This chapter considers how the statute of limitations can enable high-end tax noncompliance and prevent the IRS from challenging tax positions of high-end taxpayers. The chapter begins by describing the statute of limitations on tax assessment and the rationale underlying its design, which is followed by an explanation of how it encourages and facilitates abusive tax avoidance by high-end taxpayers. Following this discussion, we present a proposal for incorporating means adjustments into the statute of limitations in order to level the playing field between high-end taxpayers and the IRS.

Because technology companies play such a large role in governing our lives, we should expect them to constitutionalize their processes for making decisions that affect our fundamental rights. By constitutionalization, I mean particularly the introduction of limits imposed by companies on their own exercise of power.2 This process of constitutionalization is the transformation of political limits that have historically only applied to governments to apply to a decentralized environment where many different types of actors can be said to play a governing role in society.3 This is the translation of the concept of the rule of law to formalize the “lawless” internal processes of powerful corporations in a way that limits and regulates how power is exercised. This translation is a shift away from purely legal conceptions of the rule of law that is essential to pursue if the core goal of the rule of law – limiting the arbitrary exercise of power – is to be achieved in the messy social systems of real life where governments are not the only bodies that regulate our lives.4

Facebook has come under sustained criticism from human rights groups for its role in helping to spread hate speech that fueled the crisis. The platform’s policies prohibit incitement to violence and hate speech, as well as hate organizations and content that expresses support or praise for those groups or their members. These policies, however, were not well enforced during the crisis.8 The Burma Human Rights Network reported that official government Facebook pages used dehumanizing language in a campaign to “demonize” the Rohingya population, and “Facebook posts by nationalists have directed abuse towards journalists, NGO workers and Rohingya activists.”9 The military in Myanmar executed an extensive, systematic campaign involving hundreds of military personnel who used fake Facebook accounts to spread anti-Rohingya propaganda, flooding news and celebrity pages with incendiary comments and disinformation.10

In 1215, on a floodplain on the bank of the River Thames, King John of England met with a group of rebel barons to negotiate a peace treaty. The meeting at Runnymede, about halfway between the fortress of Windsor Castle and the camp of the rebels, became one of the most significant events of Western political history. After raising heavy taxes to fund an expensive and disastrous war in France, King John was deeply unpopular at home. He ruled with might and divine right; the king was above the law. He regularly used the justice system to suppress and imprison his political opponents and to extort more funds from his feudal lords. The peace charter promised an end to the arbitrary rule of the king, guaranteeing the liberties of feudal lords. The document became known as Magna Carta (the “great charter”), described by Lord Denning as “the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.”1