Dear Election Law List Members,

I've been following the discussions on this list for several months now,
but have not yet introduced myself.  I'm a second year law student at
Yale and have been researching issues related to campaign finance for
over a year.  I am not sure whether this list is open to students, and I
do not intend to participate on an ongoing basis, but I have a question
I'm hoping one of you might be able to help me with.

I'm finishing work on a paper that proposes replacing contribution
ceilings with a graduated schedule of regulatory taxes.  The rationale
for the proposal is similar to the arguments made in favor of using
regulatory taxes in environmental law or for using liability rules in
the private law areas.  I've performed fairly thorough searches through
the legal, political science, and economics literatures, and I have not
been able to find any other papers proposing the use of regulatory taxes
for campaign finance. (There are a few proposals for taxing donations
based on the wealth of the donor, but the rationales for these proposals
are very different from the argument I make in favor of taxing donations
based on their dollar amount.)  I've also discussed my paper with a
number of professors at my school and none of them are aware of any
previous publications making a proposal of this sort.  I'll be
submitting my paper for publication in a few weeks, and I'm making one
last check to make sure my ideas have not been pre-empted by any prior
work.

Are any of you aware of any previous work proposing the taxation of
political donations?  I would be very grateful for any guidance or
assistance any of you could provide.

Thank you for your help,

David Gamage