Essay by Carolyn C. Jones
Following scholars in other disciplines, some legal scholars have begun to analyze and use narrative. This interest in narrative has not, up to now, characterized tax scholarship. There is a world of tax narratives, and this essay proposes one map of the territory. Like all lawyers and legal scholars, tax scholars have been making, using, and analyzing stories in the usual legal places called for by statutes and regulations and found in case reports and legislative history. Tax scholars have also utilized, at a somewhat deeper level, stories of human behavior as told by the discipline of economics.
At a time when the legitimacy of many aspects of our tax system is questioned, a more wide-ranging map is needed. First, foundational stories about taxpayers and their government are prominent features: Donald Duck may pay his income tax, tea may be dumped, or a night may be spent in jail for the nonpayment of tax. Beyond these tax-focused stories are others with intrinsic tax elements woven into a larger narrative. This cartographical sketch considers the Little House books of Laura Ingalls Wilder and their antitax themes. At the edge of my map is the metaphoric use of taxation to describe discrimination at different times in history. The “black tax” and the “tax on sex” connect the objects of discrimination to one another and to a larger community of taxpayers. The use of metaphor connects taxation narrative to the counter-stories of woman suffragists and critical race theorists. By sketching a broad range of tax narratives, this essay attempts to open tax scholarship to the many and varied tax stories around us.
About the Author
Carolyn C. Jones. Professor of Law at the Connecticut University School of Law.
Citation
73 Tul. L. Rev. 653 (1998)