Miranda and I are headed off to Boston this weekend for the Second Annual Junior Tax Scholars Conference, which we are co-organizing with Lily Batchelder (NYU) and David Walker (BU).  Special thanks to David Walker and BU for hosting this year! 

This year's participants:  Lily Batchelder (NYU) Neil Buchanan (GW) Adam Chodorow (Arizona State) Allison Christians (Wisconsin) Steven Dean (Brooklyn) Michael Doran (Virginia) Miranda Perry Fleischer (Illinois) Vic Fleischer (Illinois) David Gamage (Boalt) Kristin Hickman (Minnesota) Mitchell Kane (Virginia) Ruth Mason (Connecticut) Lloyd Mayer (Notre Dame) Ajay Mehrotra (Indiana) Alex Raskolnikov (Columbia) Adam Rosenzweig (Wash U) Dennis Ventry (American) David Walker (BU) Ethan Yale (Georgetown).  Apologies to the junior tax folks out there that we weren't able to invite; eventually some of us may get tenure, which should open up some slots. 

One of the fun things about these kinds of conferences is seeing if any themes emerge without any coordination by the organizers.  Some accidental themes this year: (1) the application of Domar-Musgrave in specific institutional contexts (hedge funds, state and local tax, deferred comp), (2) how social norms affect tax compliance, (3) the global market for tax rules, (4) applying different conceptions of distributive justice to specific tax contexts.  Broadly speaking, our generation of tax scholars seems especially talented at bridging the theoretical and practical rather than focusing on pure theory or purely doctrinal questions. 

More details after the jump.  (To encourage works-in-progress, the conference papers are available only on a password-protected site.  Papers will be posted to SSRN in due time.) 

Friday, June 8

Panel 1 - International

Mitchell Kane, Taxation and International Charter Competition

Discussants: Steven Dean, Victor Fleischer

Steven Dean, The Market for Extraterritorial Tax Information 

Discussants: Ruth Mason, Dennis Ventry

Allison Christians, International Tax and Global Governance

Discussants: Mitchell Kane, Kristin Hickman

Ruth Mason, Juicial Activism & the ECJ's Two Country Problem

Discussants: Allison Christians, Lloyd Mayer

Lunch Dicussion Topic: Is Tax a Subject Matter or a Discipline?

Is tax law simply a doctrinal area, like corporate law or patent law, that relies on other disciplines (economics, sociology, history, philosophy) for causal theories and methodologies?  Or do tax scholars have a unique way of looking at the world?

Panel 2 - Distributive Justice

Adam Chodorow, Distributive Justice in the Real World 

Discussants: Miranda Perry Fleischer, Adam Rosenzweig

Lily Batchelder, The Superiority of an Inheritance Tax

Discussants: Adam Chodorow, David Gamage

Miranda Perry Fleischer, Charitable Justice

Discussants: Lily Batchelder, Mitchell Kane

Panel 3 - Taxation of Risk

Adam Rosenzweig, Taxation, Risk and Derivatives

Discussants: Ethan Yale, Victor Fleischer

Ethan Yale, Investment Risk & Deferred Compensation

Discussants: David Walker, Michael Doran   

Victor Fleischer, The Blackstone IPO

Discussants: Adam Rosenzweig, Alex Raskolnikov

David Gamage, Should States Tax Capital Income? 

Discussants: Neil Buchanan, Ethan Yale

Saturday, June 9 - BU Law School, 765 Commonwealth, 12th Floor Lounge

Panel 4 - Taxation and Democracy

Neil Buchanan, What Do We Owe Future Generations?  

Discussants: Lloyd Mayer, Lily Batchelder

Lloyd Mayer, What Is This "Lobbying" that We Are So Worried About?

Discussants: Ajay Mehotra, Miranda Perry Fleischer

Ajay Mehotra, To Lay and Collect: American Governors and Tax Policy, 1908-2008

Discussants: David Gamage, Allison Christians

Lunch Discussion Topic: To What Extent Should Our Research Make Political Concessions?

What elements of the tax system do you accept as a given when talking about tax reform?  Should you account for administrability concerns?  Should you take a realization-based system as a given?  The capital gains preference?  Tax-exempt entities?  Revenue-neutrality? As scholars, how should we strike the right balance between rigorous theoretical analysis and relevance to the politically-charged debates of the day? 

Panel 5 - Tax Administration

Kristin Hickman, A Problem of Remedy

Discussants: David Walker, Adam Chodorow

Michael Doran, Tax Penalties and Tax Compliance

Discussants: Dennis Ventry, Ruth Mason

Alex Raskolnikov, Tax Identity

Discussants: Michael Doran, Ajay Mehotra

David Walker, Regulatory Penalties

Discussants: Alex Raskolnikov, Neil Buchanan

Dennis Ventry, From Competition to Cooperation

Discussants: Kristin Hickman, Steven Dean

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