Loopholes for Some, Taxes for Everyone Else

Abstract

<p>Add the word “taxes” to the title of an article or conference paper, and you’re guaranteed to attract an enthusiastic group of artists and art historians. Just kidding. A few like-minded policy wonks might stick around, but generally, terms like hobby-loss rule, offshore incorporation, and limited-liability company are received with confusion and frustrated boredom. But that’s precisely the point! Behemoth companies, such as Nike and FedEx, have lobbied and lawyered up for decades to keep tax avoidance schemes plentiful. Responding to the largely invisible power of tax law, artists such as Lowell Darling and the duo Paolo Woods and Gabriele Galimberti have become artist-investigators—realizing work directly shaped by and from tax law, and in so doing, demonstrating and antagonizing the invisible power that “boring” policy wields both within and beyond the borders of the United States.</p>