All Things Considered on Windfall Profits Tax

I did a segment on NPR's All Things Considered today describing the not-so-illustrious history of the windfall profits tax. Also talked a bit about wartime excess profits taxes, as featured in my new book War and Taxes, coauthored with Steve Bank and Kirk Stark of UCLA Law School.

A few years ago, I wrote a short piece on the Carter-era version of the windfall profits tax. The tax started out with broad, bipartisan support, but it quickly fell from grace. As my piece concludes:

In August 1988 Congress agreed to repeal the tax. Few mourned its passing. "Time for the windfall tax to fall," declared its erstwhile champions at The New York Times. Events had overtaken the levy, as so often happens with narrow taxes designed to deal with transient phenomena. Did oil companies deserve to keep their windfall profits? "It was a resentful question when Americans waited two hours in gasoline lines and Saudi princes summered in Monaco," the Times recalled. "It seems almost quaint now."