Guidelines for Contributors

Submission Information

The Tax Lawyer endeavors to provide scholarly articles on topics pertaining to taxation and other information that it believes to be of professional interest to members of the Section of Taxation of the American Bar Association and other readers.

The Tax Lawyer welcomes the submission of articles written by admitted members of the bar and by other professionals. Manuscripts by candidates for graduate degrees in law (e.g., LL.M. or M.L.T.) will be considered only if the author is admitted to the bar at the time of submission.

Accepted manuscripts are generally between 12,000 to 35,000 words, though exceptions are occasionally made for longer articles on a case-by-case basis.

Although utmost care will be given to materials submitted, The Tax Lawyer does not accept responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts. Guidelines for submissions:

• Submit as e-mail attachment in MS Word. Please use standard formatting and fonts.
• Please include a table of contents and brief abstract of your article with your submission (we recommend not exceeding 500 words). Your abstract should not include footnotes, disclaimers, or urls.
• Please include 5-10 keywords or phrases, including relevant Internal Revenue Code sections.
• A copy of your CV is encouraged but not required.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice

In any content or material submitted for publication The Tax Lawyer requires disclosure of all conflicts of interest, such as those identified in the ABA Business Conduct Standards and those identified in the Section of Taxation Guide to Committee Operations. The journal requires that any content or material submitted for publication contain the identity of all authors and their professional affiliations both to establish their qualifications and to reveal any potential conflicts of interest.

E-mail submissions should be sent to: Editor, Publications, at [email protected]. Submissions may also be made through the Scholastica submission portal.

Submissions are peer-reviewed by volunteer experts in the fields of federal, state, local, and international tax law.

Editorial Policy

The Editorial Board of The Tax Lawyer reserves the right to accept or reject any article and the right to condition acceptance upon revision of material to conform to its criteria. Final publication decisions rest with the Editorial Board. Complaints or appeals should be addressed to the Vice Chair, Publications.

The Tax Lawyer does not publish material that has been previously published or is scheduled for publication elsewhere. Articles are accepted on the basis of merit, professional interest, appeal to the readership of The Tax Lawyer, timeliness of the topic, clarity of expression, and style.

Because issues of tax law and policy are frequently controversial, readers of The Tax Lawyer should understand that opinions expressed in its articles are solely those of the authors and may differ from those of the American Bar Association, the Section of Taxation, the Editorial Board of The Tax Lawyer, and the Student Editorial Board of The Tax Lawyer. An article contributed by a public official does not necessarily represent the views of that person’s department or agency unless expressly stated in the particular instance. Nothing herein shall be construed as representing the opinions, views, or actions of the American Bar Association or of the Section of Taxation unless duly approved by the Association or the Section as the case may be.

Any author who becomes aware of any error in their work should immediately notify the Vice Chair, Publications, who will review the matter and make a decision on a correction or retraction.

Ethics concerns should be addressed to the Vice Chair, Publications, who chairs the Publications Committee, which has oversight of all Section publications.

Citation & Style Manual

This Manual represents the primary authority on style and citation form at The Tax Lawyer and in most other Tax Section publications. For topics not addressed in this Manual, please consult the following authorities:

The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation

Texas Law Review Manual on Style

Publication Agreement

Authors who accept offers of publication will be asked to complete our standard agreement. Authors retain copyright and grant ABA exclusive right of first publication worldwide.

Peer Review

The Tax Lawyer’s peer review is conducted by members of the tax bar.

Rights

Authors in The Tax Lawyer retain copyright and grant the ABA the exclusive right of first publication. Details are in our sample author agreement .

The Tax Lawyer permits preposting and reposting on SSRN. Authors need only ensure that The Tax Lawyer citation is included in the SSRN record.

Editing

On acceptance of publication offers, The Tax Lawyer editors edit each article for substance, organization, and lucidity, in conjunction with the author.

Then the journal’s student editorial board at the Northwestern Tax LL.M. Program performs source and cite checking, and edits the article for style, also in conjunction with the author. Learn more about The Tax Lawyer – Northwestern Tax Program partnership in this video.

Distribution

The Tax Lawyer is distributed to all 14,000 ABA Tax Section members and via 7 different online products including EBSCO, HeinOnline, JSTOR, LexisNexis, ProQuest/Cengage, Westlaw, and the ABA website.

Promotion

The Tax Lawyer promotes articles on Twitter and LinkedIn. Authors will be notified of those postings and encouraged to share them via their social media networks.

Reprints

The Tax Lawyer offers each author 25 complimentary reprints.

Questions?

Contact us at [email protected].

Author Testimonials

“As an author, I always welcome the opportunity to publish with The Tax Lawyer, the outstanding peer-reviewed tax journal that reaches the widest possible audience of academics, practitioners, and government officials. The Tax Lawyer editors and staff are dedicated to ensuring publication in a timely manner of the highest quality articles, consistent with the publication’s commitment to serve the wider tax community and deepen understanding of significant tax issues.”
—Karen Burke, University of Florida Levin College of Law

“The editors of The Tax Lawyer were amazingly helpful with their comments and their edits. My work product was certainly better for their participation. The process was not a rubber stamp. Even better, all of the comments were thoughtful and on point. Moreover, during the pandemic, I was worried about the editing process and demands for additional footnotes because making it to the library was difficult. But the editors of The Tax Lawyer made the process simple, straightforward, and clear.  It was the smoothest editing process I have ever had, and I hope to work with them again.”
—Stephanie Hunter McMahon, University of Cincinnati College of Law

“I was very happy to have my article published by The Tax Lawyer. The editorial team was responsive and highly professional. Their editorial work resulted in a much better article. And on the rare occasion when I did not agree with a suggestion, it was clear that it was nothing more than that—a suggestion that I was free to reject. My article included three graphics, something highly unusual for a law journal. The Tax Lawyer took the steps necessary to include the graphics without batting an eyelash, something I also appreciated.”
—Laura Snyder, Paris-based attorney and international member of the Taxpayer Advocacy Panel (TAP)

“One of the key benefits of ABA Tax Section membership is The Tax Lawyer. In most issues, the content of at least one article applies to my practice and is a useful resource. When I decided to try to publish with a major tax publication, I went first to The Tax Lawyer because of its quality and its readership that was the obvious audience for the topics of my writing. I have been honored that The Tax Lawyer accepted four of my articles for publication. I found that the rigor with which editors consider and comment makes the articles better and more useful to members. Over the years, I have received numerous comments on my articles in The Tax Lawyer, often with constructive engagement on the issues that honed my skills as a lawyer. This interaction among author, the editors, and the readership has been rewarding for me. So I highly recommend The Tax Lawyer for all lawyers focusing on a tax practice.”
—John A. (Jack) Townsend, Attorney at Law, Houston, Texas

“The Tax Lawyer is unique among tax journals for its focus on cutting-edge practical long-form scholarship. That is what attracted me to publish my article “New Thinking About Jurisdictional Time Periods in the Tax Code.” Tax law reviews such as the Virginia Tax Review contain long-form scholarship. Their mostly student-run editorial boards focus on scholarship of great value to academics. Other tax publications such as Tax Notes and Taxes: The Tax Magazine are run by journalists who give practitioners valuable shorter articles. The Tax Lawyer is the only publication whose editorial board consists both of deeply experienced practitioners and academics and whose audience reflects the diversity of practice one finds in the ABA Tax Section, including both practitioners and academics.”
—Bryan Camp, Texas Tech University School of Law

“I consider The Tax Lawyer to be the premier journal in which to place tax scholarship. While The Tax Lawyer is not the only peer-reviewed tax journal, it has by far the greatest readership, with 14,000 subscribers of both academics and practitioners. Even if my article is not relevant to a given reader, that reader will still see my name on the cover, which is helpful PR, hardly irrelevant to tax professors or to practitioners. The editing process is uniformly excellent, with good turnaround times.”
—Walter Schwidetzky, University of Baltimore School of Law