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This week four papers authored by SEAT co-founders appear in Professor Paul Caron’s Top Five New Tax Papers.
The four papers are:
Of Losing Citizenship, Tropes, and Missed Opportunity
This paper was written in response to a student Note published by the Harvard Law Review entitled Moore than Meets the I.R.C.? The Apportionment Rule’s Originalist Backstop for I.R.C. § 877A. The Note accepted and repeated – without investigation – stigmatizing tropes about Americans who renounce U.S. citizenship. Because it did not investigate the tropes, the Note missed a rare opportunity to influence policy to benefit not just Americans currently living outside the United States, but all Americans who may one day imagine doing the same.
This response to the Note was submitted to the Harvard Law Review but was rejected for publication.
The Invisibility of the American Emigrant
Published by the Depaul Journal for Social Justice. For decades the knowledge and experiences of Americans living outside the United States have been ignored by academics, industry leaders, and governmental representatives, among others. Until the contributions to knowledge of Americans living outside the United States are more widely recognized, their truths are tracked, and their claims are investigated without preconceived judgements and in good faith, there can be no justice, nor true freedom for any American.
FATCA is Not the Answer
Published by Tax Notes. This is a Letter to the Editor in response to the Tax Notes article Taxing Fat Cats Abroad, The article defended the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) as an “automatic exchange of information used to track down and tax accounts held by wealthy U.S. citizens living abroad.” The article contained many errors and misinterpretations, as explained in this response.
Does the Federal Budget Trump Constitutional Rights?
Published by the Hofstra Law Review. Congress has abdicated to two unelected bodies—the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation—considerable power to determine the outcome of policy initiatives. If these bodies do not assign a positive budget score, the initiative is likely to die. This has devastating consequences for reform of the U.S. nationality-based tax system. Reform is desperately needed. But, as long as a positive budget score is required, true reform—reform that will end the system’s violations of constitutional and other fundamental rights for all Americans—is impossible.
All four papers are available outside a paywall, via SSRN. A full listing of all SEAT papers, including a link for each paper, is available here (published papers) and here (SEAT Working Paper Series).
