Each academic year, the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts publishes an Issue dedicated to the annual Symposium of the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts, which is hosted at Columbia Law School. This year’s Symposium was titled Deepfakes: In Search of Global Solutions and was held on Friday, October 24, 2025.  Each speaker was asked to select one of the two options: to write an Article based on his or her remarks at the Symposium or to produce a Transcript of his or her remarks. As always, the Journal was honored to participate in the event and is pleased to publish the proceedings in Issue 49.4. 

Columbia Journal of Tax Law

Taxing Subjective Value: Floors as a Response to Heterogeneity

In the recently published article Taxing Subjective Value: Floors as a Response to Heterogeneity, Professor Jason S. Oh tackles the tax policy challenge of “taxpayer heterogeneity”. He explores the difficulty of accurately measuring taxable income when the value of benefits, such as free room and board, family loans, luxury employee discounts, or tech stock options, fluctuates depending on an individual’s unique circumstances and preferences. Because applying a standard fair market value is often an inaccurate measure of the actual economic benefit enjoyed by specific taxpayers, Professor Oh proposes a unified, practical solution: establishing minimum benefit “floors” in the tax code. By analyzing how statutory floors are already used in debt laws and exploring their broader application, the article demonstrates how setting minimum baselines, rather than attempting individualized calculations, can improve the accuracy, fairness, and simplicity of the income tax system.

The Motor Fuels Tax Dilemma: How to Fund Road Construction and Maintenance Without Tanking the EV and Hybrid Vehicle Market

In the newly published article The Motor Fuels Tax Dilemma: How to Fund Road Construction and Maintenance Without Tanking the EV and Hybrid Vehicle Market, Professor Alice E. Keane addresses the growing crisis of declining motor fuel tax revenues, which have historically funded U.S. road and highway infrastructure. As policymakers scramble to cover these massive funding shortfalls, many have proposed enacting new mileage taxes and heavy registration fees targeting electric and hybrid vehicle owners. However, Professor Keane’s research demonstrates that these popular proposals are ineffective, complex, and counterproductive. She argues that these fees threaten to disincentivize the adoption of climate-friendly vehicles without actually raising enough revenue to fix the nation’s roads. Instead of penalizing EV drivers and hindering environmental progress, the article evaluates more practical, unified solutions, such as continuing to subsidize roadwork with general revenue funds to keep our infrastructure maintained while supporting the transition to a greener transportation market.

Solving One Problem, Creating Another: Religious Preference in the Johnson Amendment’s Latest Exception

In her newly published note, Solving One Problem, Creating Another: Religious Preference in the Johnson Amendment’s Latest Exception, Astrid Obadia examines the constitutional concerns surrounding recent efforts to alter the Johnson Amendment, which bans 501(c)(3) organizations from engaging in electoral intervention. Focusing on a recently proposed consent decree that creates a carve-out exempting religiously motivated speech from religious leaders to their congregations, Obadia argues that this exception violates both the Establishment Clause and the Free Speech Clause of the Constitution by privileging religious viewpoints. Instead of a selectively enforced decree that risks distorting the political landscape while continuing to silence secular nonprofits, Obadia proposes a neutral, activity-based legislative alternative. By advocating for a proportionate model that utilizes targeted taxation and disclosure requirements for defined campaign-intervention expenditures, Obadia outlines a path forward that protects free speech for all 501(c)(3) organizations equally while still safeguarding against large-scale, tax-favored electoral campaigning.