Interpreting the Interpreters: Assessing Forty-Five Years of Tax Literature

In an attempt to ascertain what tax literature can tell us about tax culture, this article samples articles from four tax journals—Journal of Taxation, Taxes, Tax Law Review, and Tax Lawyer—written during the forty-five year period between 1954 and 1998. Over 1,500 articles, comprising roughly 20% of all articles published in these journals during this period, are classified for a number of different variables, such as gender and professional status of the author, and the subject matter and stylistic approach of the article. Subject to the limitations of sampling itself, and a willingness to draw conclusions beyond the sampling, several benefits inure from this review. One benefit is to examine trends because a forty-five year review reveals whether women and men have published at comparable rates, for example, more readily than a one or five yearreview.3 Another benefit of this longitudinal review is what the sample tells us about scholarship and tax practice.

To draw on women again, others have written about women's presence in law and in publishing; this sampling casts light on how women have published in tax.