In the early decades of the twentieth century, the progressive income tax gradually came to dominate the U.S. system of public finance. The move to a direct and progressive tax regime had it roots in the social movements of the time period. This article examines organized labor's attitudes...

Since the 1970s, economic inequality has soared dramatically across the globe and particularly in the United States. In that time, one of the obstacles of using fiscal policy to address inequality has been the growing myth of the “overtaxed American”—the misguided notion that U.S....

Scholars, policy analysts, and lawmakers have long debated the relationship between steeply progressive taxes and economic prosperity. In their recent book, “Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe” Kenneth Scheve and David Stasavage take a step back to...

At the turn of the twentieth century, the U.S. system of public finance underwent a dramatic transformation. The late-nineteenth-century regime of indirect, hidden, partisan, and regressive taxes was eclipsed in the early twentieth century by a direct, transparent, professionally administered,...

This article uses the history of the National Tax Association (NTA), the leading twentieth-century organization of tax professionals, to strengthen our empirical understanding of the disciplinary encounter between law and the social sciences. Building on existing sociolegal scholarship, this...

During the first six decades of the 20th century, lawyers in the United States grappled with their role in stewarding the nation’s tax system. As 19th century tariffs gave way to 20th century income taxes, legal professionals found themselves at the center of a complex and momentous...

In December 2017, the Trump administration and its congressional allies enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, hailing it as the twenty-first century successor to the “landmark” Reagan-era Tax Reform Act of 1986. Indeed, the ’86 Act has long been celebrated by scholars and lawmakers alike as...

In the early 1920s, legal and economic experts in the U.S. Treasury Department played a pivotal role in developing U.S. fiscal policy. As scholars have shown, the co-evolution of government institutions and scientific expertise has been fundamental to American state building. But this symbiosis...

Histories of the modern American income tax have generally focused on the role that social and political forces have played in the development of a new tax system. This article seeks to move beyond the social and political determinants to examine the economic factors that facilitated the...

A variety of scholars and commentators have been recently exploring the connections between religion and current U.S. tax policy. The relationship between religion and American taxation, however, runs much deeper than our present period. Indeed, it is no coincidence that roughly a century ago...