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David Gamage

@davidgamage

Professor of Tax Law and Health Law; served in Obama's Treasury; research tax law reforms, public finance, and healthcare finance; https://law.missouri.edu/person/david-gamage/

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Latest posts by David Gamage @davidgamage

Yes

02.03.2026 20:16 πŸ‘ 76 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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DOJ Drops Defense Of Biglaw Executive Orders, Leaving Capitulating Firms Holding $940 Million Bag - Above the Law Turns out the Executive Orders Biglaw feared aren’t worth defending after all.

What an incredible embarrassment for all the lily-livered law firms that surrendered without a fight. Their dishonor is indelible. abovethelaw.com/2026/03/doj-...

02.03.2026 21:42 πŸ‘ 61 πŸ” 22 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 2
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Amazon to invest up to $50 billion to expand AI and supercomputing infrastructure for US government agencies Federal agencies will gain access to Amazon SageMaker AI, Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Nova among other AI services from AWS.

Also, the government has lots of computers, but they are the wrong kind of compute for inference. They need to use AWS or another cloud provider just like you do. www.aboutamazon.com/news/company...

01.03.2026 18:32 πŸ‘ 25 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

A useful piece of context is that the government does not have access to better AI models than you (actually they are worse, because they usually don't get the latest models), though they may have different guardrails. You should view government AI capabilities through that lens.

01.03.2026 18:22 πŸ‘ 109 πŸ” 13 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 3

the party that wants to require ID to vote abruptly invalidating a thousand people’s IDs overnight seems like a pretty giant flashing red light

26.02.2026 16:55 πŸ‘ 12897 πŸ” 4776 πŸ’¬ 8 πŸ“Œ 109
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Courts have ruled 4,400 times that ICE jailed people illegally. It hasn’t stopped. The decisions amount to a huge legal rebuke, but the administration has continued jailing people indefinitely.

Courts have ruled 4,400 times that ICE jailed people illegally. It hasn’t stopped.
www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

14.02.2026 17:19 πŸ‘ 2250 πŸ” 1081 πŸ’¬ 71 πŸ“Œ 111

Everyone in America should see this and think about what it implies. And have the courage, like him, to stand up.

14.02.2026 19:14 πŸ‘ 259 πŸ” 74 πŸ’¬ 4 πŸ“Œ 2

Just as ICE and CBP have no legitimate role in "election security" neither does the head of DHS. The mere existence of this press conference should be a scandal, much less this tone-deaf comment.

14.02.2026 15:18 πŸ‘ 6667 πŸ” 2078 πŸ’¬ 281 πŸ“Œ 85

Congrats!!

10.02.2026 23:33 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Happy to share that The Non-Punishment Principle and Restorative Justice is now out in the Penn L Rev! Thanks to the editors for their excellent work and to everyone who generously shared their feedback on this project!
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

08.02.2026 22:34 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 2

That serious people are still LOLing at threats to the integrity of the midterms is disheartening.
People really need to read more about how democracies deteriorate.
I hope (and still believe that) most risks won't materialize, but discounting the risks at this point is anti intellectual.

10.02.2026 06:38 πŸ‘ 37 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 3
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Is California's proposed billionaire tax smart policy? History holds lessons Critics of California's proposed billionaire tax say similar measures in Europe failed. Backers of the measure say they took lessons from those failures in drafting the California proposal.

Some more #CABillionaireTax in the news:

A deeper dive into whether the CBTA has learned the lessons of the most successful European wealth tax systems in Spain and Switzerland (spoiler: yep). Plus commentary from some people who haven't read the bill text 🫀.

www.latimes.com/california/s...

26.01.2026 18:47 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

This guy is standing up to a lot of powerful people on a lot of fronts. 🫑 (that's the salute emoji)

26.01.2026 23:48 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Just kinda seems like refusing to tell us which ICE agents murdered Alex Pretti undercuts the idea that they’re wearing masks to protect themselves β€” rather than to be able to kill people with impunity.

26.01.2026 14:07 πŸ‘ 12201 πŸ” 3961 πŸ’¬ 305 πŸ“Œ 108
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Bill Bramhall, NY Daily News

26.01.2026 17:20 πŸ‘ 595 πŸ” 215 πŸ’¬ 11 πŸ“Œ 5

Absolutely reprehensible that AG Bondi is offering ICE stand down in exchange for access to voting rolls. Outrageous and disgusting. It shows ICE is in Minneapolis is not for law enforcement purposes. Instead it’s a way to stir up shit in blue states and extort them.

25.01.2026 02:21 πŸ‘ 6735 πŸ” 2434 πŸ’¬ 262 πŸ“Œ 131
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A Conversation with David Gamage, Co-Author of the California Wealth Tax Proposal A recording from David Gamage and Bharat Ramamurti's live video

A Conversation with David Gamage, Co-Author of the California Wealth Tax Proposal
open.substack.com/pub/davidgam...

22.01.2026 23:38 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Taxing Dynasties <p><span>The estate tax and the broader wealth-transfer-tax system are even more broken than is commonly understood. Over the past two decades, researchers and

For far more than you really wanted to know about how zillionaires dodge tax on inter-generational transfers, see
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

17.01.2026 18:22 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

As you can see, this rationale does not really apply to publicly-traded companies. There, a founder might have additional voting rights, but the vast bulk of the economic value of the company is not held by the family.

Thus, the voting-rights default rule is limited to private cos.

17.01.2026 18:21 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

So this is why there has to be a voting-stock (default) rule in the CBTA. Many wealthy founders do not technically own their companies. What they own is a residual stump of voting rights. But in economic reality, of course, their family will get everything.

17.01.2026 18:18 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

So voila! You have passed the entire value of your company on to your heirs without any estate tax. And your heirs also get the voting stock, so they also control the company.

In theory there's gift tax on the transfer of the non-voting shares, but that is also easy to scheme around.

17.01.2026 18:17 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Now, to escape estate tax, you gift the non-voting shares to a trust for the benefit of your heirs. With careful lawyering, the trust will not be subject to estate tax.

At your death, your lawyers argue your voting shares are worthless because they don't entitle the owner to any profits.

17.01.2026 18:16 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Here's how the estate-tax dodge works. You found a company you expect to rocket up in value, and you don't want your heirs to pay estate tax.

So you split the stock into two classes, voting and non-voting. The n/v shares get all the dividend rights (i.e., the future profits of the company).

17.01.2026 18:14 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Even the Current Affairs article, though, is puzzled about why the default valuation (which owners can readily replace with an appraisal) includes an adjustment for voting stock.

It addresses an obscure but important estate-tax planning device w/ which most non-zillionaires are likely unfamiliar.

17.01.2026 18:13 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Every Argument Against the California Billionaire Tax is Wrong The ballot measure’s loudest critics in Silicon Valley are way off-base. Unfortunately, Representative Ro Khanna has some misconceptions too.

A useful and amusing debunker from Current Affairs on the #CABillionaireTax:

www.currentaffairs.org/news/every-a...

17.01.2026 18:10 πŸ‘ 11 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
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Per CA wealth tax vote-or-value test:

Vote-or-value thresholds are common in tax code, e.g., in arguably biggest anti-deferral provision, subpart F.

CA t/ps also can fact-and-circumstance this aspect of the wealth tax (below from @bdgesq.bsky.social @davidgamage.bsky.social et al, SSRN 5996554).

15.01.2026 16:28 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
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A reminder - before Trump, MAGA, Musk and Fox rewrote history - that this is what the entire country agreed had happened five years ago today:

06.01.2026 12:40 πŸ‘ 7150 πŸ” 3445 πŸ’¬ 112 πŸ“Œ 135

More seriously, as most readers here know I helped draft the CA billionaire tax initiative text and you just can't get out of it by setting up a couple of LLCs in Florida. We have thought about how to block these fake paper moves for 4 years.

27.12.2025 02:03 πŸ‘ 888 πŸ” 189 πŸ’¬ 33 πŸ“Œ 6

Sending you good wishes and supportive thoughts from afar.

20.12.2025 17:32 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

"ICE and CBP must be abolished" is the only reasonable position. We can debate the specifics of new agencies for immigration functions, but these agencies are simply too infected with a culture of impunity, racism, and fascism to continue. They're gangs with badges.

14.12.2025 20:49 πŸ‘ 4899 πŸ” 1790 πŸ’¬ 111 πŸ“Œ 67