Recommended Citation
Heather M. Field,
Tax Enforcement, Gutted: Tax Lawyers’ Duties When the Revenue System Is Under Attack, 78
Rutgers U. L. Rev.
103
(2025).
Available at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/faculty_scholarship/2154
Publication Date
2025
Abstract
The Trump administration has been gutting the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The workforce and budget cuts are far more severe than ever before and are likely to create long-lasting harm to the IRS’s enforcement ability. That reduces revenue collections and increases economic incentives for cheating. The dismantling of the IRS, together with escalating politicization of the IRS and political leaders whose actions demonstrate disregard for the tax laws, erode public confidence in the tax system and degrade tax morale. That could create non-compliance norms that, once established, will be difficult to reverse. This is all part of the Trump administration’s larger assault on legal institutions and the rule of law more generally. These developments demand a recalibration of tax lawyers’ ethical responsibilities. Ample literature discusses tax lawyers’ ethical duties, but this Article is the first to grapple with the fundamental question about what it should mean to be a tax lawyer when the IRS, the revenue system, and rule of law are under attack as they have been since early 2025 and as they may be for years to come. Ultimately, this Article argues that tax lawyers must play a stronger gatekeeping role going forward and that standards of practice applicable to tax advisors should be raised accordingly. Tax lawyers must stand up for the revenue system and the rule of law. Otherwise, tax lawyers will be complicit in their collapse.
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Rutgers University Law Review