ARTICLES U.S. TAX IMPERIALISM IN PUERTO RICO DIANE LOURDES DICK*
This Article uses historical and legal analysis to demonstrate how U.S. domination over Puerto Rico's tax and fiscal policies has been the centerpiece of a colonial system and an especially destructive form of economic imperialism. Specifically, this Article develops a novel theory of U.S. tax imperialism in Puerto Rico, chronicling the sundry ways in which the United States has used tax laws to exert economic dominance over its less developed island colony. During the colonial period, U.S. officials wrote and revised Puerto Rican tax laws to serve U.S. economic interests. In more recent years, U.S. tax laws have disadvantagedPuerto Ricans, who still lack voting rights and full democratic representation in Congress. A theory of tax imperialism may also have applicationfar beyond the U.S.-Puerto Rican experience. For instance, it may help us understand the relationships between the United States and its other possessions and territories throughout history, and between the United Kingdom and its British Crown dependencies, overseas territories, and newly-independent colonies.
* Associate Professor of Law, Seattle University School of Law. This Article was selected for presentation at the Sixteenth Annual Yale/Stanford/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum, held at Harvard Law School in June 2015. I owe a debt of gratitude to Matt Autio, Steven A. Bank, Steven Bender, Rosa Carrasquillo, Brooke Coleman, Keith Demirjian, Lourdes Dick, Sam Erman, Rafael Gely, Carmen Gonzalez, Lily Kahng, Yair Listokin, Charlene Luke, Pedro Malavet, Omri Marian, Ajay Mehrotra, Elizabeth Porter, Diane Ring, Victor Rodriguez, Darien Shanske, and Joseph Thorndike for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. This Work has also benefited tremendously from faculty workshop presentations at my home institution as well as at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, and from comments received at the 2015 Northwest Junior Faculty Forum and the History and Fiscal Policy Panel at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association. This Article was written in loving memory of my grandparents, Joaquin and Gloria Barros.
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