Tax Research with AI: A Chat with Ben Alarie (with offer for tax profs)

Send us Fan MailRecent research suggests that the Laffer curve is less curve-like than originally thought.  Jeff and Scott talk with Jared Walczak from the Tax Foundation about the Laffer Curve, and why we think it is mesa-like, based on his writing here: https://thesaltroad.net/p/the-laffer-mesa.

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.