Thursday, October 17, 2013

Upcoming commentary on Zelenak / Romney paper

This afternoon, after teaching a class, I am flying to Los Angeles to participate in the Third Annual NYU-UCLA Tax Policy Conference.  This year's subject is Politics and Taxation, and the conference program is available here.

As you can see from the program, I will be commenting on a paper by Larry Zelenak entitled "Mitt Romney, the 47%, and the Future of the Mass Income Tax."  The inspiration for this paper is the collision between two things that are actually, as Larry recognizes, quite different.  The first is his own view, expressed in a recent book, that mass income tax filing can strengthen "fiscal citizenship."  The second is Mitt Romney's ill-received 2012 campaign snark about the "47 percent" whose non-payment of current year income taxes suggested, to Romney's not very capacious brain, both (a) that they would never take responsibility for their own lives and (b) that they wouldn't vote for him since he wasn't offering them anything.

Needless to say, I will have a few things to say on these topics.  Following my perhaps peculiar recent practice, I've made Power Point slides for my remarks that I plan to use as notes for my commentary, but not actually to use (i.e., project) as  slides.  I will post them here when I get a chance, probably early next week.

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