Tax Chats

Send us Fan MailJeff and Scott talk about wasteful tax expenditures with Calvin Johnson, which Professor Johnson believes includes basically all tax expenditures.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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, including liquidity problems, valuation problems, and related concerns. By contrast, Brian proposes a tax that eliminates some of the value of deferral, which would reduce the incentive to hold assets merely to delay taxation, but still only levies taxes upon realization. 

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 this episode, Jeff and Scott first discuss the important matter of how to pronounce NAM (NOT like Viet-NAM). They then discuss NAM’s role in the policy process, how the organization identifies and prioritizes its tax policy agenda, and some of its most significant advocacy successes. They also explore the story behind NAM’s efforts to secure the bonus depreciation adjustment in the corporate alternative minimum tax. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 economy from the early 1600s through the Revolutionary War. We discuss who actually bore the burden of these tariffs, why European consumers may have paid most of the cost, and how tobacco revenue helps explain Britain’s fiscal interest in maintaining control over the colonies 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 change about the agency if he were IRS King for a day. 

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 reporting services, many of which present themselves as tracking or reporting tools rather than tax preparation providers. He found that these services often produced very different calculations of taxable income from identical transactions. The conversation explores why these discrepancies arise and uses them as a starting point for a broader discussion of cryptocurrency taxation, compliance, and reporting challenges. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 rest, all fit together, and who actually writes the words on the pages we consider to be tax law. 

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 authorizes the types of tariffs President Trump has put in place, if it does, whether Congress can delegate tariff-setting power that broadly even if they want to. What will the Court decide? 

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 politics of U.S. tax policy. They walk through the political and economic forces that made tariffs both attractive—and eventually untenable—as a main source of revenue. Along the way, they discuss the creation of the federal income tax, the rise of new revenue needs, and what this history can teach us about today’s debates over trade and taxation. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 open-source effort that helps researchers and policymakers analyze policy. They discuss his work at PSL and what the last 25 years of business tax changes have taught us—whether bonus depreciation boosts investment, how firms respond to shifts in business tax rates, and more. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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.

Send us Fan MailLuke 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 tax, or, what was the purpose of this trip? Jeff and Scott chat with Roman historian Anna Dolganov about these questions, and more.Anna's previous appearance on the show: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1878989/episodes/17860482 . One note: On the podcast we talk about how burdensome the tax imposed by the Romans in situations like this was, in terms of days of labor (a la Tax Foundation's "Tax Freedom Day"). Here is a follow-up note from Anna: "A Roman legionary's salary was about 225 denarii per year, and the poll tax rate in Egypt was 8-40 drachmas per year (depending on location and tax privilege). So, not quite Austrian level taxation, but still quite a considerable sum."A denarii and a drachma are equivalent. So, Tax Freedom Day for Mary and Joseph, based only on the poll tax, may have been sometime in mid-February.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 tax and the very personal story of a father and son at odds over what kind of inheritance we want to leave our kids and our country." Learn more about the film here: https://www.deathandtaxesfilm.com/. 

Send us Fan MailWe 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 that is beneficial to taxpayers and engaging in litigation the NTU believes will bring about taxpayer-friendly changes. Pete gives advice to those who want to make the world a friendly place for taxpayers and want to engage in tax advocacy. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 tax system must satisfy. They talk about the program in general, ways in which it was recently reformed under the One Big Beautiful Bill, and what we might do to fix it going forward.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 ancient Rome, Jewish tax revolts, how to evade taxes on the goods Rome taxed (including human slaves), and what we can learn from the papyrus about the trial. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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.pdfLeft unexplored is whether any of the other provisions of no tax on tips will preclude Scott and Jeff from receiving tax-free tip income, by means of the credit available to offset declared tip income available in The One Big Beautiful Bill.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 inflation would help, and, when the tax system includes explicit dollar values, such as in thresholds, amounts of credits, the income tax brackets themselves. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 to the book, and Scott tries his best at answering. The four books mentioned, and the approximate year of their original publication:Rich and Poor (1898) - Helen BosanquetCapital (1867) - Karl MarxPolitical Economy (1837) - Francis Wayland The National Revenues (1888) - Albert Shaw

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 use—far less than survey responses suggested. People bought b-bikes, then didn't really use them. When accounting for actual emissions reductions, the cost of carbon abatement was around $800 per ton, which most people agree is more than the social cost of carbon. We discuss why the policy wasn’t cost-effective and what better subsidies might look like.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 these tax research tools.

Send us Fan MailIn 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 resistance. We chat about the complexities that arise in government use of taxpayer dollars when the underlying population is extremely diverse.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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. 

Send us Fan MailThe 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, and Jeff and Scott discuss the contents of the bill, for far as it was passed by the House Ways and Means Committee. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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.  

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 tournament,  but instead of pitting basketball teams against each other to establish the best team*, he has tax expenditures competing to determine which is the worst expenditure. Jeff, Scott and Adam chat about several sets of tax expenditures, and offer their somewhat tongue-in-cheek opinion about which ones are worst.*For example, by establishing that UNC women's basketball has won a national championship 1 time, compared to Duke's 0 times, or that UNC men's basketball has won the NCAA tournament 6 times, compared to Duke's 5 times. Of note is that of all teams with over 20 games played in the NCAA men's tournament, Duke has the highest winning percentage, which is only to say that they win a lot before they ultimately lose--they choke under pressure in the end.

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 less in tax than White households with similar incomes. This occurs because Black households have more dependents, on average, than White households, and children are tax advantaged in the U.S. In the top 30% of households, by income, White households pay less in tax because they are more likely to have tax-advantaged forms of income, such as capital gains. Across the first nine income deciles, Hispanic taxpayers pay less in tax, as Hispanic households tend to have more dependents throughout the income distribution. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 one gets this job, what one does in the job, what the CEA is general, and how the CEA interacts in a very political world.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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.

Send us Fan MailThis 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 state income taxes in Alabama. Jeff and Scott interview Edgar Dyer about the tax perjury trial of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960. Eddie wrote an article entitled "A Triumph of Justice in Alabama: The 1960 Perjury Trial of Martin Luther King, Jr."Fred Grey, Martin Luther King's attorney, said of the trial, "No one would have predicted that an all-white jury in Montgomery, Alabama, the Cradle of the Confederacy, in May 1960, in the middle of all the sit-ins and all of the racial tension that was going on, would exonerate Martin Luther King, Jr. But it really happened." Coretta Scott King said of the trial, "A southern jury of twelve white men had acquitted Martin. It was a triumph of justice, a miracle that restored your faith in human good."  Dr. King said it was a "turning point" in his life. Tune in to hear about this triumphal tax trial, which was a turning point for Martin Luther King.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 13 from having lived through and covered the debate surrounding its passage, as well as what effects Prop 13 has had since its passage.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 lower-income Hawaiians, while generating additional revenue from those visiting Hawaii temporarily. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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.

Send us Fan MailScott 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.

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 competitors to Tax Notes are.Finally, we discuss Tax Analysts' ownership of the URL https://taxmuseum.org/, which is a direct competitor to the much better http://thetaxmuseum.org. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 externalities, in addition to the positive  benefit of reducing pollution. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 corporations. How can you tell if a company is paying a fair amount in tax? Listen to the episode to find out!Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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 leakage affect Heidelberg Materials, one of the largest producers of cement in the world. Cement  production contributes an enormous amount of carbon into the atmosphere, and so it is very sensitive to carbon taxation. Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate. 

Send us Fan MailJeff 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, parliament being lit on fire, and death.Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate. 

Send us Fan MailJeff and Scott chat with economist and professor Matthew Tarduno about the problems that automobile traffic causes, and different ways that have been devised to solve the problem (including tax-adjacent ways!). Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate. 

Send us Fan MailJeff and Scott chat with Senator Daniel McCay, chairman of the Utah Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee, about how he thinks about tax policy, what the objectives of tax policy are, and how he thinks Utah is doing tax-wise.Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate. 

Send us Fan MailJeff and Scott chat with Michael Graetz, Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale, about his new book, The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America. We talk about the start of the anti-tax movement with the opposition to property tax increases in California, the Regan-era tax cuts, and how the desire to cut taxes has shaped American politics over the last 40 years.Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate.

Send us Fan MailJeff and Scott talk with Iowa law professor Andy Grewal about the recent Supreme Court case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which effectively eliminates Chevron deference.  They discuss the ramifications for tax and non-tax administrative law.Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate.