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Tax Enforcement At The Intersection Of Social Welfare And Vulnerable Populations, Michelle Lyon Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

This Essay engages with Professor Bernadette Atuahene’s theory of stategraft in the context of tax administration and the role that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plays in implementing certain social welfare benefits, including the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Specifically, it considers whether the IRS’s denials of the EITC to those who might otherwise be eligible and entitled to it constitutes a wrongful taking by the state or a violation of basic human rights. While this Essay concludes that denials of the EITC generally do not fit within Atuahene’s definition of stategraft, it highlights two particularly problematic concerns with modern …

Severity Under Scrutiny: The U.S. Supreme Court Battle Over The Fbar Penalty, Beckett Cantley, Geoffrey Dietrich

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

In recent years, Congress strengthened federal regulation of foreign bank accounts held by United States citizens. In 1970, Congress passed the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), requiring U.S. citizens to report their foreign bank accounts using a form called the Foreign Bank Account Report, or “FBAR.” However, the Treasury Department rarely enforced this requirement. After the Patriot Act’s passage came the Bank Secrecy Act 2004 amendment, allowing the Treasury Department to delegate enforcement of U.S. foreign bank account reporting to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) through the FBAR. The amendment’s major change to the law concerned new penalties for non-willful FBAR …

Stay Schemin’: Tax Court’S Recent Ruling On Credit Card Rewards And The Impact This Ruling Has On Future Rewards Programs, Hunter Davis

Georgia Law Review

Beyond the utility of actual “credit,” the most important perk cardholders seek to capitalize on are the rewards that each cardholder’s particular credit card offers. Cardholders look for the most bang for their buck in terms of rewards and points. Ranging from frequent flyer miles to cash back to everything in between, rewards programs have expanded and diversified rapidly over the past several decades, and consumers cannot get enough. So much so that the question of whether, and when, consumer loyalty rewards should be taxable has arisen and persists today. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Tax Court have …

Is It Time For Federal Regulation Of The Tax Preparer Industry? New Insights From Legal And Empirical Developments, Jessica A. Magaldi, Matthew Reidenbach, Jonathan S. Sales, John S. Treu

Marquette Law Review

The tax preparer industry is unusual in that it involves the interpretation of an intricate and complicated tax code, but imposes no minimum requirements of competency because the industry is largely unregulated. A study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) indicated that unregulated tax preparers commit significantly higher error rates and, based in part on that study’s findings, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) attempted to regulate the tax preparer industry nationwide under the Registered Tax Return Preparer (RTRP) regime. This RTRP program was invalidated in Loving v. IRS, however, leaving the industry largely unregulated, except in the small minority …

A More Capacious Concept Of Church, Philip Hackney, Samuel D. Brunson

Articles

United States tax law provides churches with extra benefits and robust protection from IRS enforcement actions. Churches and religious organizations are automatically exempt from the income tax without needing to apply to be so recognized and without needing to file a tax return. Beyond that, churches are protected from audit by stringent procedures. There are good reasons to consider providing a distance between church and state, including the state tax authority. In many instances, Congress granted churches preferential tax treatment to try to avoid excess entanglement between church and state, though that preferential treatment often just shifts the locus of …

What Is Insurance? An Analysis Of The Tax Deductibility Of Captive Insurance Premiums, John D. Patten

Honors Capstones

What is insurance for the purposes of a tax deduction? The Internal Revenue Code does not define insurance. Without this definition, taxpayers using alternative insurance products to manage their risks must look to case law to determine whether their arrangements count as tax deductible insurance or non-deductible self-insurance. This paper dives into the four prongs of insurance: insurance risk, risk shifting, risk distributing, and commonly accepted notions of insurance. This paper looks to cases that have dealt with the deduction of captive insurance premiums to provide better insight into the practical application of this test. After discussing the evolution of …

Questions The Irs Will Not Answer, Emily L. Cauble

Indiana Law Journal

When a taxpayer plans to undertake a transaction and its tax consequences are unclear, the taxpayer can request a letter ruling from the IRS. The IRS issues numerous letter rulings each year. In 2020, for instance, the IRS issued 777 letter rulings. The IRS refrains from issuing letter rulings on certain topics. At the beginning of each year, the IRS publishes an updated list of the topics on which it will not rule. Many of the topics on which it will not rule arise in areas of tax law governed by standards where the tax outcome depends heavily on each …

Fighting The Tax Gap: A Prime And Recent Example Of The Value Of Gao Oversight & Reporting, Josh Bill

Upper Level Writing Requirement Research Papers

No abstract provided.

The Irs’S Voluntary Disclosure Program: Need For Codification, Jay A. Soled

Georgia State University Law Review

For more than a century, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has had a voluntary disclosure program in place. Its purpose is to coax into tax compliance those wayward taxpayers who have committed criminal acts or have been remiss in fulfilling their civic tax-filing obligations. Historically, the voluntary disclosure program has had to strike a difficult balance between being attractive enough to entice tax scofflaws to participate and not being too attractive lest ordinary taxpayers feel that their compliance efforts were for naught.

A unique feature of the voluntary disclosure program is that it is entirely administrative in origin. The commissioner …

The Surprising Significance Of De Minimis Tax Rules, Leigh Osofsky, Kathleen Delaney Thomas

Washington and Lee Law Review

De minimis tax rules—rules that eliminate tax burdens for low-income taxpayers or low-dollar transactions—abound in the tax law. Despite the prevalence of such rules, legal scholarship has treated them as—well—de minimis, or as mere rounding errors that do not merit sustained attention. This perspective is understandable. If de minimis rules address insignificant taxpayers or tax liabilities, aren’t the rules themselves likely to be insignificant?

Recent tax law developments have revealed that this conception of de minimis tax rules is deeply misguided. Major allocations of tax law liability, as well as accompanying questions about the fairness, efficiency, and administrability of the …

Fixing The Johnson Amendment Without Totally Destroying It, Benjamin Leff

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The so-called Johnson Amendment is that portion of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code that prohibits charities from "intervening" in electoral campaigns. The intervention has long been understood to include both contributing charitable funds to campaign coffers and communicating the charity's views about candidates' qualifications for office. The breadth of the Johnson Amendment potentially brings two important values into conflict: the government's interest in preventing tax-deductible contributions to be used for electoral purposes (called "nonsubvention") and the speech rights or interest of charities.

For many years, the IRS has taken the position that the Johnson Amendment's prohibition on electoral …

Taxing Bitcoin And Blockchains—What The Irs Told Us (And What It Didn’T), David J. Shakow

All Faculty Scholarship

The IRS recently issued its second description of how it will treat Bitcoin and other blockchain assets. Some of its analysis leaves open questions that invite further consideration, and important issues remain unresolved. Moreover, because the popular Bitcoin blockchain uses a "proof of work" consensus procedure, issues relating to the alternative "proof of stake" procedure have been neglected.

Tax Attorneys As Defenders Of Taxpayer Rights, Michelle Lyon Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

What is the modern role of a tax practitioner, in particular a tax attorney, in the United States? In an era in which the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is underfunded, understaffed, and struggles to address its mission, tax attorneys play an important role as advocates for taxpayer rights.

Tax attorneys act as advocates who represent ordinary individual taxpayers in controversies with the IRS. These controversies include post-filing disputes, such as audits, as well as issues arising with the collection of assessed taxes. Many of these cases are resolved at the administrative level; those that cannot be resolved are litigated, most …

Bc Ranch Ii V. Commissioner: A Flexible Approach To Perpetual Conservation Easements, Victoria Wolfe

Indiana Law Journal

Depending on the approach used in enforcement, there is the potential to encourage or discourage charitable donations of conservation easements. In Part I, this Note explores the federal charitable income tax deduction for conservation easements and the legislative purpose in enacting the perpetuity requirements. Part II examines the Fifth Circuit’s decision in BC Ranch II and the flexible approach to perpetuity adopted by the court. Finally, Part III considers the implications of the BC Ranch II decision, specifically authority to monitor conservation easements, valuation gaming of easements in the context of perpetuity, and congressional intent in allowing the conservation easement …

Demystifying Irs Transcripts, Robert D. Probasco, Nikki Mccain, Ann Garza

Robert Probasco

No abstract provided.

Tax Court Find Stars Transaction Lacks Economic Substance, Robert D. Probasco, Lee S. Meyercord

Robert Probasco

In Bank of New York Mellon Corp. v. Commissioner, the Tax Court found that a structured trust advantaged repackaged securities (“STARS”) transaction entered into by BNY Mellon lacked economic substance, and disallowed foreign tax credits of $199 million as well as transactional expenses of $8 million. BNY Mellon is the first test case to emerge from the IRS’s attempts to disallow tax benefits to several financial institutions that participated in the STARS transaction.

The STARS transaction is one of a number of different transactions that the IRS refers to as “foreign tax credit generators.” These transactions generally rely on inconsistent …

Computing Interest On Overpayments And Underpayments: How Difficult Can It Be? Very!, Mary A. Mcnulty, David H. Boucher, Joseph M. Incorvaia, Robert D. Probasco

Robert Probasco

Taxpayers often assume that the difficult part of a tax dispute is resolving the tax liability and penalties, while interest computation is fairly straightforward. In the authors' experience, however, interest determinations are as subject to controversy and prone to error as tax liability determinations. The Article explores some of the areas that taxpayers should review carefully in the process of finalizing interest computations.

- Frequent Errors. The Article reviews twelve areas in which, even though the law is settled and the facts are usually clear, the Service's interest computations frequently include mistakes. Taxpayers need to be aware of these provisions, …

Much Uncertainty About Uncertain Tax Positions, Robert D. Probasco

Robert Probasco

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced in January 2010 a new initiative to require certain businesses to report “uncertain tax positions” on a new schedule filed with their annual tax returns. Draft schedules and instructions issued in April 2010 clarified some of the mechanical aspects of the new requirement but left many open issues and questions. The IRS proposal built on requirements by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in FASB Interpretation No. 48, Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes (“FIN 48”). The standard requires companies, in their financial statements, to reserve some of the benefits from any position taken …

Tefra-Partnership Refunds: Five Steps To Protect A Partner’S Rights, Mary A. Mcnulty, Robert D. Probasco, Carla C. Crapster

Robert Probasco

The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA) established a unified procedure for determining the tax treatment of partnership items at the partnership level rather than the partner level. The TEFRA-partnership refund procedures differ from the refund claim procedures that apply to other taxpayers. For a TEFRA partnership, a refund claim is an administrative adjustment request (AAF) and a notice of deficiency is a notice of final partnership administrative adjustment (FPAA). Procedures for the assessment of additional tax attributable to partnership items have received much attention in recent years, but the procedures concerning refunds are complex and full …

Navigating Tefra Partnership Audits In Multi-Tiered Entity Structures, Mary A. Mcnulty, Robert D. Probasco, Lee S. Meyercord

Robert Probasco

The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA) established a unified procedure for determining the tax treatment of partnership items at the partnership level rather than the partner level. Although these rules addressed a serious and real administrative problem in the assessment of partnership level deficiencies, they also created a complex process with many new problems and potential traps. One particularly unique set of challenges arises in the context of multi-tiered entities.

Multi-tiered entities are partnerships that have a partnership or other pass-through entity as a partner. The pass-through partner is commonly referred to as a “tier,” and …

Rejecting Charity: Why The Irs Denies Tax Exemption To 501(C)(3) Applicants, Terri Lynn Helge

Terri L. Helge

New charitable organizations generally must file an application for exemption (Form 1023) and await approval from the Internal Revenue Service. Unfortunately, the criteria the Internal Revenue Service uses to evaluate applications has not always been transparent. If an application is approved, the Internal Revenue Service determination letter and the application for exemption are required to be made publicly available and can be requested from the Internal Revenue Service or the organization itself. Prior to 2004, in the case of denials, neither the application nor the Internal Revenue Service’s correspondence setting forth its rationale for the denial were made publicly available. …

Four Walls Do Not An Eating Facility Make: Arguing Against The U.S. Tax Court's Unprecedented Jacobs V. Commissioner Decision, Brendan Zwaneveld

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Harmonizing Federal Tax Law And The State Legalization Of Marijuana, Daniel Rowe

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is Anybody Home? The Relaxation Of The Residency Requirement For Claiming A Qualifying Child Under The Earned Income Tax Credit After Rowe V. Commissioner, Jennifer S. Hamel

Maine Law Review

Cynthia Rowe is currently serving a life sentence in prison for the shooting death of her brother-in-law. While she may have lost her criminal case, at least Rowe came away victorious in the recent Tax Court decision, Rowe v. Commissioner, in which she was awarded the earned income tax credit (EITC) over the objection of the Internal Revenue Service (Service or IRS). Unfortunately, her victory comes at the expense of sound legal analysis and public policy. Despite the efforts of Congress to ensure that the benefit of the EITC is given only to those who need it most by imposing …

Open Source: The Enewsletter Of Rwu Law 09-22-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Advocating For Clients Whose Debts Were Assigned By The Irs To A Private Collection Agency, Michael Baillif, Robert D. Probasco, Miranda Rhyne

Robert Probasco

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Donald Trump Vs. Roger Williams 05-09-2017, David Logan

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Rwu First Amendment Blog: David A. Logan's Blog: Donald Trump Vs. Roger Williams 05-08-2017, David A. Logan

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

"Gambling, Raffles, Door Prizes, And Competitions" From The Pop Culture Business Handbook For Cons And Festivals, Jon Garon

Faculty Scholarship

This article is part of a series of book excerpts from The Pop Culture Business Handbook for Cons and Festivals, which provides the business, strategy, and legal reference guide for fan conventions, film festivals, musical festivals, and cultural events.Games of chance are highly regulated activities, whereas bona fide competitions are generally left unregulated. Both are big businesses. Competitions, drafts, and other events help support the popularity of trading card games. Many nonprofit organizations take advantage of their charitable status to raise funds through various indirect strategies, including raffles, bingo, games of chance, and competitions. For the games of chance, it …

The Use Of Big Data Analytics By The Irs: Efficient Solutions Or The End Of Privacy As We Know It?, Kimberly A. Houser, Debra Sanders

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Article examines the privacy issues resulting from the IRS's big data analytics program as well as the potential violations of federal law. Although historically, the IRS chose tax returns to audit based on internal mathematical mistakes or mismatches with third party reports (such as W-2s), the IRS is now engaging in data mining of public and commercial data pools (including social media) and creating highly detailed profiles of taxpayers upon which to run data analytics. This Article argues that current IRS practices, mostly unknown to the general public are violating fair information practices. This lack of transparency and accountability …