Interpreting the Interpreters: Assessing Forty-Five Years of Tax Literature

Abstract

When I began practicing tax law in the 1970s, I kept current by reading Journal of Taxation, Taxes, Tax Law Review, and Tar Lawyer. I'm sure the genesis of my reading lies in advice from more senior attorneys with whom I worked. Even as my interests have expanded and as topics of current interest in tax have shifted over the last two decades, I still read these journals.How has tax literature changed over time? Why do these changes matter? To paraphrase a well-known book title, we are what we write. What we write reflects what we hold important. Were there no articles, for example, about business tax or the intersection of tax and race or tax and gender, the absence would suggest that these topics are not important or, if important, that they have been ignored. The steady production of business tax articles over the years and the more recent publication of articles about tax and race and tax and gender lets us deduce that business tax (to state the obvious) has always been important and that tax and race and tax and gender have been examined more recently.