PODCAST · business
Tax Chats
by Dyreng and Hoopes
Taxes touch every aspect of society, including who rules, where factories are built, what people drink, what car they buy, when they have children, and when they die. Scott Dyreng (Duke) and Jeff Hoopes (UNC), two accounting professors, chat about taxes, including current events, with the energy of an over-caffeinated chihuahua. Listening is guaranteed to be far more entertaining than actually paying your taxes.
Episodes
-
Annie Lowrey and taxes on time
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott talk with Annie Lowrey, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the new book The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time—and How to Fix It. Annie explains how government bureaucracy imposes a hidden tax on Americans through paperwork, waiting, and…
more -
The Everywhere Millionaire: A Chat with Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick about their new book
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott talk with economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick about their new book, The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There, in which they use vast amounts of tax return data to gather evidence that paints a picture of who America’s rich...
-
Brandon Arnold on Data Centers
Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff speak with Brandon Arnold , the Executive Vice President of the National Taxpayer's Union, about data centers. Do they drive up real estate prices? Do they use too much water? Are they just a substitute for people's fears about AI? And, what are they doing for...
-
Jared Walczak on the Laffer Mesa
Send us Fan Mail Recent research suggests that the Laffer curve is less curve-like than originally thought. Jeff and Scott talk with Jared Walczak from the Tax Foundation about the Laffer Curve, and why we think it is mesa-like, based on his writing here: https://thesaltroad.net/p/the-laffer-mesa.
-
Wasteful Tax Expenditures: A Chat with Calvin Johnson
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott talk about wasteful tax expenditures with Calvin Johnson, which Professor Johnson believes includes basically all tax expenditures.
-
Tax the Ultrarich Without Throwing Out Realization: A conversation with Brian Galle
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Brian Galle about his new paper, How to Tax the Ultrarich. Most proposals that seek to tax the very wealthy differently eliminate the principle of realization, such as wealth taxes or mark-to-market regimes. These approaches carry considerable baggage,...
-
Lobbying for the National Association of Manufacturers: A Chat with Charles Crain
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott speak with Charles Crain, Managing Vice President of Policy at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Charles works closely with NAM’s member companies to advocate for tax policies that support manufacturers and strengthen the manufacturing sector. In…
more -
Benjamin Jaros on Colonial Tobacco Tariffs
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Ben Jaros, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, about his paper, “Tobacco Tariffs in the Colonial Chesapeake.” Ben explains how tobacco tariffs shaped the finances of colonial Maryland and Virginia, the English Crown, and the broader Atlantic...
-
Tax Research with AI: A Chat with Ben Alarie (with offer for tax profs)
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with the CEO of BlueJ, an AI-powered tax research tool, about updates on BlueJ. Scott announces that BlueJ now offers their product free for tax professors.
-
The Tax Policy Center: Chatting with Elena Patel
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Elena Patel about the Tax Policy Center, where she is co-director. We talk about the history of the TPC, who works there, and its mission.
-
Former IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel on the IRS
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott interview Danny Werfel, a former IRS commissioner under President Obama and President Biden. They talk about his background, the request from President Obama and Biden that he lead the IRS, challenges and opportunities he encountered at the IRS, and what he would...
-
Inconsistency In Crypto Tax Compliance Providers: A Chat with Tyler Menzer
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott talk with Tyler Menzer, an assistant professor of accounting at Texas Christian University, about his recent research on cryptocurrency tax reporting. In the project, Tyler submitted the same set of cryptocurrency transactions to multiple crypto tax software and...
-
What is "The Tax Law": A Chat with Michael Kaercher
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Mike Kaercher, Deputy Director of the Tax Law Center at NYU Law, about where tax law comes from. We often refer to “tax law,” but in this episode we unpack what that actually means—how the Internal Revenue Code, Treasury Regulations, and court cases, all...
-
The Supreme Court and Tariffs: A Chat with Conor Clarke
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Conor Clarke, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, about the Supreme Court case challenging President Trump’s sweeping tariffs imposed by executive order. The key questions are whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act...
-
How the US Weaned Itself off Tariffs: A chat with Joe Thorndike
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Joe Thorndike about how the United States moved from relying heavily on tariffs to building the modern income-tax-based system we know today. Joe is a tax historian and journalist, and writes for Tax Notes, where he writes widely on the history and…
more -
What can we learn from 25 Years of Tax History? A Chat with Jason DeBacker
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott talk with Jason DeBacker about his new paper, Learning from 25 Years of Changes in Business Tax Policy (with Aerfate Haimiti). Jason is an associate professor of economics at the University of South Carolina and the director of the Policy Simulation Library, an...
-
A Chat about the Small Business Stock Exclusion with David Mitchell
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with David Mitchel, a Senior Fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, about the small business stock exclusion, recent changes to it, and an article that David wrote with Kyle Pomerleau about why we should get rid of it.
-
Taxes and Christmas: What we Know about Mary and Joseph's Tax Situation, with Roman Historian Anna Dolganov
Send us Fan Mail Luke 2 tells us that Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem "to be taxed", and while there, the baby Jesus was born. But, what do we know about that taxing from history? Did everyone travel? What was the general tax environment in the Roman world at the time? Did they actually remit a...
-
Death and Taxes: A chat with documentary filmmaker Justin Schein
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott talk with Justin Schein. They discuss Justin's newest film, and the issues and questions it brings up. Justin's newest film is Death and Taxes, which "is a feature documentary about wealth, inequality and the American Dream, viewed through the lens of the estate…
more -
A Chat with Pete Sepp, President of the National Taxpayers Union
Send us Fan Mail We start by explaining the Tax Chats DC Tour, 2025, an exclusive live event! Then, Jeff and Scott chat with Pete Sepp, President of the National Taxpayers Union. They talk about the work the NTU has done in the past, and what it currently does, including advocate for legislation...
-
Progressive! A Chat with Ajay Mehrotra about Edwin Seligman
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Ajay Mehrotra, law professor at Northwestern, about the economist Edwin Seligman. They discuss Seligman's academic legacy, his views on progressive taxation, his influence on Columbia University, his students, and his views on tax policy.
-
Medicaid! A Chat with Marc Goldwein
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Marc Goldwein, who is the Senior Vice President and Senior Policy Director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. They chat about Medicaid, a huge piece in the federal government's budget, and an essential piece of understand what needs our…
more -
A Roman Tax Evasion Trial: A Chat with Anna Dolganov
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Anna Dolganov, an academy scientist at the Austrian Archeological Institute, about her work on a recently re-discovered papyrus. The papyrus contained notes from a tax evasion trial in ancient Rome, which Dr. Dolganov translated. We discuss taxes in…
more -
A Chat with Hank Aaron about Social Security
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Henry (Hank) Aaron, a Senor Fellow Emeritus at the Brookings Institution, about Social Security. They discuss how it started, how we fund it, who gets it, how it has been reformed, and how it could be fixed.
-
No Tax On Tips? Jeff and Scott Receive a Huge Tax Break (a short emergency episode)
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott very briefly talk about the bombshell news that podcasters are included on the Treasury's list of jobs eligible for "no tax on tips." https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Tipped-Occupations-Detailed-8-27-2025.pdf Left unexplored is whether any of the other...
-
Inflation and Tax Policy: A Chat with Kyle Pomerleau
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott talk with Kyle Pomerleau about how inflation interacts with tax policy and the tax law. Kyle points out that inflation interacts in two major ways: When we tax gains that happen over long periods of time, and we have to think about whether adjusting the gain for...
-
Brad Setser on Income Shifting and Trade in Pharmaceuticals
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Brad Setser, a Senior Fellow on the Council of Foreign Relations, about income shifting among pharma firms, as well as the impact that shifting has on tariffs and international trade.
-
A Brief Tour of the Tax Museum's Library
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott take a look at 4 books that Jeff has recently acquired for the Tax Museum library, which numbers at least 677 volumes. Almost all of these books were a an academic bequest from one of Jeff's mentees, Joel Slemrod. Jeff introduces four books, asks a question related...
-
Does Subsidizing E-Bikes Reduce Carbon Emissions? A Chat With Anders Anderson
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Jeff and Scott talk with Anders Anderson, a finance professor at the Stockholm School of Economics about, his research evaluating Sweden’s nationwide e-bike subsidy. The program successfully doubled e-bike sales, but had only a modest impact on reducing car…
more -
AI and Tax Research: A (third!) Chat with BlueJ Tax CEO Ben Alarie
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat for a third time with BlueJ CEO Ben Alarie about new innovations in tax research using artificial intelligence, especially how these tools are being used by tax practitioners, the efficiency gains to using them, and how BlueJ goes about continually improving...
-
Tax Morality with Ruth Braunstein
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Scott and Jeff chat with Ruth Braunstein about her recent book "My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America" wherein we discuss complicated issues related to using tax dollars to fund controversial issues like abortion and war. We discuss taxpayer...
-
A Proposal for a Standard Business Deduction: A Chat with Kathleen Thomas
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Kathleen Thomas, a UNC tax law professor, about a recent proposal to allow businesses to have a standard deduction, rather than track expenses. Kathleen explains how this proposal would simplify compliance with and administration of the tax code.
-
One Big Beautiful Bill, One Short Sagacious Summary (insofar as it is accurate)
Send us Fan Mail The House Ways and Means Committee has pass The One Big Beautiful Bill the TOBBB). Knowing this was coming up, Jeff invited Scott to go on a Tax Chats road trip, but, got rejected--Scott was too busy. So, Jeff watched the process from a distance. Jeff discusses what he observed,...
-
The Tax Family Tree: A Genealogical Discussion with Kyle Pomerleau
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott talk about the relationship taxes have with each other. How are value added taxes related to sales taxes or the border adjustment tax, and how are all related to income taxes (or are they just unrelated)? Find out by listening to this amazing episode.
-
Tariffs in 2018: Ryan Monarch on what we know about the first round of Trump Tariffs
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott talk to Ryan Monarch, economics professor at Syracuse University, about what we know about the tariffs imposed by the first Donald Trump administration in 2018.
-
Which is the worst Tax Expenditure?: A Chat with Adam Michel
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Adam Michel of the Cato Institute about tax expenditures. Adam currently has on his X account the Tax Expenditure Madness brackets (also on his substack: https://adamnmichel.substack.com/). Adam sets up brackets like the March Madness NCAA basketball...
-
Race and Taxes: A Chat with Bill Gale
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Bill Gale of the Tax Policy Center about his new paper (with Oliver Hall and John Sabelhaus), "The Same But Different: How the Income Tax Affects Black, Hispanic, and White Households." We discuss how the bottom 70% of Black households, by income, pay…
more -
Tax Enforcement in Developing Countries: A Chat with Oyebola Okunogbe
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Oyebola Okunogbe, an economist at the World Bank. They discuss tax enforcement in the developing world, including the challenges developing world countries face that more developed countries do not face, and, how those challenges shape tax systems. Get…
more -
Advising the President's Advisor: Elena Patel on working at the CEA
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott talk about Elena Patel , an economics professor at the University of Utah, about her time working at the Council of Economic Advisors. Elena worked as a tax economist advising the chair of the CEA, who is an economic advisor to the President. Elena talks about how...
-
A Chat with Rita de la Feria on Tax Fairness
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Rita de la Feria on tax fairness. Fairness is in the eye of the beholder, and tax fairness, in particular, appears to be particularly sensitive to whose eye is beholding.
-
Re-release: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Tax Perjury Trial: A conversation with Edgar Dyer
Send us Fan Mail This episode originally aired on January 15, 2022. We are releasing it for Martin Luther King day, January 20, 2025. If you already heard it and don't wish to hear it again, skip it! Martin Luther King Jr. is the only person to have ever been tried for perjury with regards to…
more -
Low Property taxes in California: Chatting about Prop 13 with Dan Walters
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Dan Walter's, an Opinion Columnist for CalMatters. They chat about Prop 13, a law that dramatically limits property tax increases in California, and was passed in 1978. Dan has been writing about California since 1975, and shares his perspectives on Prop…
more -
Democrats Lowering the Income Tax in Hawaii! A Chat with Seth Colby
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Seth Colby, a Tax Research and Planning Officer for the State of Hawaii. They discussed a recent policy change in Hawaii, where Hawaii dramatically reduced income tax rates, while increasing sales taxes, in an effort to both collect less revenue for...
-
The Regulation of Paid Tax Preparers: A Conversation with John Treu
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with West Virginia University accounting professor, and lawyer, John Treu, about the regulation of paid tax preparers, including John's empirical evidence that they improve return quality and the Loving case.
-
Re-release: Are Craisins Candy? Must have tax information before Thanksgiving
Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff discuss what constitutes candy, for sales tax purposes, in North Carolina. The discussion ends with the verdict on craisins--are they candy? Scott is quizzed on other types of food and whether they are candy, and, scores a perfect 0/5.
-
Tax Notes: A Chat with Tax Analysts CEO Cara Griffith
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Cara Griffith, CEO of Tax Analysts about Tax Notes, the main product of Tax Analysts. Tax Notes is a tax practitioner publication catering to tax professionals, and Jeff and Scott talk about who reads Tax Notes, how content is produced, and who the...
-
Electric Car Subsidies in the IRA: A Chat with Felix Tintelnot
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Felix Tintelnot about electric cars, and the subsidies they were given before the IRA, and in the IRA. We learn that because electric cars are heavier and therefore more likely to crush you to death if they crash into you, they create negative...
-
Certifying Fairness? A Chat with Fair Tax Foundation's CEO Paul Monaghan
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Paul Monaghan, the CEO of the Fair Tax Foundation. The Fair Tax Foundation certifies companies for paying a "good" amount of tax, focusing on the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law, certifying companies from small to publicly traded large...
-
Cement and Carbon Taxes: A Chat with Marcel Olbert and Daniel Klein
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Marcel Olbert, assistant professor of accounting at London Business School, and Daniel Klein, assistant to the CFO at Heidelberg Materials. They discuss carbon taxes, and a new paper Marcel has on carbon leakage. They also discuss how carbon taxes and...
-
Deadly Tax Protests in Kenya: A chat with Nana Ama Sarfo
Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Nana Ama Sarfo, a contributing editor with Tax Notes, with a special interest in covering taxes in the developing world. They chat about the recent deadly tax protests in Kenya, where a tax increase on basic life staples lead to violence in the street,...
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
Taxes touch every aspect of society, including who rules, where factories are built, what people drink, what car they buy, when they have children, and when they die. Scott Dyreng (Duke) and Jeff Hoopes (UNC), two accounting professors, chat about taxes, including current events, with the energy of an over-caffeinated chihuahua. Listening is guaranteed to be far more entertaining than actually paying your taxes.
HOSTED BY
Dyreng and Hoopes
CATEGORIES
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Tax Chats have?
Tax Chats currently has 197 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Tax Chats about?
Taxes touch every aspect of society, including who rules, where factories are built, what people drink, what car they buy, when they have children, and when they die. Scott Dyreng (Duke) and Jeff Hoopes (UNC), two accounting professors, chat about taxes, including current events, with the energy of...
How often does Tax Chats release new episodes?
Tax Chats publishes regularly with 197 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Tax Chats?
You can listen to Tax Chats on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Tax Chats?
Tax Chats is created and hosted by Dyreng and Hoopes.
URL copied to clipboard!