July 4th, 2025, marked the day President Trump signed his tax bill into law. Dubbed by himself and his supporters as the “Big Beautiful Bill,” it was touted as a victory for the country due to supposed landmark spending and policy changes to key U.S. institutions. One of the most notable changes is a massive tax cut for the wealthy and corporations. The price tag of Trump’s signature legislation? An estimated four trillion dollars will be paid for by poor and working-class families. Despite claims by Trump and supporters that they were ushering in a new era for America’s future, Andrew Kahrl’s The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America shows that the practice of taxing the poor to pay for tax cuts to the rich is anything but new. In fact, as Kahrl shows, it’s firmly rooted in a long racist and classist history of tax policies and practices that have resulted in black people paying the heaviest costs of taxes and receiving nowhere near the proportionate amount of public goods and social services that local governments reserve for well-off whites. Instead, the tax system often subjects black people to the harshest and most predatory features of the tax system.

The Black Tax is a must-read that exposes the racialized history of U.S. tax structures and the predatory practices in tax administration, public spending, and enforcement. Specifically, The Black Tax shows how the development of property taxes and property laws has significantly contributed to dispossessing black people of land and economically subjugating them in this country. Kahrl’s goal here is not to illuminate how tax polices create economic inequality but specifically that this economic inequality is racialized. The book’s power and its gripping nature come from tracing this history from beginning to end through the personal stories of black individuals who have suffered racial harm caused by the tax system, allowing readers to witness firsthand the damage inflicted on black lives through their own words. This approach links history to a place, a person, and their real-life stories rather than presenting it as abstract concepts.

The story of the book unfolds in five equally engaging parts that build upon and connect with each other. Covering the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras, the chapters in Part 1 show how the U.S. tax system was designed to uphold the Jim Crow order. Kahrl expertly explains how, after Reconstruction, formerly enslaved black people accumulated millions of acres of land. Instead of welcoming and incorporating these newly acquired black property owners into existing systems, local white tax administrators created policies aimed at making it easier for the state and white citizens to dispossess black property owners. Examples include local tax administrators raising property taxes on black families that they knew black families couldn’t afford or not giving proper notice to property owners about their tax bills, which often resulted in a black person’s property being sold at a tax sale for much less than its actual value. For those who didn’t lose their property, tax administrators made black property ownership more costly by imposing higher property taxes in black neighborhoods compared to white neighborhoods. Cities then used the revenue generated from black taxpayers to fund social infrastructure in white areas, leaving black neighborhoods underdeveloped. Conversely, white taxpayers’ dollars stayed within white communities, and white property owners even received tax breaks – heavily subsidized by black taxpayers supporting public education, water and sewer systems, and paved sidewalks in white areas. In a very real sense, the origin of tax cuts for the wealthy, paid for by the poor, meant that black property owners were subsidizing tax cuts for whites, which eventually prompted black people to migrate north.

Part 2 reveals that what awaited black folks in the North was not better. Urban cities where black people migrated to were now facing threats to their tax base from suburbs that welcomed whites fleeing from the inner city. As a result, urban areas began adopting new measures to generate revenue and implemented policies that favored the interests of white homeowners. Some of these measures were familiar, such as taxing black property owners more to offset the tax bills of white property owners. But some were new, like the rise of risky home financing arrangements that black homeowners were forced to accept due to the lack of financing options available to them because of redlining and racist banking practices. Such arrangements made black homeowners more vulnerable to tax delinquency and more likely to fall victim to the growing tax-buying industry, where shadowy figures extorted Black homeowners for their properties.

Parts 3 and 4 lay out how the problems of Parts 1 and 2 undergirded much of the Black Freedom Movement’s struggle in the 1960s and 1970s. Fed up with a long legacy of being overtaxed and exploited, black people fought back and ardently organized to upend a deeply entrenched and brutally racist tax system. Black-led organizations and politicians rose up with the purpose of disrupting the economic tax structures that had plundered the black community, dating as far back as post-emancipation. But even as politicians and organizations made great strides towards upending the racist tax system perfected in Jim Crow, black people all across the country, particularly the South, continued to lose large swaths of land. Far too often, politicians and organizations found themselves fighting a losing battle in the face of tremendous opposition from political interests that wanted to maintain the status quo.

With growing resentment towards the gains of the Civil Rights Movement, Part 5 threads the needle through to today. Kahrl’s convincing argument illuminates how the neoliberal policies of Ronald Reagan that slashed federal support for the social safety net and local governments led to the cementing of tax inequality. As cash-strapped local governments looked to replace their lost federal revenue, they increasingly sought ways to generate revenue from their citizens via administrative moves like ticketing, fines, fees, and selling off tax delinquent properties to Wall Street-backed firms. With the federal government abandoning cities and private investors filling the void, distressed black homeowners were just another source of income.

A key reason why Kahrl’s book excels is that he does an excellent job of explaining complex tax systems simply. As someone whose work and interests are not focused on taxation, and admittedly a novice when it comes to tax issues, I felt Kahrl made tax accessible to me for the first time. Another added benefit of Kahrl’s mastery of clarity is that the book provides an exemplary case study on structural racism. No doubt a result of Kahrl’s history background, each part of the book walks the reader through how racism and classism became baked into tax institutions, leading the reader to be understand the current-day conundrum of why black families have so little wealth. High property taxes sapped and undermined their ability to save and accumulate wealth. Perhaps the biggest indictment in the book that comes from this is that all of the harmful practices in the book are just as legal today as they were post-emancipation. But this point only emerges as a result of Kahrl’s delicate and thoroughly consistent threading across the timeline of the book.

The contemporary importance of this book cannot be overstated. As politicians today justify cutting the social safety net by claiming people are unworthy and lazy, and as they defend lowering taxes for the wealthy, The Black Tax provides us with a proper framework to understand these arguments. It helps us see through the veneer of such claims and recognize that they are part of a long, deeply rooted history that has justified the plunder and exploitation of poor and especially black people in the US. In the absence of historical accounts like this, we can be easily tricked into wasting time fighting these arguments on their merits instead of seeing them as meritless predatory money grabs.

Despite the bleak and damning critique of the book, all is not lost. Kahrl concludes by offering a variety of solutions and highlighting ongoing efforts to improve the tax system. These solutions are clear and pragmatic, giving the reader something to work toward. I would have preferred these solutions and more commentary on them to be woven throughout the book rather than saved for the conclusion. Furthermore, I felt the conclusion was the first time I truly heard Kahrl’s voice, and I would have liked to hear more of it throughout the book. That said, the book is essential and provides a critical foundation for people who think critically about race, tax, the law, and economic inequality.