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Articles 1 - 19 of 19
Full-Text Articles in Law
State Constitutional Limitations To Cities Taxing The Digital Economy, Lauren Shores Pelikan
State Constitutional Limitations To Cities Taxing The Digital Economy, Lauren Shores Pelikan
Faculty Publications
The digital economy’s rapid evolution, most recently with the rise of artificial intelligence, demands a reevaluation of state constitutional limitations on local taxation of digital transactions. Citizens have long feared excessive or unfair tax burdens, hence the adoption of constitutional amendments that prohibit legislators from increasing taxes or imposing new taxes without a public vote. However, these constitutional limitations are now preventing cities from taxing digital transactions that are taking over the economy. This is a serious financial problem for cities whose traditional sources of tax revenue, such as sales taxes and property taxes, are dwindling due to the digitalizing …
Solving The Valuation Challenge: The Ultra Method For Taxing Extreme Wealth, David Gamage, Brian Galle, Darien Shanske
Solving The Valuation Challenge: The Ultra Method For Taxing Extreme Wealth, David Gamage, Brian Galle, Darien Shanske
Faculty Publications
Recent reporting based on leaked tax returns of the ultra-rich confirms what experts have long suspected: for the wealthiest Americans, paying taxes is mostly optional. Some of the country's richest have reported annual incomes that would be modest for a school teacher, even as the share of wealth held by the top .1% is at its highest in nearly a century.
Experts have long understood that one problem sits at the root cause of many of the tax system's failures to reach the very rich: valuation. Because it is difficult to appraise complex or unique assets, modern tax systems instead …
Taxation And The Constitution, Reconsidered, David Gamage, John R. Brooks
Taxation And The Constitution, Reconsidered, David Gamage, John R. Brooks
Faculty Publications
Our current income tax is unable to address growing concentrations of financial wealth and resulting economic inequality. But reforms to address these problems—such as a wealth tax or an income tax on unrealized capital gains—are stymied by fears of unconstitutionality. The basic claim is that wealth taxes and similar reforms are “direct taxes” under the Apportionment Clauses of the Constitution, and since apportionment is not feasible, these taxes are impossible. But this claim is wrong.
This Article shows that there is in fact a long history of federal taxes similar to wealth taxes—both apportioned and uniform—and a well-developed constitutional tax …
Wage Enslavement: How The Tax System Holds Back Historically Disadvantaged Groups Of Americans, David Gamage, Goldburn P. Maynard Jr.
Wage Enslavement: How The Tax System Holds Back Historically Disadvantaged Groups Of Americans, David Gamage, Goldburn P. Maynard Jr.
Faculty Publications
Despite the importance placed on equality of opportunity within United States political culture, the existing tax system inhibits historically disadvantaged groups from building wealth or catching up with historically more privileged groups. This effectively then traps many members of historically disadvantaged groups into a continued cycle of dependence on tax-disfavored wage and salary income, a phenomenon that we metaphorically label as “wage enslavement.” This Article explains this phenomenon and then calls for reform.
Equitable Anti-Junction Act, The, Erin Morrow Hawley
Equitable Anti-Junction Act, The, Erin Morrow Hawley
Faculty Publications
The (AIA or the Act) has never been more important. Originally enacted to expedite the collection of revenue-raising taxes, courts and scholars have for years assumed that the statute imposes a jurisdictional bar on any pre-enforcement challenge to a tax. On this interpretation, taxpayers subject to an invalid tax have two choices only: comply or pay the tax and pursue a refund. Read this way, the Act is a marked departure from the general rule that pre-enforcement challenges are permissible so long as justiciability requirements are met. And it imposes a marked burden on aggrieved taxpayers that grows all the …
Jurisdictional Question In Hobby Lobby, The, Erin Morrow Hawley
Jurisdictional Question In Hobby Lobby, The, Erin Morrow Hawley
Faculty Publications
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores may well be the biggest case of the term. And by its own rules, the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction. An obscure statute, the Anti-Injunction Act of 1867 (“the AIA”), imposes a pay-first requirement for federal tax challenges. The deeply held conventional wisdom is that the AIA is a jurisdictional statute, and there is a good argument that the AIA applies to the contraception mandate. As we learned from National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 132 S.Ct. 2566 (2012), the best evidence of whether Congress intended the AIA to apply is the text. The mandate …
Unwanted Exposure To Religious Expression By Government: Standing And The Establishment Clause, Carl H. Esbeck
Unwanted Exposure To Religious Expression By Government: Standing And The Establishment Clause, Carl H. Esbeck
Faculty Publications
For nearly half a century the Supreme Court has relaxed traditional standards of justiciability and permitted taxpayer standing when a claimant has invoked the Establishment Clause in a lawsuit to prohibit government funding of religion. The Court has recently cutback, however, permitting taxpayer standing only when a tax is extracted from the claimant and money is appropriated by a legislature to fund a statutory program that directs the use of public aid for religion.
Does A Federal Tax Lien Take Priority Over A Mortgagee's Lien On Rents: Bloomfield State Bank V. United States, R. Wilson Freyermuth
Does A Federal Tax Lien Take Priority Over A Mortgagee's Lien On Rents: Bloomfield State Bank V. United States, R. Wilson Freyermuth
Faculty Publications
Few reported cases have addressed the relative priority rights of a mortgage lender and the IRS for rents from real estate. In Bloomfield State Bank v. United States, No. 10-3939, 2011 WL 1773953 (7th Cir. May 11, 2011), Judge Richard Posner provided the first reported federal appellate opinion; under its analysis, State Bank would have priority over the IRS in the above hypothetical for the rents due from both tenants. This article discusses Judge Posner's opinion, both for its result (which the author believes is ultimately the correct result) and how it characterizes background principles of real estate finance law …
Bankruptcy Reform: What's Tax Got To Do With It?, Michelle A. Cecil
Bankruptcy Reform: What's Tax Got To Do With It?, Michelle A. Cecil
Faculty Publications
The article takes a two-pronged approach to the issue. First, it argues that all post-petition appreciation should be taxed to the debtor rather than to the debtor's bankruptcy estate because the debtor enjoys the benefits of the asset's appreciation in value and because, from a tax perspective, the results will be identical irrespective of whether the debtor or the bankruptcy estate is taxed on the asset's post-petition appreciation. Second, the article proposes that the gain accruing before the termination of the bankruptcy proceeding be treated as discharge of indebtedness income so that the debtor can defer recognition of the gain …
Abandonments In Bankruptcy: Unifying Competing Tax And Bankruptcy Policies, Michelle A. Cecil
Abandonments In Bankruptcy: Unifying Competing Tax And Bankruptcy Policies, Michelle A. Cecil
Faculty Publications
This Article attempts to resolve one such issue: the tax consequences of property abandonments by the bankruptcy trustee.
Income Tax Planning For Long-Term Care, David M. English
Income Tax Planning For Long-Term Care, David M. English
Faculty Publications
Planning for long-term involves more than the preparation of powers of attorney and counseling on possible asset transfers to qualify for Medicaid reimbursement. Steps should also be taken to make certain that the person receiving care continues to file an income tax return and does so at a minimum possible income tax cost. Practitioners should be familiar with the procedure for filing a return on behalf of an incapacitated individual. The medical expense deduction, while of little importance for most taxpayers, is critical for many elderly, particularly for those receiving long-term care. Long-term care insurance and life insurance may be …
Crumbs For Oliver Twist: Resolving The Conflict Between Tax And Support Claims In Bankruptcy, Michelle A. Cecil
Crumbs For Oliver Twist: Resolving The Conflict Between Tax And Support Claims In Bankruptcy, Michelle A. Cecil
Faculty Publications
This article is premised on the assumption that the congressional goal of preferring support claims over federal income tax claims is indeed a laudable one, based on three interrelated policy justifications. First, support claimants are unable to spread their risk of loss like the government is able to do by raising tax rates or increasing tax revenue from other sources. As three prominent bankruptcy scholars noted in their recent study of consumer bankruptcy entitled The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt:
Charitable Choice And The Critics, Carl H. Esbeck
Charitable Choice And The Critics, Carl H. Esbeck
Faculty Publications
First, the statute prohibits the government from discriminating with regard to religion when determining whether providers are eligible to deliver social services under these programs. Second, the statute imposes on government the duty not to intrude into the religious autonomy of faith-based providers. Third, the statute imposes on both government and participating FBOs the duty not to abridge certain rights of the ultimate beneficiaries of these programs. I will touch on these three principles below, and do so in reverse order.
Tax Exemptions And The Establishment Clause, Erika Lietzan
Tax Exemptions And The Establishment Clause, Erika Lietzan
Faculty Publications
Churches are exempted from a variety of taxes collected by the various levels and jurisdictions of government in the United States. For instance, they are almost always exempt from payment of property tax at the local level and from payment of income tax to both state and federal government. They are often exempt from payment of state sales tax on the products they sell. A person making a contribution to a religious organization is usually entitled to deduct the contribution from his income when calculating both his state and his federal income taxes at the end of the taxable year. …
Toward Adding Further Complexity To The Internal Revenue Code: A New Paradigm For The Deductibility Of Capital Losses, Michelle A. Cecil
Toward Adding Further Complexity To The Internal Revenue Code: A New Paradigm For The Deductibility Of Capital Losses, Michelle A. Cecil
Faculty Publications
This article examines problems inherent in the current loss limitation system, arguing that it is ill-equipped to meet parallelism concerns and that cherrypicking is not a problem that a loss limitation scheme should address. The article also argues that the current system is both fundamentally unfair to taxpayers and promotes economic inefficiency in the marketplace. It proposes an alternative system for the tax treatment of capital losses that would allow such losses to offset all types of income, but only up to the tax rate that would have been imposed had the losses instead been capital gains. The article concludes …
Comments On A Revised Filing System, R. Wilson Freyermuth
Comments On A Revised Filing System, R. Wilson Freyermuth
Faculty Publications
Professor Edward Adams's article, both in terms of its basic structure and the myriad of options it offers, neatly highlights the basic dilemma facing the Drafting Committee as it addresses the future Article 9 filing system. As he correctly notes, the filing system's shortcomings are largely due to its continued dependence on paper records, despite the increasing sophistication and availability of computerized information technology for both filing and searching. Should the Drafting Committee maintain the basics of the current system (a public, paper-based filing system) and merely attempt to identify and correct the existing shortcomings in that system, with some …
Why Have Chapter 11 Bankruptcies Failed So Miserably? A Reappraisal Of Congressional Attempts To Protect A Corporation's Net Operating Losses After Bankruptcy, Michelle A. Cecil
Why Have Chapter 11 Bankruptcies Failed So Miserably? A Reappraisal Of Congressional Attempts To Protect A Corporation's Net Operating Losses After Bankruptcy, Michelle A. Cecil
Faculty Publications
This Article will first outline the history of judicial and statutory limitations on the free transferability of net operating losses, highlighting congressional attempts to afford more favorable treatment to troubled corporations reorganizing in Title 11 proceedings. It will then examine the operation of section 382 of the 1986 Code, again focusing on those provisions designed to assist in the successful reorganization of these corporations, and will demonstrate the wholesale inability of these provisions to preserve the net operating losses of troubled corporations. Finally, the Article will propose an amendment to section 382 that would increase the likelihood that corporations will …
A Policy Analysis Of Fee-Shifting Rules Under The Internal Revenue Code, Gary Myers, Richard L. Schmalbeck
A Policy Analysis Of Fee-Shifting Rules Under The Internal Revenue Code, Gary Myers, Richard L. Schmalbeck
Faculty Publications
Until recently, the costs of litigating federal tax cases were borne exclusively by the parties who incurred them, regardless of whether the government or the taxpayer prevailed in the litigation. This practice reflects the application to tax disputes of the ‘American rule’ against fee shifting. Although the American rule continues to be predominant in the tax area, it has been modified in important respects. An explicit fee-reimbursement rule, benefiting prevailing taxpayers in cases in which the government is found to have acted unreasonably, was added to the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) by the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of …
Partnership Taxation: A Deceased Partner's Final Year, Michelle A. Cecil
Partnership Taxation: A Deceased Partner's Final Year, Michelle A. Cecil
Faculty Publications
One significant and unresolved partnership taxation problem is the taxation of a deceased partner's final year. In a recent case of first impression, Estate of Hesse v. Commissioner, the Tax Court held that the widow of a deceased partner could not include his share of partnership losses incurred during the year of his death on their final joint income tax return. Consequently, the widow lost thousands of dollars in tax refunds because the loss deductions could not offset prior taxable income. The Tax Court believed the result was illogical and unfair, but nevertheless found that the Code required the decedent's …