Law Commons^™

Understanding The Amt, And Its Unadopted Sibling, The Amxt, James R. Hines Jr., Kyle D. Logue

Articles

Four million Americans with extensive tax preferences are subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). By taxing a broad definition of income, the AMT makes it possible to have a tax system that both encourages certain activities with generous tax preferences and maintains a semblance of distributional equity. The same rationale supports the imposition of an Alternative Maximum Tax (AMxT), which would cap tax liabilities of individuals with very few preference items and thereby afford Congress greater flexibility in designing the income tax. The original 1969 AMT proposal included an AMxT; it is difficult to justify imposing one without the …

Retreat From Progressive Taxation In The Swedish Welfare State: Does Immigration Matter?, Henry Ordower

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper questions whether late twentieth century immigration patterns may have contributed to retreat from progressive taxation in Sweden (and elsewhere). The paper applies critical methodology to ask whether the societal generosity reflected in development of Sweden’s welfare state yielded to greater parsimony as Sweden opened its borders to ethnically and racially diverse groups of immigrants. The paper explores whether Sweden’s loss of societal homogeneity facilitated the development of a political climate in which protecting traditional Scandinavian-owned capital from taxation became acceptable. Social science literature already has detected various unintentional ethnic and gender biases in delivery of welfare services and …

A Bundle Of Confusion For The Income Tax: What It Means To Own Something, Stephanie H. Mcmahon

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

ABSTRACT-Conceptions of property exist on a spectrum between the Blackstonian absolute dominion over an object to a bundle of rights and obligations that recognizes, if not encourages, the splitting of property interests among different people. The development of the bundle of rights conception of property occurred in roughly the same era as the enactment of the modem federal income tax. Nevertheless, when Congress enacted the tax in 1913, it did not consider how the nuances of property, and the possible splitting of the interests in an income-producing item, might affect application of the tax. Soon after the tax's enactment, the …

Corporate Taxation And Corporate Social Responsibility, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

This Article will address the question of whether publicly traded U.S. corporations owe a duty to their shareholders to minimize their corporate tax burden through any legal means, or if instead, strategic behaviors like aggressive tax-motivated transactions are inconsistent with corporate social responsibility (“CSR”). I believe the latter holds true, regardless of one’s view of the corporation. Under the “artificial entity” view, such behavior undermines the constitutive relationship between the corporation and the state. Under the “real view,” such behavior runs contrary to the normal obligation of citizens to comply with the law (even absent effective enforcement). And under the …

Income Imputation: Toward Equal Treatment Of Renters And Owners, Henry Ordower

All Faculty Scholarship

This chapter argues that fundamental fairness principles demand changes in U.S. tax law to place those who rent on an equal tax footing with those who own their residences. The disparity in tax treatment of owners and renters results primarily from the failure of the tax law to include the use value from investment of capital in a personal residence in the incomes of owners. While the yield from investment in a personal residence is not cash, the yield is valuable as it replaces an outlay for dwelling use the owner otherwise would have to make. That occupancy right as …

Big (Gay) Love: Has The Irs Legalized Polygamy?, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

Within days in December, a federal judge in Utah made news by loosening that state’s criminal prohibition against polygamy and the Attorney General of North Dakota made news by opining that a party to a same-sex marriage could enter into a different-sex marriage in that state without first obtaining a divorce or annulment. Both of these opinions raised the specter of legalized plural marriage. What discussions of these opinions missed, however, is the possibility that the IRS might already have legalized plural marriage in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last June in United States v. Windsor, which …

Waiting For Perseus: A Sur-Reply To Professors Graetz And Warren, Ruth Mason, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

This manuscript responds to Income Tax Discrimination: Still Stuck in a Labyrinth of Impossibility by Professors Michael Graetz and Alvin Warren (121 Yale L.J. 1118). In that article, Professors Graetz and Warren challenge many of the arguments we made in our own article entitled, “What is Tax Discrimination?” (121 Yale L.J. 1014). In our earlier article, we set out to accomplish two goals. First, we sought to identify the principle behind the doctrine of tax discrimination as that doctrine is applied by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) and to translate that …

What Innocent Spouse Relief Says About Wives And The Rest Of Us, Stephanie Mcmahon

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Every time spouses sign joint returns, knowingly or not they accept joint and several liability, meaning that either spouse may be held liable for all of the tax due on the joint return. Although joint and several liability facilitates tax collection, it may conflict with a spouse’s claims to have signed the return while being lied to, abused, or manipulated. The question for Congress is how to balance these competing demands. Innocent spouse relief provides some tax relief for spouses Congress does not believe should be jointly and severally liable. The existence of this relief also offers an opportunity to …

Electing Fairness: A Check-The-Box-Style Regime For Same-Sex Couples' Tax Filing Status, Jennifer Bird-Pollan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In the wake of the United States Supreme Court's decision regarding the Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor, tax lawyers and those interested in tax policy immediately wondered what consequences this change would have to the United States' federal tax laws. The Internal Revenue Service issued a Revenue Ruling explaining the position it took regarding the case, which answered many questions for taxpayers whose lives were affected by the decision. Because the IRS announced that it would recognize same-sex marriages based on the state of celebration of the marriage rather than the state of residence of …

Tax Recognition, Barry Cushman

Journal Articles

This article was prepared for the St. Louis University Law Journal’s “Teaching Trusts & Estates” issue. Many law students take a course in Trusts & Estates, but comparatively few enroll in a class devoted to the federal wealth transfer taxes. For most law students, the Trusts & Estates course provides the only opportunity for exposure to some of the basic features of the estate tax, the gift tax, the generation-skipping transfer tax, and some related features of the income tax. The coverage demands of the typical Trusts & Estates course do not allow for intensive discussion of these issues, but …

Heal The Suffering Children: Fifty Years After The Declaration Of War On Poverty, Francine J. Lipman, Dawn Davis

Scholarly Works

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the War on Poverty. Since then, the federal tax code has been a fundamental tool in providing financial assistance to poor working families. Even today, however, thirty-two million children live in families that cannot support basic living expenses, and sixteen million of those live in extreme poverty. This Article navigates the confusing requirements of an array of child-related tax benefits including the dependency exemption deduction, head of household filing status, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Child Tax Credit. Specifically, this Article explores how altering the definition of a qualifying child …

Form 1023-Ez And The Streamlined Process For The Federal Income Tax Exemption: Is The Irs Slashing Red Tape Or Opening Pandora's Box, Manoj Viswanathan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Beyond Tax Credits: Smarter Tax Policy For A Cleaner, More Democratic Energy Future, Felix Mormann

Articles

Solar, wind, and other renewable energy technologies have the potential to mitigate climate change, secure America's energy independence, and create millions of green jobs. In the absence of a price on carbon emissions, however, these long-term benefits will not be realized without near-term policy support for renewable energy. This Article assesses the efficiency of federal tax incentives for renewables and proposes policy reform to promote renewable energy more cost-effectively through capital markets and crowdfunding.

Federal support for renewable energy today comes primarily in the form of accelerated depreciation and, critically, tax credits. Empirical evidence reveals that only a fraction of …

Fiscal Federalism As Risk-Sharing: The Insurance Role Of Redistributive Taxation, John R. Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In addition to funding government and redistributing income, a redistributive tax-and-transfer system, and a progressive income tax in particular, provides insurance against the risk of uncertain future income. By providing for high taxes for high incomes, and low taxes, exemptions, and transfers for low incomes, a progressive income tax lowers the volatility of potential after-tax income relative to a lump-sum tax. This insurance function is distinct from the redistributive function of the system, since it provides a direct risk-mitigation benefit to the taxpayer himself, rather than simply redistributing income from one taxpayer to another.

This article analyzes the question of …

Ending The Sweetheart Deal Between Big-Time College Sports And The Tax System, Richard L. Schmalbeck

Faculty Scholarship

This paper was prepared for the annual conference of the National Center for Philanthropy and Law, held at the NYU Law School, held October 24-25, 2013. The overall topic was “Tax Issues Affecting Colleges and Universities,” and I was asked to address specifically those issues relating to athletics. This paper considers two specific issues that have in common only that they involve college sports, and are plagued by egregiously bad, (in this case, egregiously generous), tax treatment: the failure of the IRS to regard any part of the revenue from college sports as unrelated business income, and the choice by …

Mitt Romney, The 47% Percent, And The Future Of The Mass Income Tax, Lawrence A. Zelenak

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lgbt Families, Tax Nothings, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

The federal tax laws have never been friendly territory for LGBT families. Before the enactment of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal tax laws turned a blind eye to the existence of LGBT families by tacitly embracing state law discrimination against same-sex couples. When it enacted DOMA in 1996, Congress ensured that it would be able to continue to turn a blind eye to LGBT families even if one or more states were to legally recognize families headed by same-sex couples. In a real sense, LGBT families have been, and continue to be, tax outlaws.

This overt …

The House Of Windsor: Accentuating The Heteronormativity In The Tax Incentives For Procreation, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor, many seem to believe that the fight for marriage equality at the federal level is over and that any remaining work in this area is at the state level. Belying this conventional wisdom, this essay continues my work plumbing the gap between the promise of Windsor and the reality that heteronormativity has been one of the core building blocks of our federal tax system. Eradicating embedded heteronormativity will take far more than a single court decision (or even revenue ruling); it will take years of work uncovering the subtle …

Tearing Out The Income Tax By The (Grass)Roots, Lawrence A. Zelenak

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Almost-Restatement Of Income Tax Of 1954: When Tax Giants Roamed The Earth, Lawrence A. Zelenak

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments In Federal Income Taxation: The Year 2013, Martin J. Mcmahon Jr., Ira B. Shepard, Daniel L. Simmons

UF Law Faculty Publications

This recent developments outline discusses, and provides context to understand the significance of, the most important judicial decisions and administrative rulings and regulations promulgated by the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department during the most recent twelve months. The outline focuses on primarily on topics of broad general interest — income tax accounting rules, determination of gross income, allowable deductions, treatment of capital gains and losses, corporate and partnership taxation, exempt organizations, and procedure and penalties. It deals summarily with qualified pension and profit sharing plans, and generally does not deal with international taxation or specialized industries, such as banking, …