Tax Law
Dan Shaviro has a blog entry on Leandra Lederman's paper. The US IRS has "private letter rulings" and Luxemburg gave advice on how to run business through Luxemburg to save on taxes.
Luxemburg was acting much like a shady tax-shelter law firm, giving strategic advice to clients in the hopes of getting some profitable business. (As with such firms, it can be hard for the client to know whether shelter is legitimate or crooked, though that is crucial to the moral situation for both law firm and client.) And Luxemburg can, and maybe has, replicated the situation by having a private law firm issue the same sort of advice, subsidized by the State if necessary.
I haven't read any US private letter rulings. Do they have the approach of "Well, the scheme you suggest wouldn't reduce your taxable income plus we'd fine you if you did it, but you didn't see how you can manage to reduce your taxes a different way by doing..."? It sounds like that is the spirit of the Luxemburg letters.
