Vanessa Williamson
Senior Fellow at Brookings
Berkeley, CA
Experience
- Senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings
- Senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center
Expertise
- U.S. economic policy
- Tax and revenue policy
- Labor
- Wealth Inequality
- Trade
Education
- Harvard University, PhD, Social Policy
- New York University, MA, French Studies
- New York University, BA, French Language and Literature
Recent Coverage
MARCH 5, 2025
Marketplace: Halving the IRS workforce in the middle of tax season
“I think there’s no scenario in which it doesn’t endanger the federal revenue,” says Vanessa Williamson, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, of the Trump administration’s play to layoff workers at the IRS.
February 20, 2025
AP: IRS layoffs could hurt revenue collection and foil efforts to go after rich tax dodgers, experts say
Vanessa Williamson, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said on a Thursday call with reporters that the layoffs at the IRS will disproportionately harm enforcement efforts.
“When you underpay and understaff the IRS, the agency doesn’t have the power or the resources it needs to go after wealthy tax evaders with their high priced lawyers,” she said, adding, “The result is, of course, a disaster for revenue.”
MAY 29, 2024
The Progress Network: Red, White, and Due: Talking Taxes with Vanessa Williamson
JANUARY 14, 2021
The Majority Report: The Austerity Politics of White Supremacy w/ Vanessa Williamson
FEBRUARY 12, 2019
CNBC SquawkBox: Scholars from Brookings and Cato debate wealth tax
Interested in speaking with Vanessa Williamson?
About Vanessa
Vanessa Williamson is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, and a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. She studies taxation and democracy in America.
Her forthcoming book, “The Price of Democracy,” reveals the revolutionary power of taxation in American history (Basic Books, September 2025). She is also the author of “Read My Lips: Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes,” and, with Harvard professor Theda Skocpol, “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.”
She has written on school segregation, tax opinion, and tax politics in the Washington Post; about the Tea Party, anti-union legislation and voter registration at income tax filing in the New York Times; about taxpayer citizenship in the Atlantic; about philanthropy and austerity and white supremacy in Dissent; and about democracy and organizing for Teen Vogue. She has discussed her research on NPR’s “Marketplace”, C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal”, CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS”, CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, and MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” She received her Ph.D. in social policy from Harvard University.
