The Failure of U.S. Tax Policy: Revenue and Politics

An investigation of the tangled U.S. tax system, which attributes its complexities and inconsistencies to the conflicting aims of its many creators. The federal courts, the IRS, the private tax bar, and individual taxpayers all struggle just to keep up with increasingly complex tax statutes and regulations. The Failure of U.S. Tax Policy surveys federal tax policy in the post-World War II era, with special attention to the last two decades, when it gained much of its complexity. Tax attorney and business law professor Sheldon Pollack shows how the tax policy agenda has been and continues to be influenced by a wide assortment of players, from tax lawyers, the media, and private interest groups and their lobbies to presidential contenders and congressional 'policy entrepreneurs,' thereby shaping the development of the tax laws.