Since the first ship of enslaved African people landed in Virginia in 1619, racist policies in institutions, systems, structures, practices, and laws have ensured inequity for people of color. These racist policies include every imaginable variant of injustice from slavery to lynching, to...

The enhancements in the child tax credit (CTC) in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) signed by President Biden on March 11 are a targeted child-centered, economic stimulus. Economists estimate that the 2021 CTC enhancements will increase consumer spending by $27 billion to $37 billion,...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the federal agency charged with tax revenue collection. In fiscal year 2020, the IRS collected $3.5 trillion in taxes, which represented about 96 percent of aggregate annual federal funding (IRS, 2020). In its mission statement the IRS states that its...

Despite this phenomenal success and the Biden administration’s strong support, a divided Congress narrowly failed to extend these enhancements to 2022. The adverse impact was immediate. The January 2022 monthly child poverty rate increased by more than 40 percent to 17 percent in January 2022,...

In recent decades, Congress has used the federal income tax system increasingly to administer and deliver social benefits. This transition is consistent with the evolution of the American welfare system into workfare over the last several decades. As more and more social welfare benefits are...

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) makes available to certain lower and middle-income individuals a refundable tax credit, the Premium Tax Credit (PTC), designed to help them pay the premiums on their qualified health care plans. To achieve Congress’s goal of making health...

Certain federal, state, and local government employees do not pay into the Social Security system, but rather pay into alternative government pension plans. For purposes of the Social Security Act, where a worker pays into an alternative government pension plan, the worker’s employment...

“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.” Rep. John Robert Lewis (1940-2020)It seems fitting that the civil rights movement was born in the district that John Robert Lewis represented in Congress for 34 years until his death on July 17. In the 1960s,...

There is nothing certain about taxes or death. I beg your pardon Ben Franklin, but hear me out . . . . A glance at my resume presents a life journey including at least three different careers: tax accountant, tax lawyer and tax professor. While I have had different titles, in substance I have...