The IRS not publishing tax data by race forecloses race-based tax remedies.

Evidence

What was the difference here? Access to information. The favorable ruling was only possible because the plaintiff was able to gain access to the information about the petitions granted and denied by the board of supervisors. However, this kind of finding—and the evidence it’s based on—is rare; you’d have to prove a pattern as stark and discriminatory as that in Yick Wo. In other words, you’d need to show that no black taxpayers have received the marriage bonus, claimed the mortgage interest deduction, or sold their home and received tax-free gain. Targeted tax relief for black Americans is simply not available—for now. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 554

Categorization

• QUESTION: Directly mirrors the reader’s tracked interest in how Brown argues around the IRS evidence hole — here the missing data is itself the reason a remedy is unavailable.
• SEED: The information-access parallel (Yick Wo succeeded because petitions data existed; tax reform fails because racial tax data doesn’t) could anchor an essay on how data availability silently determines legal outcomes.