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Full-Text Articles in Law
An Assignment By Any Other Name: Contingent-Fee Agreements As Partial Assignments Of The Claim, Andrew P. Lycans
An Assignment By Any Other Name: Contingent-Fee Agreements As Partial Assignments Of The Claim, Andrew P. Lycans
Michigan Law Review
In 1959, Mrs. Ethel West Cotnam of Alabama won a groundbreaking lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service when the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed her to subtract her legal fees, paid to her lawyer on a contingency basis, from her gross income. Mrs. Cotnam sued the estate of her former employer when the administrator refused to honor the decedent's promise to pay her one-fifth of his estate if she would care for him for the rest of his life. Upon the successful disposition of this suit, the Supreme Court of Alabama awarded Mrs. Cotnam $120,000. Of that amount, $50,365.83 …
Circuit-Specific Application Of The Internal Revenue Code: An Unconstitutional Tax, Jeffrey S. Kinsler
Circuit-Specific Application Of The Internal Revenue Code: An Unconstitutional Tax, Jeffrey S. Kinsler
Law Faculty Scholarship
For all practical purposes, the Constitution prescribes only one limit on the federal government's power to tax: the Uniformity Clause, which requires that indirect taxes, such as income and excise taxes, be "uniform throughout the United States ... " It is exceedingly rare for a federal tax law to violate the Uniformity Clause. The Internal Revenue Code does not fix different taxes for different states, as Congress has carefully crafted the tax laws to avoid geographical distinctions. Unfortunately, the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") has not always been so careful. In recent years, the IRS has adopted a practice of applying …