Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-5lx2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-25T08:56:03.810Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Programmatic Reform to Social Science Research: The National Tax Association and the Promise and Perils of Disciplinary Encounters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Ajay K. Mehrotra  and
Joseph J. Thorndike
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article uses the history of the National Tax Association (NTA), the leading twentieth-century organization of tax professionals, to strengthen our empirical understanding of the disciplinary encounter between law and the social sciences. Building on existing sociolegal scholarship, this article explores how the NTA embodied tax law's ambivalent historical interaction with public economics. Since its founding in 1907, the NTA has changed dramatically from an eclectic and catholic organization of tax professionals with a high public profile to an insular, scholarly association of mainly academic public finance economists. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative historical evidence, we contend that the transformation in the NTA's mission and output can be explained by the increasing professionalization and specialization of tax knowledge, and by the dominant role that public economics has played in shaping that knowledge. This increasing specialization allowed the NTA to secure its position as a bastion of scholarly tax research. But that achievement came at a cost to the organization's broader civic mission. This article is thus a historical account of how two competing professional disciplines—tax law and public economics—have interacted within a particular organizational field, namely the research and analysis of tax law and policy.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 2011 , pp. 593 - 630
Copyright
© 2011 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Earlier versions of this article were presented at workshops sponsored by the University of Michigan, University of Cincinnati, Indiana University, and UCLA, as well as the annual conferences of the National Tax Association, the Social Science History Association, and the Law & Society Association. We thank participants at those venues for their comments. We are also grateful for comments and suggestions provided by Rick Abel, Reuven Avi-Yonah, Steve Bank, Beth Berman, Elliot Brownlee, Paul Caron, Dan Ernst, Bill Fox, Bryant Garth, Jane Gravelle, Jay Krishnan, Leandra Lederman, Kyle Logue, Isaac Martin, Ed McCaffery, Bill Popkin, David Reingold, Galit Sarfaty, Ferdinand Schoettle, Joel Slemrod, Kirk Stark, Emil Sunley, Bob Tannenwald, Chris Tomlins, Dennis Ventry, Jr., Onno Ydema, and the editors and anonymous reviewers of Law & Society Review. Outstanding research assistance was provided by Ryan Guillory, Jeff Peabody, and Sarah Kellogg, and funding for this research was supported by an Indiana University Maurer School of Law summer research grant.

References

References

Aaron, Henry (1972) “Tax Reform and the Composition of Investment,” 25 National Tax J. 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abbott, Andrew (1988) The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abelson, Donald E. (2002) Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes. Montreal: McGill–Queen's Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Allen, Kenneth (1942) “The Case for a Federal Sales Tax,” 33 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 273–6.Google Scholar
Almond, Gabriel (1988) “Separate Tables: Schools and Sects in Political Science,” 21 PS: Political Science and Politics 828–42.Google Scholar
Balogh, Brian (1991) “Reorganizing the Organizational Synthesis: Federal-Professional Relations in Modern America,” 5 Studies in American Political Development 119–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barker, Charles A. (1955) Henry George. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Beito, David T. (1989) Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance During the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Bender, Thomas (1993) Intellect and Public Life: Essays on the Social History of Academic Intellectuals in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Bensel, Richard Franklin (2000) The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, Michael A. (2001) A Perilous Progress: Economists and Public Purpose in Twentieth Century America. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloch, Henry Simon (1942) “Consumer Spending and Inflation,” 27 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 70–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blough, Roy (1947) “New Publication Plans,” 33 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 65.Google Scholar
Blough, Roy (1948) “Measurement Problems of the Excess Profits Tax,” 1 National Tax J. 353–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blough, Roy (1950) “Fiscal Policy in a Defense Economy,” 3 National Tax J. 273–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blum, Walter J. (1949) “Tax Policy in a Democratic Society,” 2 National Tax J. 97–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, E. Cary (1954) “The Corporate Income Tax in the Short Run,” 7 National Tax J. 240–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brownlee, W. Elliot (1996) Federal Taxation in America: A Short History. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Buehler, Alfred. (1950) “Taxation and the Economy,” 3 National Tax J. 121–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Andrea Louise (2009) “What Americans Think of Taxes,” in Martin, Isaac W., Mehrotra, Ajay K., & Prasad, Monica, eds., The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Carter, Susan B. et al. (2006) Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Collins, Robert M. (2000) More: the Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Courant, Paul N. (1979) “Tax Limitation and the Demand for Public Services in Michigan,” 32 National Tax J. 147–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cyphers, Christopher J. (2002) The National Civic Federation and the Making of a New Liberalism, 1900–1915. Westport, CN: Praeger.Google Scholar
Ellis, Albert Luther III. (1991) “The Regressive Era: Progressive Era Tax Reform and the National Tax Association—Roots of the Modern American Tax Structure.” Ph.D. diss., Political Science, Rice University.Google Scholar
Fairchild, Fred Rogers (1917) “Introduction,” 10 NTA Proceedings 11–5.Google Scholar
Fairchild, Fred Rogers (1931) “Taxation in a Period of Economic Depression,” 17 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 42–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fairchild, Fred Rogers (1944) “Some Theoretical Premises of the Problem of Postwar Taxation,” 30 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 2–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farrar, Donald F. (1967) “Taxes, Corporate Financial Policy and the Return to Investors,” 20 National Tax J. 444–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldstein, Martin (1976) “Compensation in Tax Reform,” 29 National Tax J. 123–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Glen W. (1996) The Worst Tax? A History of the Property Tax in America. Lawrence: Kansas Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Flanagan, Maureen A. (2006) America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivism, 1890s–1920s. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Foote, Allen Ripley (1908) “Conference Called to Order,” 1 NTA Proceedings 3–5.Google Scholar
Foote, Allen Ripley (1917) “The Birth, Work, and Future of the National Tax Association,” 10 NTA Proceedings 23–52.Google Scholar
Foote, Allen Ripley (1913) “Annual Address of the President: The Purposes of the National Tax Association,” 6 NTA Proceedings 22–7.Google Scholar
Fourcade, Marion (2009) Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furner, Mary O. (1975) Advocacy & Objectivity: A Crisis in the Professionalization of American Social Science. Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press.Google Scholar
Galambos, Louis (1970) “The Emerging Organizational Synthesis of Modern American History,” 44 Business History Rev. 279–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galanter, Marc, & Edwards, Mark Alan (1997) “Introduction: The Path of the Law Ands,” Wisconsin Law Rev. 375–88.Google Scholar
Garth, Bryant, & Sterling, Joyce (1998) “From Legal Realism to Law & Society: Reshaping Law for the Last Stages of the Social Activist State,” 32 Law & Society Rev. 409–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gieryn, Thomas F. (1999) Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goode, Richard (1997) “The National Tax Journal in 1948–50 and 1994–96,” 50 National Tax J. 707–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Robert W. (2008) “The American Legal Profession, 1870–2000,” in Michael Grossberg & Christopher Tomlins, eds. The Cambridge History of Law in America.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gramlich, Edward M. (1981) “Why Voters Turn Out for Tax Limitation Votes,” 34 National Tax J. 115–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gravelle, Jane G. (1989) “Differential Taxation of Capital Income: Another Look at the 1986 Tax Reform Act,” 42 National Tax J. 441–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Groves, Harold M. (1952) “A New Proposal for Emergency Taxation of Corporate Profits,” 5 National Tax J. 325–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haig, Robert Murray (1932a) “Taking the Burden from Real Estate,” 18 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 34–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haig, Robert Murray (1932b) “The Coordination of the Federal and State Tax Systems,” 17 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 66–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Andrew (1908) “Address of Welcome,” 1 NTA Proceedings 5–6.Google Scholar
Harriss, C. Lowell (2003) “Continuing to Serve: The National Tax Association Approaches Its Centennial,” paper presented at the 96th Annual NTA Conference.Google Scholar
Haskell, Thomas L. (1977) The Emergence of Professional Social Science: The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Authority. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Higgens-Evenson, R. Rudy (2003) The Price of Progress: Public Services, Taxation, and the American Corporate State, 1877–1929. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holzman, Franklyn D. (1958) “Income Taxation in the Soviet Union: A Comparative View,” 11 National Tax J. 99–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howe, Samuel T. (1916) “Purposes and Possibilities of the Bulletin,” 1 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 3–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heller, Walter W. (1951) “Compulsory Lending: The World War II Experience,” 4 National Tax J. 116–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irwin, Douglas (1996) Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Kimberley S. (2007) Governing the American State: Congress and the New Federalism, 1877–1929. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalambokidis, Laura (2010) “How Did You Like the 2009 NTA Conference?,” 21 NTA Network 5–6.Google Scholar
Kalman, Laura (1996) The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Keller, Morton (1990) Regulating a New Economy: Public Policy and Economic Change in America, 1900–1933. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Lawrence, David (1931) “Why Increased Taxes are Unavoidable,” 27 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 78–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leff, Mark (1984) The Limits of Symbolic Reform: The New Deal and Taxation, 1933–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Leland, Simeon E. (1945) “Some Problems of Postwar Taxation,” 30 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 258–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lerner, Eugene M. (1956) “Federal Taxes on Corporate Income and the Rate of Return on Investment in Manufacturing, 1927 to 1952,” 9 National Tax J. 193–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, Mickey (1975) “Voting on California's Tax and Expenditure Limitation Initiative,” 28 National Tax J. 426–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livingston, Michael A. (1997) “Reinventing Tax Scholarship: Lawyers, Economists, and the Role of the Legal Academy,” 83 Cornell Law Rev. 365–436.Google Scholar
Lutz, Harley L. (1931) “Tax Relief Through The Control of Public Expenditures,” 16 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 201–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marberry, Charles E. (1958) “On the Burden of the Corporate-Income Tax,” 11 National Tax J. 323–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Isaac W. (2008) The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mehrotra, Ajay K. (2008) “Forging Fiscal Reform: Constitutional Change, Public Policy, and the Creation of Administrative Capacity in Wisconsin, 1880–1920,” 20 J. of Policy History 94–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, Ogden T. (1932) “Financial Relations of the Federal and State Governments,” 18 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 224–31.Google Scholar
Mitchell, George W. (1948) “The New Journal: Message of President Mitchell,” 1 National Tax J. 93–4.Google Scholar
Morgan, Mary S., & Rutherford, Malcolm (1998) From Interwar Pluralism to Postwar Classicism. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Murnane, M. Susan (2004) “Selling Scientific Taxation: The Treasury Department's Campaign for Tax Reform in the 1920s,” 29 Law & Social Inquiry 819.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Civic Federation (1901) National Conference on Taxation. Buffalo: publisher unknown.Google Scholar
National Tax Association (1908) State and Local Taxation; National Conference under the auspices of the National Tax Association, Columbus, Ohio, November 12–15, 1907; addresses and proceedings. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
National Tax Association (1914) “Introduction,” 7 Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Conference under the Auspices of the National Tax Association 11–2.Google Scholar
National Tax Association (2006) Data on 2005 Membership. Provided to authors by Thomas Neubig.Google Scholar
Palmer, Peter F. (1943) “The Control of Post-War Inflation,” 28 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 153–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pechman, Joseph A. (1957) “Erosion of the Individual Income Tax,” 10 National Tax J. 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reed, Charles A.L. (1908) “A Council of States,” 1 NTA Proceedings 30–1.Google Scholar
Rich, Andrew (2004) Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodgers, Daniel. T. (1982) “In Search of Progressivism,” 10 Revs. in American History 113–32.Google Scholar
Rodgers, Daniel. T. (2000) Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, Dorothy. (1991) The Origins of American Social Science. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Roy, William G. (1997) Socializing Capital: The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporation in America. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, Edward L. (1997) “Law And and the Methodology of Law,” 1997 Wisconsin Law Rev. 521–66.Google Scholar
Scheiber, Harry N. (1996) “Redesigning the Architecture of Federalism—An American Tradition: Modern Devolution Policies in Perspective,” 14 Yale Law and Policy Rev. 227–96.Google Scholar
Schoettle, Ferdinand P. (1979) “The National Tax Association Tries and Abandons Tax Reform—1907–30,” 32 National Tax J. 429–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sears, David O., & Citrin, Jack (1982) Tax Revolt: Something for Nothing in California. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Seligman, Edwin R.A. (1914) “Annual Address of the President,” 7 NTA Proceedings 13–20.Google Scholar
Selko, Daniel T. (1931) “Program for Reducing Taxes,” 17 Bulletin of the National Tax Association 5–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shere, Louis (1949) “Federal Corporate Income Tax—Revenue and Reform,” 2 National Tax J. 110–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shoup, Carl (1948) “Incidence of the Corporation Income Tax: Capital Structure and Turnover Rates,” 1 National Tax J. 12–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slemrod, Joel (1995) “Professional Opinions About Tax Policy: 1994 And 1934,” 48 National Tax J. 121–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stein, Herbert (1969) The Fiscal Revolution in America. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Steuerle, C. Eugene (2004) Contemporary U.S. Tax Policy. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.Google Scholar
Surrey, Stanley S. (1974) Pathways to Tax Reform: The Concept of Tax Expenditures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Tanenhaus, Sam (2007) “History, Written in the Present Tense,” New York Times, 4 Mar., Sec. 4, p. 1.Google Scholar
Taussig, F.W. (1910) Tariff History of the United States, 5th ed. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.Google Scholar
Teaford, Jon C. (2002) Rise of the States: Evolution of American State Government. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, John L. (1983) Alternative America: Henry George, Edward Bellamy, Henry Demarest Lloyd, and the Adversary Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Thorndike, Joseph J. (2003) “Franklin Roosevelt, Agriculture, and New York Property Taxation,” Tax Analysts (Nov. 14).Google Scholar
Tomlins, Christopher (2000) “Law's Disciplinary Encounters: A Historical Narrative,” 34 Law & Society Rev. 911–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ventry, Dennis J. Jr. (2002) “Equity versus Efficiency and the U.S. Tax System in Historical Perspective,” in Thorndike, Joseph J. & Ventry, Dennis J. Jr. eds. Tax Justice: The On-going Debate. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.Google Scholar
Veysey, Laurence R. (1965) The Emergence of the American University. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Vick, Douglas W. (2004) “Interdisciplinarity and the Discipline of Law,” 31 J. of Law & Society 163–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallis, John Joseph. (2000) “American Government Finance in the Long Run: 1790–1990,” 14 J. of Economic Perspectives 61–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver, R. Kent (1989) “The Changing World of Think Tanks,” 22 PS: Political Science and Politics 563–78.Google Scholar
Weintraub, Roy E. (2002) How Economics Became a Mathematical Science. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Wiebe, Robert H. (1967) The Search for Order, 1877–1920. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Yearley, C.K. (1970) Money Machines: The Breakdown and Reform of Party Finance in the North, 1860–1920. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.Google Scholar
Zelizer, Julian E. (2000) Taxing America: Wilbur D. Mills, Congress and the State, 1945–75. New York. Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar

Statutes Cited

Tax Reform Act of 1986, Pub. L 99–514, 100 Stat. 2085 (Oct. 22, 1986).Google Scholar