Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
-
- University of Michigan Law School (4)
- University of Pittsburgh School of Law (4)
- Roger Williams University (2)
- Selected Works (2)
- St. Mary's University (2)
-
- University of Richmond (2)
- Pace University (1)
- Penn State Law (1)
- Pepperdine University (1)
- SelectedWorks (1)
- Touro University Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center (1)
- University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law (1)
- University of Kentucky (1)
- University of Washington School of Law (1)
- Publication Year
- Publication
-
- Articles (5)
- Michigan Journal of Gender & Law (2)
- Dan Subotnik (1)
- Faculty Articles (1)
- James Puckett (1)
-
- Journal Articles (1)
- Law Faculty Publications (1)
- Law Faculty Scholarly Articles (1)
- Law School Blogs (1)
- Life of the Law School (1993- ) (1)
- Michigan Law Review (1)
- Pace Law Review (1)
- Pepperdine Law Review (1)
- Scholarly Works (1)
- Scott Titshaw (1)
- St. Mary's Law Journal (1)
- University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review (1)
- University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform (1)
- University of Richmond Law Review (1)
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 24 of 24
Full-Text Articles in Law
Caregivers And Tax Reform: Before And After Snapshots, Shannon Weeks Mccormack
Caregivers And Tax Reform: Before And After Snapshots, Shannon Weeks Mccormack
Articles
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) changed the way families are taxed, starting in tax year 2018. By rearranging a myriad of deck chairs, politicians painted rosy pictures of families reaping the benefits of tax reform. In reality, however, generalizations cannot be made and the extent to which any one family gains or loses depends on particular facts. Even more obscured is the way in which the TCJA changed –– and failed to change –– the taxation of different types of caregivers. This Essay seeks to provide needed clarity in this area. It begins by offering snapshots of how …
Back To The Future: Marriage And Divorce Under The 2017 Tax Act, Mark Cochran
Back To The Future: Marriage And Divorce Under The 2017 Tax Act, Mark Cochran
St. Mary's Law Journal
Abstract forthcoming
Back To The Future: Marriage And Divorce Under The 2017 Tax Act, Mark W. Cochran
Back To The Future: Marriage And Divorce Under The 2017 Tax Act, Mark W. Cochran
Faculty Articles
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the 2017 Tax Act) significantly altered the federal tax consequences of marriage and divorce by mostly eliminating the so-called "marriage penalty" from the individual income tax rates and abolishing the deduction for alimony payments. These changes represent the latest congressional tinkering with issues that have persisted since the earliest days of the modem income tax, turning back the clock with regard to taxation for both married and divorced couples. For the first time, since the enactment of the Tax Reform Act of 1969, the rate brackets for married taxpayers filing joint returns …
A Practical Solution To The Marriage Penalty, Margaret Ryznar
A Practical Solution To The Marriage Penalty, Margaret Ryznar
Pepperdine Law Review
In the federal income tax code, there is a marriage penalty resulting from tax brackets that do not double upon marriage. This marriage penalty persists despite universal condemnation of it, penalizing a significant portion of married women who work and many same-sex couples. This Article proposes a novel way to deal with this marriage penalty by creating a filing status for dual income couples that earn an amount within a particular percentage of each other. This filing status would be the same as the current married filing status, except it would double the rates of single filers by accommodating two …
Newsroom: Donald Trump Vs. Roger Williams 05-09-2017, David Logan
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
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.
Rethinking Tax Priorities: Marriage Neutrality, Children, And Contemporary Families, James M. Puckett
Rethinking Tax Priorities: Marriage Neutrality, Children, And Contemporary Families, James M. Puckett
James Puckett
Tax scholarship has long struggled with whether married taxpayers should be taxed differently from unmarried taxpayers. Currently, married taxpayers are subject to different tax rates than unmarried taxpayers, and may file a joint tax return. A married couple may pay a higher or lower amount of tax than an unmarried couple with the same total income, and a single person generally pays more tax on a given income than a married couple with a single earner with the same income. These outcomes are difficult to reconcile with a commitment to income tax progressivity, which in theory requires that higher incomes …
Victims Of Our Own Success: The Perils Of Obergefell And Windsor, Anthony C. Infanti
Victims Of Our Own Success: The Perils Of Obergefell And Windsor, Anthony C. Infanti
Articles
This short essay was spurred by the numerous celebrations of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalizing same-sex marriage in all fifty states. Though the essay acknowledges the importance of both Obergefell and the Supreme Court’s earlier decision in United States v. Windsor, it highlights the significant perils that these decisions entail for the LGBT community. In the essay, I use tax as a lens for describing some of the lesser-known perils associated with these decisions in the hopes of making those perils more concrete and easily understood by a wide audience of (tax and nontax) …
Moving Beyond Marriage: A Proposed Unit Of Presumed Economic Interdependence For Joint Filing Purposes In Bankruptcy And In Tax, Heather V. Graham
Moving Beyond Marriage: A Proposed Unit Of Presumed Economic Interdependence For Joint Filing Purposes In Bankruptcy And In Tax, Heather V. Graham
Pace Law Review
In order to promote both equality and efficiency, this Comment proposes that individuals should have the opportunity to file jointly for tax and bankruptcy purposes when they have a relationship predicated upon economic interdependence, as opposed to basing the opportunity to file jointly upon marital status. Part I of this Comment will briefly discuss the history of marriage in the United States. In particular, Part I will discuss the role that the government has had in promoting and regulating marriage and how the treatment of married persons operates to the exclusion of the unmarried. Parts II and III of this …
Lgbt Families, Tax Nothings, Anthony C. Infanti
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
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 …
Big (Gay) Love: Has The Irs Legalized Polygamy?, Anthony C. Infanti
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 …
Electing Fairness: A Check-The-Box-Style Regime For Same-Sex Couples' Tax Filing Status, Jennifer Bird-Pollan
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 …
The Reactionary Road To Free Love: How Doma, State Marriage Amendments And Social Conservatives Undermine Traditional Marriage, Scott Titshaw
The Reactionary Road To Free Love: How Doma, State Marriage Amendments And Social Conservatives Undermine Traditional Marriage, Scott Titshaw
Scott Titshaw
Much has been written about the possible effects on different-sex marriage of legally recognizing same-sex marriage. This article looks at the defense of marriage from a different angle: It shows how rejecting same-sex marriage results in political compromise and the proliferation of “marriage light” alternatives (e.g., civil unions, domestic partnerships, or reciprocal beneficiaries) that undermine the unique status of marriage for everyone. In the process, it examines several aspects of the marriage debate in detail. After describing the flexibility of marriage as it has evolved over time, the article focuses on recent state constitutional amendments attempting to stop further development. …
The Marriage Tax Revisited: An Analysis Of The Tax Consequences Of Marriage, Dan Subotnik
The Marriage Tax Revisited: An Analysis Of The Tax Consequences Of Marriage, Dan Subotnik
Dan Subotnik
No abstract provided.
Taxing Civil Rights Gains, Anthony C. Infanti
Taxing Civil Rights Gains, Anthony C. Infanti
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This Article is divided into four parts. In Part I, the nature of the levy that the DOMAs impose on same-sex couples is explained. In Part II, how this levy can be classified as a "tax" is explained. In Part III, the federal- and state-level ramifications of classifying the levy that the DOMAs impose as a "tax" are discussed. Finally, brief concluding remarks are provided that discuss how this Article might pave the way for making similar arguments with respect to other nontraditional families and, concomitantly, how it demonstrates the transformative potential of same-sex marriage.
Rethinking Tax Priorities: Marriage Neutrality, Children, And Contemporary Families, James M. Puckett
Rethinking Tax Priorities: Marriage Neutrality, Children, And Contemporary Families, James M. Puckett
Journal Articles
Tax scholarship has long struggled with whether married taxpayers should be taxed differently from unmarried taxpayers. Currently, married taxpayers are subject to different tax rates than unmarried taxpayers, and may file a joint tax return. A married couple may pay a higher or lower amount of tax than an unmarried couple with the same total income, and a single person generally pays more tax on a given income than a married couple with a single earner with the same income. These outcomes are difficult to reconcile with a commitment to income tax progressivity, which in theory requires that higher incomes …
Love Doesn't Pay: The Fiction Of Marriage Rights In The Workplace, James A. Sonne
Love Doesn't Pay: The Fiction Of Marriage Rights In The Workplace, James A. Sonne
University of Richmond Law Review
No abstract provided.
A New I Do: Towards A Marriage-Neutral Income Tax, Shari Motro
A New I Do: Towards A Marriage-Neutral Income Tax, Shari Motro
Law Faculty Publications
The federal income tax system treats married couples as if each spouse earned approximately one-half of the couple's combined income through a mechanism called "income splitting. " For many one-earner and unequal-earner couples, income splitting produces a significant advantage, a "marriage bonus," by shifting income from higher to lower rate brackets. Marriage-based income splitting relies on a presumption that marriage is a good indicator of economic unity between two taxpayers. It is not. Marriage does not require spousal sharing, and many unmarried couples share everything they earn. As a result, the current system extends the benefit of income splitting to …
The Passage Of Community Property Laws, 1939-1947: Was "More Than Money" Involved?, Jennifer E. Sturiale
The Passage Of Community Property Laws, 1939-1947: Was "More Than Money" Involved?, Jennifer E. Sturiale
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
Part I of this article reviews the legal landscape that provided the backdrop against which Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Pennsylvania later adopted community property laws. It also examines the tax consequences of the two Supreme Court cases, Lucas v. Earl and Poe v. Seaborn, that resulted in the disparate tax treatment of married couples in common law and community property law states. Part II briefly reviews the subsequent passage of community property laws by Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Pennsylvania; the passage of a federal tax reduction bill that provided for equal treatment of community property law and …
The Marriage Tax Revisited: An Analysis Of The Tax Consequences Of Marriage, Dan Subotnik
The Marriage Tax Revisited: An Analysis Of The Tax Consequences Of Marriage, Dan Subotnik
Scholarly Works
No abstract provided.
Federal Tax Lien—Forced Sale Of The Homestead Interest Of A Non-Delinquent Spouse, Allen C. Dobson
Federal Tax Lien—Forced Sale Of The Homestead Interest Of A Non-Delinquent Spouse, Allen C. Dobson
University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Haitian Vacation: The Applicability Of Sham Doctrine To Year-End Divorces, Michigan Law Review
The Haitian Vacation: The Applicability Of Sham Doctrine To Year-End Divorces, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
This Note examines the propriety of applying the sham doctrine to tax-motivated divorces. Section I outlines the evolution of the sham doctrine from its exposition in Gregory v. Helvering through its expression in two different tests for commercial transactions. Section II then studies the relationship between state divorce law and the marital status provisions of the Internal Revenue Code to demonstrate the clear congressional preference for incorporating state law by reference rather than creating an independent federal law of marriage. It also examines the history of the 1969 Tax Reform Act in a vain effort to discern a congressional desire …
Federal Invome Tax Discrimination Between Married And Single Taxpayers, Michael W. Betz
Federal Invome Tax Discrimination Between Married And Single Taxpayers, Michael W. Betz
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This article explores the present tax rate structure and its implications, considers the historical events and policies which created four separate tax rates, analyzes the tax policies embodied by the different rate treatment of married and single taxpayers, and examines the constitutional problems involved in maintaining the present disparate tax treatment. An alternative tax rate treatment, which will avoid the discrimination inherent in the present system, is suggested.