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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Hidden Limits Of The Charitable Deduction: An Introduction To Hypersalience, Lilian Faulhaber
The Hidden Limits Of The Charitable Deduction: An Introduction To Hypersalience, Lilian Faulhaber
Faculty Scholarship
Behavioral economics introduced the concept of salience to law and economics. In the area of tax policy, salience refers to the prominence of taxes in the minds of taxpayers. This article complicates the literature on salience and taxation by introducing the concept of “hypersalience,” which is in many ways the mirror image of hidden taxation. While a revenue-raising tax provision must be hidden for taxpayers to underestimate their tax bill, a revenue-reducing tax provision – such as a deduction, exclusion, or credit – must be more than fully salient for taxpayers to underestimate their tax bill. In other words, the …
Internation Equity And Human Development, Anthony C. Infanti
Internation Equity And Human Development, Anthony C. Infanti
Book Chapters
No abstract provided.
Decoupling Taxes And Marriage: Beyond Innocence And Income Splitting, Michelle Lyon Drumbl
Decoupling Taxes And Marriage: Beyond Innocence And Income Splitting, Michelle Lyon Drumbl
Scholarly Articles
Fourteen years ago, members of Congress sympathetically listened as divorcees testified to their struggles to raise children while being pursued by the Internal Revenue Service for tax debts, often unknown to them, that were attributable to their ex-husbands' income. Rather than adopting one of many proposals to end joint and several liability, Congress instead elected to expand the grounds on which these individuals could seek relief from such liability. Since that time, taxpayers have seen a steady expansion of the grounds for so-called “innocent spouse relief” that has evolved through a combination of legislative, administrative, and judicial action. Yet the …
Taxing Facebook Code: Debugging The Tax Code And Software, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine
Taxing Facebook Code: Debugging The Tax Code And Software, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine
Articles
This article sets out to analyze both intellectual property laws and tax systems as applied to computer software. It analyzes software within intellectual property's established doctrinal framework, a difficult task due to the fact that software can encompass some combination of the traits of copyrights, trade dress, patents, and trade secrets. It then examines both the federal and state tax systems governing software. It shows that fitting software within current tax schemes presents unique challenges, as software contains both tangible and intangible elements, is subject to varying intellectual property protections, and can be delivered through various media. The article argues …
Tax Reform DisCourse, Anthony C. Infanti
Tax Reform DisCourse, Anthony C. Infanti
Articles
Our tax system is supposed to serve the public good by fairly raising the revenue that we need to fund public expenditures — for example, the common defense, social safety net programs such as Social Security and Medicare, etc. But the tax reform debate has shifted away from discussing how best to distribute the burden of these common expenditures and instead has come to focus on how tax reform can be used to spur economic growth. Especially in times of economic crisis, these two goals — equitably funding public expenditures and spurring economic growth — sound equally important and somehow …
Lgbt Taxpayers: A Collision Of 'Others', Anthony C. Infanti
Lgbt Taxpayers: A Collision Of 'Others', Anthony C. Infanti
Articles
In this essay prepared for a symposium on the intersection of tax law with gender and sexuality, I explore the violent collision of these two concepts - or, more appropriately, these two “others.” I begin my exploration of this collision of “others” by first explaining how the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community is a marginalized “other” in American society while, in contrast, tax is a privileged “other” in the realm of American law. Then, I turn to a close examination of a recent case, O’Donnabhain v. Commissioner, to illustrate the collision of the otherness of LGBT individuals with …
Perverse Incentives Arising From The Tax Provisions Of Healthcare Reform: Why Further Reforms Are Needed To Prevent Avoidable Costs To Low- And Moderate-Income Workers, David Gamage
Articles by Maurer Faculty
Called “Obamacare” by some, the Affordable Care Act (or “ACA”) is the most extensive reform to the American healthcare system since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The ACA promises many improvements to American health care. While recognizing the importance of these improvements, this Article focuses on how the ACA’s tax provisions will create avoidable costs for low- and moderate-income workers.
This Article argues that – once key tax-related provisions of the ACA come into effect in 2014 – the ACA will create perverse incentives with respect to a number of important decisions affecting low- and moderate-income Americans, …
The Unjustified Subsidy: Sovereign Wealth Funds And The Foreign Sovereign Tax Exemption, Jennifer Bird-Pollan
The Unjustified Subsidy: Sovereign Wealth Funds And The Foreign Sovereign Tax Exemption, Jennifer Bird-Pollan
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
The taxation of Sovereign Wealth Funds in the United States is outmoded and due for reconsideration. Offering a tax exemption to the billion dollar investment funds owned by foreign governments is both unfair and ineffective. Founded in the principles of sovereign immunity, the foreign sovereign tax exemption, codified in I.R.C. § 892, fails to satisfy the Congressional goals that motivated its creation. This Article explains the current taxation of foreign sovereigns and, by extension, Sovereign Wealth Funds. It then illustrates that the current exemption is simultaneously too broad, providing a tax exemption for activities that are clearly nongovernmental activities, and …
The Hidden Limits Of The Charitable Deduction: An Introduction To Hypersalience, Lilian V. Faulhaber
The Hidden Limits Of The Charitable Deduction: An Introduction To Hypersalience, Lilian V. Faulhaber
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Behavioral economics introduced the concept of salience to law and economics. In the area of tax policy, salience refers to the prominence of taxes in the minds of taxpayers. This article complicates the literature on salience and taxation by introducing the concept of “hypersalience,” which is in many ways the mirror image of hidden taxation. While a revenue-raising tax provision must be hidden for taxpayers to underestimate their tax bill, a revenue-reducing tax provision – such as a deduction, exclusion, or credit – must be more than fully salient for taxpayers to underestimate their tax bill. In other words, the …