How Codification of the Tax Statutes and the Emergence of the Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation Helped Change the Nature of the Legislative Process

For a number of months, Pres Richard Nixon had rebuffed questions about a sizable tax deduction he claimed for donating some of his papers to the National Archives. Among other things, Nixon pointed out that the IRS had audited the returns in question and given him a clean bill of tax health. But the questions persisted, and Nixon eventually asked the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation (JCT)to review his returns and promised to pay any deficiency it determined. Even though Democrats controlled the committee at the time, Nixon knew of the JCT staff's reputation for expertise, independence, and nonpartisan integrity, and gambled that its fair examination would vindicate his position. As we know, the gamble did not pay off. The staff's conclusion was one of the factors contributing to the President's resignation. Here, Yin describes the early development of the JCT staff following its creation in 1926 and details how the role of the staff emerged from a very different and much more modest conception by Congress.