Sarah Lawsky – College of Law https://law.illinois.edu Thu, 28 May 2026 20:10:30 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 New paper from Lawsky: “Constructing Deductions” https://law.illinois.edu/new-paper-from-lawsky-constructing-deductions/ Thu, 28 May 2026 20:10:28 +0000 https://law.illinois.edu/?p=20414

Professor Sarah Lawsky, along with co-author Leandra Lederman, published the paper “Constructing Deductions” on SSRN.com. The abstract follows:

This Essay identifies drafting “building blocks” that are present in the Internal Revenue Code and that are used to construct many of the deductions available to individuals. The Essay represents these building blocks using mathematical formulas and graphically, and it then shows how the building blocks are combined to create complex deductions. These formalizations and visualizations yield insight into statutory drafting choices. They also reveal “negative space”–that is, ways that federal income tax deductions could be drafted but are not.

Download the full paper at ssrn.com.

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