In the winter of 1996, Steve Forbes--publisher, heir, and presidential
candidate--captured the American imagination with his proposal for a
flat tax. But while Mr. Forbes claimed that such a tax would level the
economic playing field by eliminating countless loopholes and miles of
red tape, his actual proposal betrayed such claims to fairness by
overtaxing workers and undertaxing financial capital.
In the face of recent proposals for dramatic and far-reaching tax
reform, Taxing America takes a critical look at the way the federal
government collects its revenue and exposes the bias at the heart of a
system which claims to be objective and fair. Contrary to traditional
tax scholarship, these writers argue that an awareness of disability
discrimination, economic exploitation, heterosexism, sexism and racism
is crucial to any analysis of tax policy.
Gathering together essays whose topics range from federal housing policy
to environmental clean-up costs to tax treaty policy making, Karen B.
Brown and Mary Louise Fellows present a philosophy that is as simple as
it is radical: economic arrangements contribute significantly to the
creation of social hierarchies and the perpetuation of discrimination.
Given this reality, Brown and Fellows maintain that the goal of the
federal tax law should be social justice and the disruption of
discriminatory and exploitative practices.
