Tax Chats

Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with David Mitchel, a Senior Fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, about the small business stock exclusion, recent changes to it, and an article that David wrote with...

Send us a text Luke 2 tells us that Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem "to be taxed", and while there, the baby Jesus was born. But, what do we know about that taxing from history? Did everyone travel? What was the...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott talk with Justin Schein. They discuss Justin's newest film, and the issues and questions it brings up. Justin's newest film is Death and Taxes, which "is a feature documentary about wealth...

Send us a text We start by explaining the Tax Chats DC Tour, 2025, an exclusive live event! Then, Jeff and Scott chat with Pete Sepp, President of the National Taxpayers Union. They talk about the work the NTU has done...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Ajay Mehrotra, law professor at Northwestern, about the economist Edwin Seligman. They discuss Seligman's academic legacy, his views on progressive taxation, his influence on...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Marc Goldwein, who is the Senior Vice President and Senior Policy Director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. They chat about Medicaid, a huge piece in the...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Anna Dolganov, an academy scientist at the Austrian Archeological Institute, about her work on a recently re-discovered papyrus. The papyrus contained notes from a tax evasion...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Henry (Hank) Aaron, a Senor Fellow Emeritus at the Brookings Institution, about Social Security. They discuss how it started, how we fund it, who gets it, how it has been...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott very briefly talk about the bombshell news that podcasters are included on the Treasury's list of jobs eligible for "no tax on tips." Left unexplored is whether any of the other provisions...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott talk with Kyle Pomerleau about how inflation interacts with tax policy and the tax law. Kyle points out that inflation interacts in two major ways: When we tax gains that happen over long...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Brad Setser, a Senior Fellow on the Council of Foreign Relations, about income shifting among pharma firms, as well as the impact that shifting has on tariffs and international...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott take a look at 4 books that Jeff has recently acquired for the Tax Museum library, which numbers at least 677 volumes. Almost all of these books were a an academic bequest from one of...

Send us a text In this episode, Jeff and Scott talk with Anders Anderson, a finance professor at the Stockholm School of Economics about, his research evaluating Sweden’s nationwide e-bike subsidy. The program...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat for a third time with BlueJ CEO Ben Alarie about new innovations in tax research using artificial intelligence, especially how these tools are being used by tax practitioners, the...

Send us a text In this episode, Scott and Jeff chat with Ruth Braunstein about her recent book " My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America " wherein we discuss complicated issues related to using tax dollars...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Kathleen Thomas, a UNC tax law professor, about a recent proposal to allow businesses to have a standard deduction, rather than track expenses. Kathleen explains how this proposal...

Send us a text The House Ways and Means Committee has pass The One Big Beautiful Bill the TOBBB). Knowing this was coming up, Jeff invited Scott to go on a Tax Chats road trip, but, got rejected--Scott was too busy. So...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott talk about the relationship taxes have with each other. How are value added taxes related to sales taxes or the border adjustment tax, and how are all related to income taxes (or are they...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott talk to Ryan Monarch, economics professor at Syracuse University, about what we know about the tariffs imposed by the first Donald Trump administration in 2018.

Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Adam Michel of the Cato Institute about tax expenditures. Adam currently has on his X account the Tax Expenditure Madness brackets (also on his substack: Adam sets up brackets...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Bill Gale of the Tax Policy Center about his new paper (with Oliver Hall and John Sabelhaus), "The Same But Different: How the Income Tax Affects Black, Hispanic, and White...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Oyebola Okunogbe, an economist at the World Bank. They discuss tax enforcement in the developing world, including the challenges developing world countries face that more...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott talk about Elena Patel, an economics professor at the University of Utah, about her time working at the Council of Economic Advisors. Elena worked as a tax economist advising the chair of...

Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Rita de la Feria on tax fairness. Fairness is in the eye of the beholder, and tax fairness, in particular, appears to be particularly sensitive to whose eye is beholding.

Send us a text This episode originally aired on January 15, 2022. We are releasing it for Martin Luther King day, January 20, 2025. If you already heard it and don't wish to hear it again, skip it! Martin Luther King...