Education

• Stanford University B.A. 2000
• Stanford University M.A. 2000
• Yale University J.D. 2005

Courses

• Introduction to Income Tax (B650)
• Health Law (B536)
• Seminar in Tax Policy (L773)
• Tax Policy Colloquium (B526)

Biography

Professor David Gamage is a scholar of tax law and policy and also of health law and policy. He has written extensively on tax and budget policy at both the U.S. state and federal levels, as well as on tax theory, fiscal federalism, and the intersections between taxation and health care. Professor Gamage is ranked as the 9th most-cited U.S. tax law scholar and is the youngest scholar on that top-10 list. He is also ranked as the 5^th most-downloaded U.S. tax law scholar.

Gamage has authored or coauthored over 70 scholarly articles and essays. His scholarship has appeared in a range of journals, including the peer-reviewed Tax Law  Review and Public Finance Review, and the flagship law reviews of the University of Chicago, the University of California, Duke, and Northwestern Law Schools. His casebook, Taxation: Law, Planning, and Policy, is published by Carolina Academic Press.

From 2010 through 2012, Gamage served as special counsel to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Policy. In that position, he administered the individual income tax portfolio of the Treasury Department's Tax Legislative Counsel, and he oversaw the drafting of all individual income tax regulations and executive branch initiatives related to the individual income tax. Gamage's position primarily involved the drafting and implementation of tax provisions of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"). Since returning to academia in 2012, Gamage has served on a tax reform commission for the state of California and has regularly advised other state and federal policymakers on tax and health policy. Recently, Professor Gamage has helped draft tax reform legislation for the federal government and for the states of California, New York, and Illinois, and has advised on numerous other federal and state level legislative and regulatory proposals for tax and health law reform.

Selected works

Congressional Testimony

• "The Case for Taxing Extreme Wealth Holdings and 'Real' (Book) Corporate Profits and for Improving IRS Funding" ( PDF and VIDEO ): Testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth in a hearing entitled, "Creating Opportunity Through a Fairer Tax System." April 27, 2021, 215 Dirksen Senate Office Building

Legislation and Public Research

• Drafted tax reform proposals for California, Illinois, and New York to address budget crises brought on by COVID-19 and to fund public investment, and advised on tax reform proposals for the federal government and for a number of other state and local governments
• Co-organized Project SAFE (State Action in Fiscal Emergencies), an effort by academics and their students to help states mitigate the fiscal crisis by providing policy recommendations backed by research

Publications

• Taxation and the Constitution, Reconsidered (with John R. Brooks), Tax Law Review (forthcoming).
• Solving the Valuation Challenge: A Feasible Method for Taxing Extreme Wealth (with Brian Galle and Darien Shanske), Duke Law Journal (forthcoming).
• Wage Enslavement: How the Tax System Holds Back Historically Disadvantaged Groups of Americans (with Goldburn Maynard Jr.), Kentucky Law Journal (forthcoming).
• Weathering State and Local Budget Storms: Fiscal Federalism with an Uncooperative Congress (with Darien Shanske, et. al.), University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform (forthcoming).
• Tax Now or Tax Never: Political Optionality and the Case for Current-Assessment Tax Reform (with John R. Brooks), 100 North Carolina Law Review 487 (2022).
• How to Measure and Value Wealth for a Federal Wealth Tax Reform (with Ari D. Glogower and Kitty Richards), Roosevelt Institute Issue Brief (2021).
• Why A Federal Wealth Tax Is Constitutional (with Ari D. Glogower and Kitty Richards), Roosevelt Institute Issue Brief (2021).
• The Games They Will Play: Tax Games, Roadblocks, and Glitches Under the 2017 Tax Legislation (with David Kamin, et. al.), 103 Minnesota Law Review 1439 (2019).
• Taxing E-Commerce in the Post-Wayfair World (with Darien Shanske and Adam Thimmesch), 58 Washington University Journal of Law and Policy 71 (2019).
• Tax Cannibalization and Fiscal Federalism in the United States (with Darien Shanske), 111 Northwestern University Law Review 295 (2017).
• The Case for Taxing (All of) Labor Income, Consumption, Capital Income, and Wealth, 68 Tax Law Review 355 (2015).
• Preventing Government Shutdowns: Designing Default Rules for Budgets (with David Louk), 86 Colorado Law Review 181 (2015).
• How Should Governments Promote Distributive Justice?: A Framework for Analyzing the Optimal Choice of Tax Instruments, 68 Tax Law Review 1 (2014).
• Taxation and Incentives in the Business Enterprise (with Shruti Rana), in ENTERPRISE LAW: CONTRACTS, MARKETS, AND LAWS IN THE U.S. AND JAPAN (Zenichi Shishido ed., 2014).
• Experimental Evidence of Tax Salience and the Labor-Leisure Decision: Anchoring, Tax Aversion, or Complexity? (with Andrew Hayashi and Brent Nakamura), 41 Public Finance Review 203 (2013).
• Perverse Incentives Arising from the Tax Provisions of Healthcare Reform: Why Further Reforms Are Needed to Prevent Avoidable Costs to Low- and Moderate-Income Workers, 65 Tax Law Review 669 (2012).
• A Better Way Forward for State Taxation of E-Commerce (with Devin Heckman), 92 Boston University Law Review 483 (2012).
• Three Essays on Tax Salience: Market Salience and Political Salience (with Darien Shanske), 65 Tax Law Review 19 (2011).
• Preventing State Budget Crises: Managing the Fiscal Volatility Problem, 98 California Law Review (2010).

Interests

• Tax Law
• Tax Policy
• Health Law
• Health Policy
• Budget Policy

Related links

• Curriculum vitae
• Social Science Research Network
• ORCID

Areas of expertise

• Health law
• Tax law