Tax law is political. This book highlights and explains the major themes and methodologies of a group of scholars who challenge the traditional claim that tax law is neutral and unbiased. The contributors to this volume include pioneers in the field of critical tax theory, as well as key thinkers who have sustained and expanded the investigation into why the tax laws are the way they are and what impacts tax laws have on historically disempowered groups. This volume, assembled by two law professors who work in the field, is an accessible introduction to this new and growing body of scholarship. It is a resource not only for scholars and students in the fields of taxation and economics, but also for those who engage with critical race theory, feminist legal theory, queer theory, class-based analysis, and social justice generally. Tax is the one area of law that affects everyone in our society, and this book is crucial to understanding its impact.

The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics presents a unified conceptual framework for analyzing taxation--the first to be systematically developed in several decades. An original treatment of the subject rather than a textbook synthesis, the book contains new analysis that generates novel results, including some that overturn long-standing conventional wisdom. This fresh approach should change thinking, research, and teaching for decades to come. Building on the work of James Mirrlees, Anthony Atkinson and Joseph Stiglitz, and subsequent researchers, and in the spirit of classics by A. C. Pigou, William Vickrey, and Richard Musgrave, this book steps back from particular lines of inquiry to consider the field as a whole, including the relationships among different fiscal instruments. Louis Kaplow puts forward a framework that makes it possible to rigorously examine both distributive and distortionary effects of particular policies despite their complex interactions with others. To do so, various reforms--ranging from commodity or estate and gift taxation to regulation and public goods provision--are combined with a distributively offsetting adjustment to the income tax. The resulting distribution-neutral reform package holds much constant while leaving in play the distinctive effects of the policy instrument under consideration. By applying this common methodology to disparate subjects, The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics produces significant cross-fertilization and yields solutions to previously intractable problems.

This essay unscrambles gross misconceptions that have made rational debates about tax policies virtually impossible for decades.

The question of how to tax multinational companies that operate highly digitalised business models is one of the most contested areas of international taxation. The tax paid in the jurisdictions in which these companies operate has not kept pace with their immense growth and the OECD has proposed a new international tax compromise that will allocate taxing rights to market jurisdictions and remove the need to have a physical presence in the taxing jurisdictions in order to sustain taxability. In this work, Craig Elliffe explains the problems with the existing international tax system and its inability to respond to challenges posed by digitalised companies. In addition to looking at how the new international tax rules will work, Elliffe assesses their likely effectiveness and highlights features that are likely to endure in the next waves of international tax reform.

An economist examines the evolution of optimal tax analysis and its influence on tax policy design. Many things inform a country's choice of tax system, including political considerations, public opinion, bureaucratic complexities, and ideas drawn from theoretical analysis. In this book, Robin Boadway examines the role of optimal tax analysis in informing and influencing tax policy design. Scholars of public economics formulate models of optimal tax-transfer systems based on normative principles that reflect efficiency and equity considerations. They use that analysis to form views about the optimal design or reform of actual tax systems that are much more complicated than their models. Boadway argues that there is an important symbiosis between ideas drawn from normative tax analysis and tax policies actually enacted. Ideas germinated by normative analyses have led to the widespread adoption of the value-added tax, the use of refundable tax credits, and various business tax reforms. Other ideas provide rationales for existing features of tax systems, including the tax treatment of retirement savings and human capital investment. Boadway charts the evolution of optimal tax analysis and discusses the lessons it holds for tax policy. He describes the theoretical challenges posed by recent findings in such fields as behavioral economics and social choice and considers how optimal tax analysis might adapt to these new paradigms. His analysis offers a timely assessment of the role that optimal tax theory has played in establishing the principles that continue to inform tax policy.

Critical Theory Today is the essential introduction to contemporary criticial theory. It provides clear, simple explanations and concrete examples of complex concepts, making a wide variety of commonly used critical theories accessible to novices without sacrificing any theoretical rigor or thoroughness. This new edition provides in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to literary analysis today: feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, reader-response theory, new criticism, structuralism and semiotics, deconstruction, new historicism, cultural criticism, lesbian/gay/queer theory, African American criticism, and postcolonial criticism. The chapters provide an extended explanation of each theory, using examples from everyday life, popular culture, and literary texts; a list of specific questions critics who use that theory ask about literary texts; an interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby through the lens of each theory; a list of questions for further practice to guide readers in applying each theory to different literary works; and a bibliography of primary and secondary works for further reading.

Taxation is a discipline that does not receive sufficient academic attention. It is typically viewed as a subset of law, accounting, public policy, economics, or finance. In this respect, most academic efforts in the field of taxation are shadowed by a mother discipline. There is currently an unprecedented need to approach tax pedagogy in a way that is independent of another discipline. This book caters to that real and unmet need in tax pedagogy. One of the book’s advantages is that it is not tied to a specific tax year and does not coddle the reader with volumes of time-sensitive information. In this book the tax year is never the focus, as the center stage is reserved for teaching the principles and skills necessary to independently find answers. The reader will learn to appreciate the complexity of the American tax system and will be endowed with the contextual understanding necessary to formulate educated opinions about how taxes work and, most importantly, why. Contrary to common belief, taxation in the United States has remained fairly stable for the last 100 years. This book uses the federal individual income tax as a vehicle to unveil the mechanics that make up the American tax system. This book is essential reading for students taking a first course in taxation, at the undergraduate or graduate level, as part of programs in accounting, law, public administration, or business at large.