Anthony Infanti

Professor Infanti’s scholarly work focuses on comparative tax law, critical tax theory, and the overlaps and intersections between these two fields of study. Professor Infanti has published numerous articles and book chapters in these areas. He is also the author of Everyday Law for Gays and Lesbians (And Those Who Care About Them) (Paradigm Publishers 2007), coeditor of Critical Tax Theory: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press 2009), and editor of Controversies in Tax Law: A Matter of Perspective (Ashgate Publishing 2015).

Professor Infanti is currently working on a book titled Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America (NYU Press, forthcoming in late 2024). Taxation and Slavery examines the role that taxation played in reinforcing and perpetuating the institution of slavery during the colonial period in America. The general aim of the book is to document a dark but long unexamined chapter of fiscal history while demonstrating the close relationship between tax law and the society that creates it. Taxation and Slavery thus directly challenges—and, building on Prof. Infanti’s earlier work, further undermines—the long-prevailing belief among tax scholars that tax law is a quasi-scientific subdiscipline of economics that stands above such base concerns as societal discrimination.

Prior to embarking on the writing of Taxation and Slavery, Professor Infanti published Tax and Time: On the Use and Misuse of Legal Imagination (NYU Press 2022). Tax and Time shows how our tax laws resemble more the creative product of an author’s imagination than the rote dictates of economics. In this way, Tax and Time complicates and overturns prevailing views of how time operates in and through tax law. But it does more than just that. In asserting that time in tax law is the product of pure imagination, Tax and Time calls into question the world beyond time that we have created for ourselves. In other words, the book asks the reader to consider the ends to which we have put our imaginative efforts. Have we used our tax imagination to work toward a more just world or merely to entrench and exacerbate existing injustices? Providing preliminary answers to these questions, Tax and Time asks the reader to consider the broader and more provocative question of whether we should revisit and rework the relationship between time and our tax laws to move us toward the better future that we collectively hope and strive for.

Prior to writing Tax and Time, Professor Infanti completed two book projects. In Our Selfish Tax Laws: Toward Tax Reform That Mirrors Our Better Selves (The MIT Press 2018), Professor Infanti brought together his work in comparative legal theory and critical tax theory in an attempt to shift how we see our tax system. Our Selfish Tax Laws uses comparative legal research to show how tax law is shaped by its social, political, and cultural context. Shaped as it is in this way, the U.S. tax system paints a picture of American society that lets us see those who are included in the collective American “self” (i.e., those whom we value, validate, and support) as well as the many “others” whom we dismiss or leave out because they fail to meet this “ideal.” Once we understand the expressive power of our tax system, it is easy to see that taxes are about much more than just economics or finances. Our tax laws are a reflection of ourselves—of our society as it is and as we wish it would be. This shift in perspective is important both because it provides the foundation for critical tax scholars to reframe their contributions in order to have greater impact on tax reform debates and because it helps us all to understand why we must heed critical tax scholars’ calls for reform. After all, it is only once we understand the “selfishness” of our tax laws that we can work together toward creating a fairer and more inclusive tax system—one that reflects our continuing aspiration toward a fairer and more inclusive society that embraces and benefits all Americans.

While working on Our Selfish Tax Laws, Professor Infanti coedited with Professor Bridget Crawford of Pace Law School a volume titled Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions (Cambridge University Press 2017). Tax law is, of course, primarily statutory in nature; however, tax statutes are rarely determinative on their own and require interpretation and application that is often influenced by the context in which the parties and the court are operating. One of the underlying claims of this book is that perspective matters in all areas of judicial interpretation, not only with respect to constitutional questions. The book demonstrates that judges may decide tax issues involving both fundamental constitutional principles, such as equal protection, as well as more prosaic statutes in ways that are consistent with their judicial roles and established methods of interpretation while applying feminist perspectives to advance the goal of equal justice. The book also combats the notion that tax law is a pseudoscientific subdiscipline of economics in which application of the law is foreordained by economic principles or precepts. Instead, the book shows that tax law is a product of the larger social, political, and cultural context in which it operates and that tax law decisions are contingent and that the history and development of tax law can take (and could have taken) a multiplicity of different paths.

Professor Infanti teaches a variety of tax courses at Pitt Law, including Federal Income Tax, Corporate Tax, and International Tax. He has also cotaught the classroom component of Pitt Law’s Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic and served as a Faculty Editor of the Pittsburgh Tax Review since its founding in 2003. Professor Infanti has received both the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award as well as an Excellence-in-Teaching Award from the graduating students at Pitt Law. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute, the American College of Tax Counsel, and the American Bar Foundation.