Abstract

The attitude—common among tax professionals—that tax is special (mostly because of its supposedly unique complexity), and that special legal rules should apply in the tax context, has been described and excoriated by scholars as "tax exceptionalism" or "tax myopia." The Supreme Court dealt tax exceptionalism a grievous blow in its 2011 opinion in Mayo Foundation for Medical Education & Research v. United States, in which it held that the Chevron standard for determining the validity of regulations applied in tax just as it applied in other fields. One commentator gleefully celebrated Mayo as the death knell of tax exceptionalism, declaring, "The tax world finally recognized a stark fact of life in 2011: Tax law is not special." This Article offers, with numerous hedges and qualifications, a defense of the exceptionalists and of exceptionalism. It makes three points for the defense. First, it is not so much tax professionals who think tax is special; rather, the view of tax as a thing apart is held most strongly by everyone else. Second, to the extent tax professionals do believe that tax is special, they resemble antitrust lawyers who think that antitrust is special, bankruptcy lawyers who think that bankruptcy is special, and so on. In other words, there is nothing exceptional about tax exceptionalism. And, finally, to the extent tax professionals not only think tax is special but also think it is more special than, say, antitrust lawyers think that antitrust is special, they may not be altogether wrong. Maybe tax really is just a little bit special, after all.

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