Joseph J. Thorndike is director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts. He is a regular columnist for Tax Notes magazine and a frequent contributor to Forbes.com. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, Barron’s, Bloomberg, Time.com, and numerous academic journals.
Thorndike is a frequent radio and television guest, appearing on shows for National Public Radio, Fox News, CBS, and other broadcasters.
Thorndike’s research explores the political economy of American taxation, with a special focus on the 20th century. He is the author of Their Fair Share: Taxing the Rich in the Age of FDR, the coauthor (with Steven A. Bank and Kirk J. Stark) of War and Taxes, and the co-editor (with Dennis J. Ventry, Jr.) of Tax Justice: The Ongoing Debate. His current projects include: 1500 Pennsylvania, a history of the United States Treasury Department, and Other People’s Taxes: Avoidance, Evasion, and the Rise of Progressive Taxation.
Some additional detail:
Professional Positions
Director, Tax History Project
Tax Analysts, Falls Church, VA, 1995–present
Contributing Editor, Tax Notes
Tax Analysts, Falls Church, VA, 2003–present
Assoc. Editor in Chief, Federal Publications
Tax Analysts, Falls Church, VA, 2002–2003
Adjunct Professor
Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, Jan. 2012–2016
Visiting Scholar in History
University of Virginia, 2005–2014
Fellow
George W. Bush Institute, 2012–2013
Contributor
Bloomberg View, New York, NY, 2011
Executive Associate
Consortium of Social Science Associations, Washington, DC, 1989–1991
Reporter
Tax Analysts, Falls Church, VA, 1988–1989
Education
Ph.D., History — University of Virginia, 2005
Dissertation: “The Price of Civilization: Taxation in Depression and War, 1932–1945”
M.A., History — University of Virginia, 1993
Thesis: “The Liberal and Salutary Path: Fortune Magazine and the Search for a Business Liberalism, 1930–1939”
B.A., History — Williams College, 1988
Books
Their Fair Share: Taxing the Rich in the Age of FDR. Urban Institute Press, 2013.
War and Taxes. With Steven A. Bank and Kirk J. Stark. Urban Institute Press, 2008.
Tax Justice: The Ongoing Debate. Edited with Dennis J. Ventry, Jr. Urban Institute Press, 2002.
Articles, Book Chapters, and Reports
“How a Dispute over Counting Cows Shaped Taxpayer Privacy Protections.” Taxes: The Tax Magazine 104, no. 3 (March 2026): 241–257.
“Cheater in Chief: Presidential Taxpaying and Fiscal Citizenship.” In Work, Capitalism, and Democracy: The United States Since the New Deal, edited by Elizabeth Tandy Shermer. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026.
“Stanley Surrey, the New Deal, and the Virtues of Incremental Tax Reform.” Law and Contemporary Problems 86 (2023): 15–36.
“Who Speaks for Tax Equity and Tax Fairness? The Emergence of the Organized Tax Bar and the Dilemmas of Professional Responsibility.” With Ajay K. Mehrotra. Law and Contemporary Problems 81 (2018): 203–240.
Making the World Safe for Philanthropy: The Wartime Origins and Peacetime Development of the Tax Deduction for Charitable Giving. Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2016.
“Politics, Fiscal Performance, and External Sources of Budget Discipline in the United States, 1970–2013.” In Deficits and Debt in Industrialized Democracies, edited by Eisaku Ide and Gene Park, 199–228. New York: Routledge, 2015.
“Mr. Shoup Goes to Washington: Carl Shoup and His Tax Advice to the U.S. Treasury.” In The Political Economy of Transnational Tax Reform: The Shoup Mission to Japan in Historical Context, edited by W. Elliot Brownlee, Eisaku Ide, and Yasunori Fukagai, 110–134. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
“Soak-the-Rich Republicans: The Persistence of High Tax Rates in the 1950’s.” Tax Law Review 66 (2012): 761.
“The Durability of a Dysfunctional Tax: Public Opinion and the Failure of Corporate Tax Reform.” Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy 21 (2012): 347–450.
“Walking the Walk: Calvin Coolidge and Fiscal Policy.” New England Journal of History, 2012.
“From Programmatic Reform to Social Science Research: The National Tax Association and the Promise and Perils of Disciplinary Encounters.” With Ajay K. Mehrotra. Law & Society Review, Fall 2011.
“The Fiscal Revolution and Taxation: The Rise of Compensatory Taxation, 1929–1938.” Law and Contemporary Problems, Winter 2010.
“‘The Unfair Advantage of the Few’: The New Deal Origins of Soak the Rich Taxation.” In The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective, edited by Isaac Martin, Ajay K. Mehrotra, and Monica Prasad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
“Randolph E. Paul.” In The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law, edited by Roger K. Newman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
“The Flat Tax: Fiscal Revolution or Policy Diffusion?” In Global Debates about Taxation, edited by Holger Nehring and Florian Schui, 201–218. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
“The Taxation of Capital Income in Historical Perspective.” In Taxing Capital Income, edited by Henry J. Aaron, Leonard E. Burman, and C. Eugene Steuerle, 153–164. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2007.
“Evasion Fiscale: La Civilisation Au Rabais.” L’Economie Politique (Paris), Summer 2003.
“Reforming the Internal Revenue Service: A Comparative History, 1862–2000.” Administrative Law Review 53, no. 2 (2001): 717–780.
“‘The Sometimes Sordid Level of Race and Segregation’: James J. Kilpatrick and the Virginia Campaign against Brown.” In The Moderates’ Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia, edited by Matthew D. Lassiter and Andrew B. Lewis, 51–71. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.
Selected Journalism and Opinion
Contributor, Forbes.com, 2013–present.
Contributor, Time.com, 2011–2012.
Contributor, Bloomberg View, 2011.
“Democrats Can Counter GOP Warnings about ‘Armies’ of Tax Collectors.” Washington Post, September 7, 2022.
“A Short History of the Income Tax.” Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2014.
“A Century of Income Taxation.” Barron’s, July 6, 2013.
“An ‘Unthinkable’ IRS Scandal? More Like Unavoidable.” Washington Post, May 17, 2013.
“Romney Should Release His Tax Returns.” Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2012.
“Obama’s Job Creation Tax Credit: Cool Idea, Bad Policy.” Time.com, February 24, 2012.
“A Tax Hike is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” Time.com, December 16, 2011.
“The Tragic Death of the Temporary Tax Cut.” Time.com, December 1, 2011.
“Soaking the Wealthy: An American Tradition.” Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2011.
“Americans Don’t Mind Taxes – They Hate Tax Loopholes.” Washington Post, September 12, 2010.
“Stop the War on Windfalls.” Barron’s, September 8, 2008.
“Speculation and Taxation: Time for a Transaction Tax?” Tax Notes 119, no. 6 (2008): 1367.
“Taxes, Trade, and the British Taste for Beer.” Tax Notes International 50, no. 6 (2008): 487.
“Hurts So Good.” The New York Times, April 15, 2005.
“The Republican Roots of New Deal Tax Policy.” Tax Notes 100, no. 9 (2003).
“An Army of Officials: The Civil War Bureau of Internal Revenue.” Tax Notes 93 (2001): 1739–80.
“The IRS Is Hiding Its History.” Washington Times, December 19, 1997.
Joseph J. Thorndike 