pace; Google Scholar), Confronting Inequality: Three Eras of Gender and Tax Scholarship, 58 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. ___ (2025):

Tax law is not neutral—it encodes social values and reinforces certain longstanding hierarchies. For over fifty years, gender and tax scholarship has exposed how seemingly neutral tax laws perpetuate gender inequality in particular. This essay uses the metaphor of quilting to trace the evolution of this field across three distinct eras.

Part I names and defines the designing era (1971–1986) as beginning with the Grace Blumberg’s work on the gendered impact of tax laws on marriage, labor, and caregiving; she framed taxation as a tool of social control over women. Blumberg’s work laid the foundation for other scholars who took up the project of uncovering gender bias embedded in the tax law.  

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Bridget J. Crawford (Pace; Google Scholar), Confronting Inequality: Three Eras of Gender and Tax Scholarship, 58 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. ___ (2025):

Tax law is not neutral—it encodes social values and reinforces certain longstanding hierarchies. For over fifty years, gender and tax scholarship has exposed how seemingly neutral tax laws perpetuate gender inequality in particular. This essay uses the metaphor of quilting to trace the evolution of this field across three distinct eras.

Part I names and defines the designing era (1971–1986) as beginning with the Grace Blumberg’s work on the gendered impact of tax laws on marriage, labor, and caregiving; she framed taxation as a tool of social control over women. Blumberg’s work laid the foundation for other scholars who took up the project of uncovering gender bias embedded in the tax law.  

(more…)

Orly Mazur (SMU; Google Scholar) & Adam B. Thimmesch (Nebraska; Google Scholar), Cooperative Federalism and the Digital Tax Impasse, 51 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 647 (2024):

The digital economy is changing faster than the law can respond and has challenged legal systems worldwide. In the tax space, the digital economy has undermined traditional tax systems in ways that have created significant tax compliance and enforcement challenges, substantial tax revenue losses, and unwarranted distortions in the market between digital and traditional transactions. These problems are well recognized both in the legal literature and in the public sphere. Unfortunately, the legal reforms that are needed in this space have been slowed by a combination of technical, conceptual, and political impediments. This Article focuses on the digital tax landscape at the U.S. subnational level to demonstrate how those factors are preventing meaningful legal reform and why a novel approach to tax reform may be successful in breaking the current impasse.

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Orly Mazur (SMU; Google Scholar) & Adam B. Thimmesch (Nebraska; Google Scholar), Cooperative Federalism and the Digital Tax Impasse, 51 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 647 (2024):

The digital economy is changing faster than the law can respond and has challenged legal systems worldwide. In the tax space, the digital economy has undermined traditional tax systems in ways that have created significant tax compliance and enforcement challenges, substantial tax revenue losses, and unwarranted distortions in the market between digital and traditional transactions. These problems are well recognized both in the legal literature and in the public sphere. Unfortunately, the legal reforms that are needed in this space have been slowed by a combination of technical, conceptual, and political impediments. This Article focuses on the digital tax landscape at the U.S. subnational level to demonstrate how those factors are preventing meaningful legal reform and why a novel approach to tax reform may be successful in breaking the current impasse.

(more…)