Taxation and Animal Welfare

Policymakers have promoted animal welfare through taxation since at least the late nineteenth century, when New York imposed a tax on dogs and earmarked the proceeds for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In recent years, scholars have suggested new ways to deploy tax tools to improve animal welfare. This lecture surveys the history of animal welfare-related tax provisions, analyzes recent reform proposals, and identifies additional tax mechanisms that could help reduce the cruelty humans inflict on fellow members of the animal kingdom.