Federal tax courses can be taught from several points of view. For example, deductions for interest, if paid on a mortgage on a home, or for real estate taxes, can be taught merely as deductions subtracted from income in order to arrive at taxable income, as a platform for analyzing underlying policy, or as a base for asking whether they have contributed to the gap that has grown, increasingly, between the "rich" and the "poor."

Part of the workshop on property, wealth, and inequality is a session on the pedagogy of unequal distributions of wealth and income in tax courses. Literature suggests that a gap exists, whether it is measured by the accumulation of wealth or by income. Unequal distributions of wealth and income also appear along racial lines. To what extent do federal tax laws contribute to these inequalities?

This session presents the opportunity to discuss whether we teach about the effect of tax laws on unequal distributions of wealth and income, how we teach it, what methods have worked best, and what problems we have encountered.

Members of the AALS Tax Section were surveyed in early December in preparation for this session. Results of the survey will be distributed at the session, as well as a bibliography of material about inequality and tax.