Law Commons^™

Consumption Tax, Double Taxation And The Taxes And Levies (Approved List For Collection) Act (Amendment) Order 2015: The Lingering Labyrinth, Okanga Ogbu Okanga

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Nigeria has a long history of legal conflict on fiscal federalism. One dimension borders on who has the power to tax the consumption of goods and services. Although the Nigerian Constitution prescribes how taxing powers are to be exercised between the federal government and the federating units, controversy remains as to the extent of taxing powers exercisable by each tier of government. This is because, apart from the Constitution, a peculiar military-era statute, the “Taxes and Levies Act” prescribes what taxes each tier of government can collect and appears to circumscribe their constitutional taxing powers. The federal government and the …

Gst Contract Review, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

GST contract review—overviewTax lawyers are often asked to review a commercial contracts from a Goods Services Tax (“GST”) perspec-tive. This note focuses on contracts for the supply of services or goods, and not a contract for the sale and purchase of a business.Understanding the GST consequences of the contractThe contract that you are asked to review will usually contain a GST clause, but it is insufficient to look only at that clause. As further explained in Practice Note: How to review a commercial contract for GST purposes, you should also review the whole contract so that you can establish:• What …

Legislated Interpretation And Tax Avoidance In Canadian Income Tax Law, David G. Duff, Benjamin Alarie

All Faculty Publications

Predictable statutory interpretation helps ensure the reliable operation of contemporary systems of taxation. Tax liabilities that are not clearly expressed and articulated by legislatures lead to over-reliance on litigation as a means to enforce and clarify legislative intent. For this reason, modern legislatures continually amend and draft new tax provisions, reformulating existing rules and introducing new ones to address ever-changing social and economic environments. Moreover, legislatures also respond with amendments directed at judicial decisions with which they disagree, as well as the transactions and arrangements at issue in these cases. As these amended and new rules are then subject to …

A (Partial) Defense Of Section 501(C)(4)'S “Catchall” Nature, Lloyd Histoshi Mayer

Journal Articles

Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(4) provides exemption from federal income tax for “social welfare” organizations. The vagueness of this term and the failure of the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service to interpret it in a manner that would significantly limit that vagueness has led some commentators to criticize this section’s “catchall” nature. While much scholarly attention has been paid to this criticism with respect to the most visible section 501(c)(4) organizations, particularly those involved in political campaign activity and lobbying, almost no attention has been paid to the many less common types of section 501(c)(4) organizations that illustrate that …

Brief Of Tax Law Professors As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner, Edward A. Zelinsky

Amicus Briefs

Amici are professors of tax law at universities across the United States. As scholars and teachers, they have considered the doctrinal roots and practical consequences of judicial limits on state and local taxation. Amici join this brief solely on their own behalf and not as representatives of their universities. A full list of amici appears in the Appendix to this brief.

Centralized Review Of Tax Regulations, Clinton G. Wallace

Faculty Publications

Centralized oversight of agency policymaking and spending by the President’s Office of Management and Budget is a hallmark of the modern administrative state. But tax regulations have almost never been subject to centralized review. The Trump administration recently proposed to require centralized review of tax regulations, but it is unclear what regulations would be subject to such review or how it would be conducted.

This Article examines the normative desirability of the longstanding approach of exempting tax regulations from centralized review, and the alternative of imposing such review. Scholars and policymakers have provided various incomplete justifications for excepting tax policy …

Why Examples? Towards More Behaviorally-Intelligent Regulation, Yariv Brauner

UF Law Faculty Publications

Tax regulation authors habitually infuse regulations with explanatory examples. These examples are viewed favorably by both the government that encourages their drafting and the taxpayers who regularly rely on such examples to assist them in dealing with the notoriously complex tax rules. Despite the ubiquity of these examples, there is no published guidance for their drafting, their use, or their interpretation. The first original contribution of this article is the exposition and classification of the advantages and deficiencies in the current use of examples in tax regulations. This article is the first to question the rationale behind the ubiquitous use …

Tax As Part Of A Broken Budget: Good Taxes Are Good Cause Enough, Stephanie Mcmahon

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The federal budget is a myth. Despite being a myth, Congress uses the budget to limit its choices by linking its revenue-raising and spending powers under a federal debt ceiling. Through its self-imposed limits, Congress puts tremendous pressure on how it calculates its budget, and that calculation generally assumes any tax provisions will raise revenue when the law becomes effective. However, many tax provisions require additional direction to ensure they operate as the budgetary process expects. That task falls to the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a bureau of the Department. Consequently, limiting the production of …

Foreword – The 2017 Tax Cuts: How Polarized Politics Produced Precarious Policy, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

By lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, the 2017 tax legislation brought the U.S. statutory rate into closer alignment with the rates applicable in other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, thereby decreasing the incentive for businesses to locate their deductions in the United States and their income abroad. Its overhaul of the U.S. international income tax rules simultaneously reduced preexisting incentives for U.S. multinationals to reinvest their foreign earnings abroad and put a floor on the benefits of shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions. The 2017 legislation also added an unprecedented, troublesome lower rate for …