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INTRODUCTION I. DEMOCRATIC BLIND SPOTS IN CONVENTIONAL TAX ANALYSIS A. Efficiency Without Governing Context B. Equity Without Collective Power C. Administrability Through an 'Everyday Libertarian' Lens D. Limited Focus on [...], As democracies around the world have faltered, legal scholars in fields as diverse as election law, labor law, and administrative law have turned to tax law to repair and support democratic governments. Taxation offers a toolset well-equipped to address concerns raised by democratic theorists focused on the conditions that shape a democratic community and help it to flourish. Tax laws can rectify social dynamics characterized by economic inequality and can help establish and strengthen civic institutions, among many possible interventions. But legal scholars evaluating and designing tax policies generally focus on the standard normative criteria of efficiency, equity, and administrability, with little specific regard for democratic concerns. This separation from democratic theory has left tax law scholars ill-equipped to respond to calls for help from more democracy-focused fields of law. Thus, tax scholarship mostly has not engaged with the increasingly important project of strengthening democratic governance. This Article argues that democracy should be a more central consideration in designing and evaluating tax laws in a democratic system of government, exploring a set of democracy criteria that can bolster the standard normative criteria used to evaluate tax policy. The democracy criteria considered here ask: Does a change in tax rules strengthen or undermine democratic governance? This Article draws on democratic theory to identify pressure points where taxation might shape democracy, building on work by tax scholars who have tried to integrate democratic values into the standard criteria. I make the case that democratic considerations should not be subordinated to other criteria, but rather should stand on their own. I apply the democracy criteria to wealth tax proposals, showing how a democratic perspective illuminates a contemporary debate in U.S. tax policy. Approached in this way, a democratic perspective on tax law and policy can facilitate tax responses--in scholarly discourse and in policy prescriptions--to current challenges facing democracies around the world, answering the calls of scholars in other fields who (appropriately) view tax rules as sites of important potential interventions to shore up democracy.

I. INTRODUCTION II. THE MALTESE ISLANDS AND THE ULTRA-WEALTHY III. GOLDEN PASSPORTS AND MALTESE PENSION PLANS A. Golden Passports: The Back Door to Europe 1. The Structure and Harm of [...], Around the world, the richest among us continue to use their wealth and influence to evade the enforcement of both domestic and international laws. Recently, the country of Malta has become a haven for such abusive and exploitative activity, centering around the country's sale of passports and creative uses of its pension plans. The sale of Maltese passports allows the wealthy to launder money and gain European citizenship, while Malta's pension plans allow the wealthy to evade massive domestic tax liability on virtually any type of asset. This Article details how these schemes are structured and the ways in which they are exploited, as well as the monumental harm the schemes cause in the United States and abroad. Additionally, this Article examines the attempts made by the European Union and the United States to eliminate these schemes, showing why the current attempts are insufficient. Lastly, more stringent, longterm solutions are proposed, leveraging existing mechanisms in domestic and international law to finally bring an end to these abusive activities.

Table of Contents I. Introduction 639 II. The Whistleblower Program in Context 641 A. Measuring the Effectiveness of the Whistleblower Program 641 B. The Whistleblower Experience 644 III. Whistleblower Claims, [...], Tax whistleblowers may challenge the Service's award determinations only in the Tax Court under a highly deferential abuse-of-discretion standard and using an often underdeveloped administrative record. The limited forum, high standard of review, and incomplete administrative record effectively forecloses meaningful review of the agency's award determinations. While the lack of effective review is a problem for whistleblowers, it can also be viewed as a problem for the Service and the Whistleblower Program if potential whistleblowers are dissuaded from submitting tips because they perceive that they will be treated unfairly or fail to be compensated for the professional and personal risks they undertake in blowing the whistle. With a goal of strengthening the Whistleblower Program and improving its reputation for fairness, this Article examines the appeals process for tax whistleblower awards for consistency with fundamental taxpayer rights and existing law. Specifically, this Article uses the most recent Taxpayer Bill of Rights as a normative lens to examine the forum, standard of review, and available administrative record for tax whistleblower appeals.