Are tax "benefits" constitutionally equivalent to direct expenditures?

Harvard Law Review

Volumn 112, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 380-

  Zelinsky, Edward A ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0041633658     PISSN: 0017811X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1342425     Document Type: Article

References (3)

1. I place "benefits" in quotation marks here because the characterization of tax provisions as "benefits" is often problematic. See infra pp. 394-95 (discussing Professor Bittker's critique of the notion of tax benefits). In deference to convention, I drop the quotation marks after this initial reference, although I continue to use the term "benefits" advisedly.
2. For a general discussion of tax expenditure theory, see Edward A. Zelinsky, James Madison and Public Choice at Gucci Gulch: A Procedural Defense of Tax Expenditures and Tax Institutions, 102 YALE L.J. 1165, 1168-71 (1993). The basic premise of tax expenditure theory is that tax provisions can be divided into "normative" provisions, which are necessary to implement the theoretical base of the tax, and provisions that are adopted to implement policies extraneous to the tax base. These latter provisions, the theory holds, are in the nature of governmental expenditures; hence the term "tax expenditures."
3. The clause is also referred to as the dormant commerce clause.