Send us a text

Scott and Jeff discuss some of the prominent arguments against progressive taxation.

Send us a text

Scott and Jeff discuss the tax status of churches in the U.S. with Lloyd Mayer, Professor of Law at Notre Dame University.  We discuss the basics of tax law as it pertains to Churches. We also discuss special tax benefits that apply to ministers and other church employees. We consider the tradeoffs that exist between providing churches with tax benefits and relying on them to provide certain types of public goods and services vs taxing churches and relying on the government to provide those goods and services.

Send us a text

Scott and Jeff ask Andy Grewal to describe administrative law, and why it is so important for taxes. We discuss how significant portions of tax laws are left to interpretation by the IRS or Treasury, and how these interpretations can have a material effect on the experience of taxpayers.

Send us a text

Scott and Jeff discuss income shifting by multinational corporations with Jennifer Blouin. We talk about Jennifer's research that suggests some estimates of the amount of tax revenue the U.S. loses to income shifting are as much as ten times too large. These estimates are important because they drive policy discussions, including debates in the U.S. about tax reform, and abroad, through the OECD and other organizations. The conversation builds on some of Jennifer's recent work related to income shifting, including a paper entitled "Double Counting Accounting: How Much Profit of Multinational Enterprises Is Really in Tax Havens?" available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3491451.

Send us a text

Scott and Jeff discuss the effects the tax rate has on how much taxes are raised with Professor Arthur Laffer,  for whom the Laffer Curve is named. The Laffer Curve shows the likely relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. We hear the famous story of drawing the curve on a napkin. We ask  Professor Laffer about the Laffer Curve, and we get his opinion on the revenue maximizing tax rate.

Send us a text

Scott and Jeff are joined by Rita de la Feria @delaFeriaR to discuss her new paper (co-authored with Maria Amparo Grau Ruiz) called "Taxing Robots".  The abstract of her paper reads in part: 

"In recent years, the idea of taxing robots has been progressively gaining momentum. The potential impact of automation on employment, and consequently on income tax revenues, has led many to defend the introduction of a tax on robots, or on the use of robots, to either compensate for the potential revenue loss, or to slow down the process of automation. This paper argues that whilst automation presents significant challenges to tax systems, the introduction of a new tax on robots –or on their use– is not an effective mechanism through which to address these challenges."
 
We discuss the idea of taxing robots, whether the tax is different from a tax on other types of capital investment, the behavioral motivations for a desire to tax robots, and other issues.

Send us a text

Scott and Jeff discuss whether the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was effective. Often referred to as the Trump tax cuts, or the Trump Tax Reform, recent commentators have argued that it was highly effective. For example, Tyler Goodspeed and Kevin Hassett argued in the Wall Street Journal the TCJA "delivered as promised" by increasing investment, wages, and government revenues. Academic research, however, paints a more nuanced picture. Jeff keeps a list of academic studies that evaluate different aspects of the TCJA on the UNC Tax Center website called The TCJA Effects Tracker. We discuss why articles in the popular press that claim victory or defeat are almost always oversimplified.

Send us a text

Scott, Jeff, and Paul Kiel discuss the series of articles published by ProPublica based on a massive leak of private tax return data on the wealthiest individuals in the United States. The series of articles can be found here: https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files.

We ask about privacy, transparency, tone, influence, leaked data, and more.

Send us a text

Jeff explains why quarters have ridges, and what it has to do with taxes and inflation.

Send us a text

Scott and Jeff discuss the idea of carryover basis with Kathleen Thomas. Currently, when someone dies with appreciated capital gains, they get a step-up in basis, meaning their estate pays no taxes on their accumulated gains. The downside is they have to die. An alternative would be to carryover the basis the the person who died had, which would make many tax planning strategies more difficult.