Tax compliance in the United States has long relied on information from centralized intermediaries — the financial institutions, employers, and brokers that help ensure income is reported and taxes are paid. Yet while the IRS remains tied to these centralized entities, consumers and businesses...

Tax planning is generally criticized by scholars as inefficient; that is, imposing welfare-reducing costs by incentivizing transactions with few non-tax economic benefits. This Article argues that this view is unacceptably narrow, and makes the original claim that tax planning by lower-income...