People and Their Taxes

It’s April and that means two things: spring and tax time! The US tax system is really, really complicated. Every time you do your taxes, you’re answering to multiple jurisdictions –– and all their laws about what you owe for what, and why. We’re taking a look at how our tax system got so complicated and how our attitudes about taxes have changed over the years.

We start with a story from Alisa Roth about a surprising group of taxpayers who live outside the law. Then we listen in as a group of scholars talk about how the tax system got so complicated, and how Americans ideas about citizenship and taxation have changed over the years.

Bad Constitution

With more than 300,000 words and over 800 amendments, Alabama’s Constitution is 40 times longer than the US Constitution, and holds the record for being the longest active constitution in the world. Originally written in 1901 by men seeking to establish the law of white supremacy in the state, the constitution still requires racially segregated schools and outlaws interracial marriage, laws that have been nullified by the United States Supreme Court.

Release Day

For eighteen years, California’s three strikes law leveled harsh penalties against repeat felons: anyone with two felony convictions received 25 years to life for committing a third felony. In 2012, Californians voted to change the three strikes law, allowing some of the prisoners sentenced under it to petition for release for time served. Curtis Penn is one of those prisoners. Life of the Law executive producer Nancy Mullane chronicles the day Curtis was released from prison.

On Prison and Pregnancy

United States incarcerates six times as many women as it did thirty years ago. Many of these women are already mothers, and four percent of incarcerated women enter prison pregnant. What happens to the babies born in the correctional system? What happens to the children left behind, as their mothers serve out their sentences?

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