Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis; Google Scholar) presents Inside Income’s Exterior Borders at Georgetown right now as a part of its Tax Legislation and Public Finance Workshop hosted by Emily Satterthwaite and Dayanand Manoli:

The mandate of tax companies appears clear: to safe income for the federal government and guarantee taxpayer compliance. But for many years, tax companies have repeatedly facilitated immigration enforcement. Whereas students and the general public have paid vital consideration to the usage of state and native police for immigration enforcement, this conscription of the taxman as a foot soldier has largely been neglected.

This paper goals to appropriate that oversight. Constructing on the rising critiques of the tax system’s function in perpetuating racial inequities, I first describe tax-agency participation in immigration raids, holding the dry mechanics of the company procedures towards stark examples of IRS complicity in mid-raid civil rights violations. I then tackle a number of causes to be involved about tax-agency involvement in immigration enforcement earlier than contemplating present constraints on that involvement. My evaluation of these constraints begins with a reminder of the tax-law origins of immigration raids’ constitutional exceptionalism, earlier than assessing the residual constraints on company participation: taxpayer privateness, regulatory suppression, and civil rights torts.