Deficit Peacock

About this Episode

We’re joined by tax scholar Daniel Hemel to discuss a puzzling problem. Why don’t presidents use their regulatory powers to affect tax law like they do to affect the law in many other areas? But before that, we talk about Christian’s birthday disappointment (0:01:15) and law reviews and the Bluebook (0:06:47). Then we talk Joe’s Oral Argument cruise proposal and segue to today’s topic (0:21:32), a president’s power to tax (0:27:19), an example of “carried interest” (the tax issue that flared up in the 2012 presidential campaign) (0:37:12), Daniel’s game-theoretic model and discussion of hawks, peacocks, debt ceilings, and presidential hand-offs (1:04:36).

This show’s links:

• Daniel Hemel’s faculty profile and writing
• Oral Argument 91: Baby Blue (guest Chris Sprigman)
• Orin Kerr, A Theory of Law
• Christopher Cotropia and James Gibson, The Upside of Intellectual Property's Downside
• Daniel Hemel, The President’s Power to Tax (forthcoming so watch this space)
• The Joint Committee on Taxation’s Bluebooks
• U.S. Treasury’s Greenbooks
• National Muffler Dealers Ass’n v. United States
• Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research v. United States
• 26 U.S.C. sec. 385
• Gregg Polsky, Can Treasury Overrule the Supreme Court?
• Victor Fleischer, Two and Twenty: Taxing Partnership Profits in Private Equity Funds
• Matthew Yglesias, Jeb Bush Wants You to Think He’d Raise Taxes on Hedge Fund Managers. He’d Actually Cut Them. (see the second section, Carried interest, explained)
• Victor Fleischer, Why Hedge Funds Don’t Worry About Carried Interest Tax Rules
• David Lebedoff, Why Doesn’t Obama End the Hedge Fund Tax Break?
• About the Pay-As-You-Go-Act of 2010
• About hawk-dove games
• About Margaret Chase Smith