The Politicization of Tax Reform: The Case of the Deduction for Charitable Gifts

• In Event: 594 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 07. The Politics of Public Policy

Abstract

The depoliticizing effect of the law is well-traveled terrain among scholars of law and politics, from analyses of how the “myth of rights” depoliticizes inequalities in society once rights are granted to the ways in which the legal order quells collective action through individualized reward structures. But comparatively less is known about complementary processes of politicization. How does the law become politicized, and what are the consequences of politicization? This paper illustrates one such process of politicization through a close reading of the recent debate over the tax deduction for charitable gifts. Historically, tax expenditures such as the deduction for gifts have been considered relatively apolitical objects and have received little scholarly attention. This has slowly changed, however, as scholars have begun to recognize indirect federal spending via tax expenditures as a key source of welfare provision. Building on these accounts of the “hidden” or “submerged” welfare state, I argue that recent proposed changes to the tax deduction for giving provide a special opportunity to investigate how tax law becomes constructed as a political object. In the analysis that follows, I assemble testimonies and written reports from a 2013 open hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee to demonstrate the ways in which nonprofit leaders infuse the tax deduction for charitable gifts with political meaning as a universal social good, despite clear inequalities in the black-letter law, and use the deduction as a tool to navigate the uneasy relationship between the state, civil society, and the market.

Author

• Kelly Russell, University of Michigan