Tax Chats

Hosted by Dyreng and Hoopes

Business News PoliticsInterviews guests

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Episodes

195

Latest episode

Aug 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

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.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

August 25, 202630 min

Brandon Arnold on Data Centers

Send us Fan Mail Scott and Jeff speak with Brandon Arnold , the Executive Vice President of the National Taxpayer's Union, about data centers. Do they drive up real estate prices? Do they use too much water? Are they just a substitute for people's fears about AI? And, what are they doing for property taxes (this is, after all, Tax Chats!). Read Brandon's article on data centers here: https://www.ntu.org/publications/detail/smart-policies-not-kneejerk-bans-can-help-taxpayers-benefit-from-data-centers

August 10, 2026Episode 17732 min

Jared Walczak on the Laffer Mesa

Send us Fan Mail Recent research suggests that the Laffer curve is less curve-like than originally thought. Jeff and Scott talk with Jared Walczak from the Tax Foundation about the Laffer Curve, and why we think it is mesa-like, based on his writing here: https://thesaltroad.net/p/the-laffer-mesa.

July 13, 2026Episode 17635 min

Wasteful Tax Expenditures: A Chat with Calvin Johnson

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott talk about wasteful tax expenditures with Calvin Johnson, which Professor Johnson believes includes basically all tax expenditures.

July 6, 2026Episode 17635 min

Tax the Ultrarich Without Throwing Out Realization: A conversation with Brian Galle

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Brian Galle about his new paper, How to Tax the Ultrarich . Most proposals that seek to tax the very wealthy differently eliminate the principle of realization, such as wealth taxes or mark-to-market regimes. These approaches carry considerable baggage, including liquidity problems, valuation problems, and related concerns. By contrast, Brian proposes a tax that eliminates some of the value of deferral, which would reduce the incentive to hold assets merely to delay taxation, but still only levies taxes upon realization.

June 29, 2026Episode 17735 min

Lobbying for the National Association of Manufacturers: A Chat with Charles Crain

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott speak with Charles Crain, Managing Vice President of Policy at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Charles works closely with NAM’s member companies to advocate for tax policies that support manufacturers and strengthen the manufacturing sector. In this episode, Jeff and Scott first discuss the important matter of how to pronounce NAM (NOT like Viet-NAM). They then discuss NAM’s role in the policy process, how the organization identifies and prioritizes its tax policy agenda, and some of its most significant advocacy successes. They also explore the story behind NAM’s efforts to secure the bonus depreciation adjustment in the corporate alternative minimum tax.

June 8, 2026Episode 17628 min

Benjamin Jaros on Colonial Tobacco Tariffs

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Ben Jaros, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, about his paper, “Tobacco Tariffs in the Colonial Chesapeake.” Ben explains how tobacco tariffs shaped the finances of colonial Maryland and Virginia, the English Crown, and the broader Atlantic economy from the early 1600s through the Revolutionary War. We discuss who actually bore the burden of these tariffs, why European consumers may have paid most of the cost, and how tobacco revenue helps explain Britain’s fiscal interest in maintaining control over the colonies

May 30, 2026Episode 17538 min

Tax Research with AI: A Chat with Ben Alarie (with offer for tax profs)

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with the CEO of BlueJ, an AI-powered tax research tool, about updates on BlueJ. Scott announces that BlueJ now offers their product free for tax professors.

May 26, 2026Episode 17431 min

The Tax Policy Center: Chatting with Elena Patel

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott chat with Elena Patel about the Tax Policy Center, where she is co-director. We talk about the history of the TPC, who works there, and its mission.

April 29, 2026Episode 17334 min

Former IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel on the IRS

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott interview Danny Werfel, a former IRS commissioner under President Obama and President Biden. They talk about his background, the request from President Obama and Biden that he lead the IRS, challenges and opportunities he encountered at the IRS, and what he would change about the agency if he were IRS King for a day.

February 23, 2026Episode 17238 min

Inconsistency In Crypto Tax Compliance Providers: A Chat with Tyler Menzer

Send us Fan Mail Jeff and Scott talk with Tyler Menzer, an assistant professor of accounting at Texas Christian University, about his recent research on cryptocurrency tax reporting. In the project, Tyler submitted the same set of cryptocurrency transactions to multiple crypto tax software and reporting services, many of which present themselves as tracking or reporting tools rather than tax preparation providers. He found that these services often produced very different calculations of taxable income from identical transactions. The conversation explores why these discrepancies arise and uses them as a starting point for a broader discussion of cryptocurrency taxation, compliance, and reporting challenges.