
Tax Chats
Taxes touch every aspect of society, including who rules, where factories are built, what people drink, what car they buy, when they have children, and when they die. Scott Dyreng (Duke) and Jeff Hoopes (UNC), two accounting professors, chat about taxes, including current events, with the energy of an over-caffeinated chihuahua. Listening is guaranteed to be far more entertaining than actually paying your taxes.
Latest episodes

Apr 28, 2025 • 48min
The Tax Family Tree: A Genealogical Discussion with Kyle Pomerleau
Send us a textJeff and Scott talk about the relationship taxes have with each other. How are value added taxes related to sales taxes or the border adjustment tax, and how are all related to income taxes (or are they just unrelated)? Find out by listening to this amazing episode.

Apr 15, 2025 • 41min
Tariffs in 2018: Ryan Monarch on what we know about the first round of Trump Tariffs
Send us a textJeff and Scott talk to Ryan Monarch, economics professor at Syracuse University, about what we know about the tariffs imposed by the first Donald Trump administration in 2018.

Mar 24, 2025 • 40min
Which is the worst Tax Expenditure?: A Chat with Adam Michel
Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with Adam Michel of the Cato Institute about tax expenditures. Adam currently has on his X account the Tax Expenditure Madness brackets (also on his substack: https://adamnmichel.substack.com/). Adam sets up brackets like the March Madness NCAA basketball tournament, but instead of pitting basketball teams against each other to establish the best team*, he has tax expenditures competing to determine which is the worst expenditure. Jeff, Scott and Adam chat about several sets of tax expenditures, and offer their somewhat tongue-in-cheek opinion about which ones are worst.*For example, by establishing that UNC women's basketball has won a national championship 1 time, compared to Duke's 0 times, or that UNC men's basketball has won the NCAA tournament 6 times, compared to Duke's 5 times. Of note is that of all teams with over 20 games played in the NCAA men's tournament, Duke has the highest winning percentage, which is only to say that they win a lot before they ultimately lose--they choke under pressure in the end.

Mar 19, 2025 • 29min
Race and Taxes: A Chat with Bill Gale
Send us a text Jeff and Scott chat with Bill Gale of the Tax Policy Center about his new paper (with Oliver Hall and John Sabelhaus), "The Same But Different: How the Income Tax Affects Black, Hispanic, and White Households." We discuss how the bottom 70% of Black households, by income, pay less in tax than White households with similar incomes. This occurs because Black households have more dependents, on average, than White households, and children are tax advantaged in the U.S. In the top 30% of households, by income, White households pay less in tax because they are more likely to have tax-advantaged forms of income, such as capital gains. Across the first nine income deciles, Hispanic taxpayers pay less in tax, as Hispanic households tend to have more dependents throughout the income distribution.

Feb 19, 2025 • 34min
Tax Enforcement in Developing Countries: A Chat with Oyebola Okunogbe
Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with Oyebola Okunogbe, an economist at the World Bank. They discuss tax enforcement in the developing world, including the challenges developing world countries face that more developed countries do not face, and, how those challenges shape tax systems. Get CPE for listening to Tax Chats! Free CPE courses are available approximately one week after episodes are published. Visit https://earmarkcpe.com/ to download the free app. Go to the Tax Chats channel, register for the course, take a short quiz, and earn your CPE certificate.

Feb 17, 2025 • 35min
Advising the President's Advisor: Elena Patel on working at the CEA
Send us a textJeff and Scott talk about Elena Patel , an economics professor at the University of Utah, about her time working at the Council of Economic Advisors. Elena worked as a tax economist advising the chair of the CEA, who is an economic advisor to the President. Elena talks about how one gets this job, what one does in the job, what the CEA is general, and how the CEA interacts in a very political world.

Feb 6, 2025 • 46min
A Chat with Rita de la Feria on Tax Fairness
Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with Rita de la Feria on tax fairness. Fairness is in the eye of the beholder, and tax fairness, in particular, appears to be particularly sensitive to whose eye is beholding.

Jan 16, 2025 • 34min
Re-release: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Tax Perjury Trial: A conversation with Edgar Dyer
Send us a textThis episode originally aired on January 15, 2022. We are releasing it for Martin Luther King day, January 20, 2025. If you already heard it and don't wish to hear it again, skip it!Martin Luther King Jr. is the only person to have ever been tried for perjury with regards to state income taxes in Alabama. Jeff and Scott interview Edgar Dyer about the tax perjury trial of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960. Eddie wrote an article entitled "A Triumph of Justice in Alabama: The 1960 Perjury Trial of Martin Luther King, Jr."Fred Grey, Martin Luther King's attorney, said of the trial, "No one would have predicted that an all-white jury in Montgomery, Alabama, the Cradle of the Confederacy, in May 1960, in the middle of all the sit-ins and all of the racial tension that was going on, would exonerate Martin Luther King, Jr. But it really happened." Coretta Scott King said of the trial, "A southern jury of twelve white men had acquitted Martin. It was a triumph of justice, a miracle that restored your faith in human good." Dr. King said it was a "turning point" in his life. Tune in to hear about this triumphal tax trial, which was a turning point for Martin Luther King.

Jan 15, 2025 • 34min
Low Property taxes in California: Chatting about Prop 13 with Dan Walters
Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with Dan Walter's, an Opinion Columnist for CalMatters. They chat about Prop 13, a law that dramatically limits property tax increases in California, and was passed in 1978. Dan has been writing about California since 1975, and shares his perspectives on Prop 13 from having lived through and covered the debate surrounding its passage, as well as what effects Prop 13 has had since its passage.

Jan 13, 2025 • 31min
Democrats Lowering the Income Tax in Hawaii! A Chat with Seth Colby
Send us a textJeff and Scott chat with Seth Colby, a Tax Research and Planning Officer for the State of Hawaii. They discussed a recent policy change in Hawaii, where Hawaii dramatically reduced income tax rates, while increasing sales taxes, in an effort to both collect less revenue for lower-income Hawaiians, while generating additional revenue from those visiting Hawaii temporarily.
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