Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Could a pending Supreme Court case upend large parts of the US tax system? Some observers think Moore v. United States could do just that. The specific claim in the case is that a one-time tax on unrepatriated profits that was part of the 2017 tax law is a tax on property not income, and thus violates the Constitution’s apportionment clause. If the Court agrees, that could call into question the validity of major portions of the current tax code. The case has also been explicitly framed by the Moores as addressing the constitutional viability of wealth taxation and other fundamental reforms to the US tax code. An unusual alliance of tax and constitutional law experts has raised serious concerns about such implications, and much of the justices’ questioning at oral arguments in December focused on that as well. At this Forum, experts discussed the legal, economic, and ethical issues the Moore case presents.

This program was co-hosted by the Tax Law Center at NYU Law, which submitted an amicus brief in Moore.

Panelists

Chye-Ching Huang, Executive Director, Tax Law Center, NYU School of Law
Catherine Rampell, Opinion Columnist, Washington Post
Eric Solomon LLM ’84, Partner, Ivins, Phillips & Barker; former Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, US Department of the Treasury
Moderator

David Kamin ’09, Professor and Faculty Co-director, Tax Law Center, NYU School of Law