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Full-Text Articles in Law
Foreword -- The Supreme Court's Estate Planning Jurisprudence, Bridget J. Crawford
Foreword -- The Supreme Court's Estate Planning Jurisprudence, Bridget J. Crawford
ACTEC Law Journal
This short essay introduces a special issue of the ACTEC Law Journal devoted to the estate planning jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the United States. The issue includes two invited essays on the role of the court in developing the law in this area, as well as commentaries on seventeen of the most important estate planning-related cases decided by the Supreme Court between 1925 and 2013.
Valuation, Values, Norms: Proposals For Estate And Gift Tax Reform, Bridget J. Crawford
Valuation, Values, Norms: Proposals For Estate And Gift Tax Reform, Bridget J. Crawford
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
In their contributions to this Symposium, Professor Joseph Dodge, Professor Wendy Gerzog, and Professor Kerry Ryan offer concrete proposals for improving the existing estate and gift tax system. Professor Dodge and Professor Gerzog are especially interested in accuracy in valuation, and advance specific proposals with respect to split-interest transfers and family limited partnerships. Professor Dodge makes an additional proposal to improve the generation-skipping transfer tax system, an understudied area of the law. Professor Gerzog's Symposium contribution draws particular attention to the legal fiction on which the estate and gift tax marital deductions rely. She would restrict the availability of the …
Toward A Reality-Based Estate Tax, Wendy C. Gerzog
Toward A Reality-Based Estate Tax, Wendy C. Gerzog
All Faculty Scholarship
Currently, the estate tax does not accurately value the property and transactions that it is meant to cover. Additionally, the marital and charitable deductions do not reflect actual associated transfers, instead skewing their benefits away from their purported beneficiaries. This Article proposes reforming the estate tax by eliminating these sources of unreality and distortion, and to make the current estate tax a reality-based tax. Through six specific proposals, the Article identifies solutions to the problems associated with testamentary transfers, puts forth alternative methods of valuation to prevent gaming of transfer taxes, and offers significant modifications to two deduction provisions.
Why Tax Wealth Transfers?: A Philosophical Analysis, Jennifer Bird-Pollan
Why Tax Wealth Transfers?: A Philosophical Analysis, Jennifer Bird-Pollan
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
The one-hundredth anniversary of the estate tax provides an ideal moment to reflect on the role of wealth transfer taxation in the larger scheme of the U.S. tax system. Wealth and income inequality are at historically high levels, and the responses to these issues are often reduced to a simplistic political dichotomy of “right” versus “left.” The multitude of views of the American people cannot be reduced to such simple generalities without losing important nuances. This Article identifies three general categories of political philosophical viewpoints that are commonly endorsed by both politicians and everyday Americans, and then examines the current …
Utilitarianism And Wealth Transfer Taxation, Jennifer Bird-Pollan
Utilitarianism And Wealth Transfer Taxation, Jennifer Bird-Pollan
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
This article is the third in a series examining the continued relevance and philosophical legitimacy of the United States wealth transfer tax system from within a particular philosophical perspective. The article examines the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill and his philosophical progeny and distinguishes the philosophical approach of utilitarianism from contemporary welfare economics, primarily on the basis of the concept of "utility" in each approach. After explicating the utilitarian criteria for ethical action, the article goes on to think through what Mill's utilitarianism says about the taxation of wealth and wealth transfers, the United States federal wealth transfer tax system …