Edward McCaffery
Robert C. Packard Trustee Chair in Law and Political Science, USC Gould School of Law, Los Angeles, USA
Where’s the Sex in Fiscal Sociology? Taxation and Gender in Comparative Perspective
1. Introduction: Beyond War Getting “sex” into the title of a chapter in book on a subject as daunting as “fiscal sociology” makes obvious marketing sense. Yet in fact something important is missing from the other chapters, each valuable and interesting in its own right. The field of “fiscal sociology,” born in Schumpeter’s stirring invocation [...]
The Uneasy Case for Capital Taxation
I. INTRODUCTION I write not to praise all tax-reductions but to bury one particular set of taxes. Over a decade ago I began writing on the subject of comprehensive tax reform, in a piece titled The Uneasy Case for Wealth Transfer Taxes,[2] echoing the classic work on tax-rate progression by the law professors Walter Blum [...]
Three Views of Tax
Introduction: The Traditional View of Tax Traditional tax policy for decades, if not centuries, has been locked in a seemingly all-or-nothing debate between two apparent extremes, income and consumption taxation.[2] In this ongoing war, income tax advocates have carried the banner for liberal egalitarian redistribution[3]─for the cause of taking from the rich and giving to [...]
Gender and Tax
(forthcoming in GENDER AND POLITICS, Jyl Josephson and Susan Tolleson-Rinehard, eds. (M.E. Sharpe)) R. Michael Alvarez* and Edward J. McCaffery** INTRODUCTION Given the stakes involved, there has been surprisingly little empirical analysis of gender-based differences in attitudes towards specific aspects of taxation. Most of the literature on the so-called gender gap in political behavior has [...]
Through the Looking Glass: The Politics of Estate Tax Reform
Here we go again. Trusts and estates practitioners sleep anxiously, uncertain of what Washington will do next to affect the centerpiece of their professional lives: the gift and estate tax. Repeal or repair? Stronger or weaker? Whither the law? As we lose sleep over these questions and write or read articles like this one, we [...]
Ten Facts About Fundamental Tax Reform
The older I get, the less time I seem to have to read, or to pay attention to anything at great length. I presume, or hope, that this is because I am busy, not on account of any biological decline. In any event, I have learned since my first days of talking about tax reform [...]
Behavioral Dimensions of Tax Reform
Abstract These are powerpoint slides from a presentation at a joint UCLA-Tax Policy Center Conference on Tax Policy in the Obama Era. The basic insight is that it will be difficult to raise significant revenue through the current tax system. Behavioral perspectives suggest that a series of small (or large) cuts, aiming towards a flattened [...]
A Voluntary Tax? Revisited
Abstract This Article explains, updates and generalizes Cooper (1979), which had labeled the estate tax a voluntary tax. The tax has remained voluntary in the sense of being easily avoidable, even by those engaging in activities within the tax’s ostensible normative target (i.e., significant intergenerational wealth transfers). Further, all taxes on the yield to capital [...]
A Tale of Two Davids: Commentary on David Weisbach’s Implementing Income and Consumption Taxes: An Essay in Honor of David Bradford
David Weisbach has given us a work that would have made David Bradford proud. I can think of no higher compliment than that, and it is well warranted. David Bradford devoted much of his considerable intellectual gifts to figuring out analytic equivalences among various, seemingly divergent, tax systems, and attempting to carefully explain them to [...]
