Law Commons^™

State Fiscal Policies And Transitory Income Fluctuations, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

State and local expenditure and tax revenue respond less to the business cycle than do federal spending and revenue, thereby reducing the countercyclicality of total government expenditure and revenue. This paper considers forces responsible for the cyclical pattern of state expenditure and revenue. Annual fluctuations in state personal income are associated with small changes in state spending and significant changes in tax receipts; receipt of federal grants is associated with greater state spending. Tax collections, and to a lesser degree expenditure, of larger states are more closely associated with annual income fluctuations than are the tax collections and expenditure of …

The Redemption Puzzle, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

After the adoption of partial integration in 2003, there has been only a modest rise in dividends, but a sixfold increase in redemptions. This article argues that the explanation for that lies in the different treatment of dividends and capital gains to foreign shareholders and that Congress should respond by making sections 302 and 304 inapplicable to foreign shareholders.

Xilinx Revisited, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

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On March 22 the Ninth Circuit released its new opinion in Xilinx v. Commissioner, Doc 2010-6163, 2010 WTD 55-42. 1 As has been expected since the panel withdrew its original opinion, it reversed itself and in a 2-1 opinion held for the taxpayer. The opinion makes it pretty clear why the reversal occurred. It was the result of concentrated pressure by the international tax community and the fact that the government was unwilling to defend the theory on which the panel originally decided the case: that the arm’s-length standard of the section 482 regulations does not apply to cost sharing. …

Dissecting O'Donnabhain, Anthony C. Infanti

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In O'Donnabhain v. Commissioner, a sharply divided Tax Court allowed a medical expense deduction for some costs related to sex reassignment surgery. This short commentary examines the opinions in the case and concludes that the taxpayer's victory rings hollow.

Taking The Good With The Bad: Recognizing The Negative Externalities Created By Charities And Their Implications For The Charitable Deduction, Shannon Weeks Mccormack

Articles

The tax code allows taxpayers to deduct amounts donated to an extremely broad variety of organizations deemed to create societal benefits — that is, positive externalities. But many organizations that may receive tax-deductible contributions also cause harms. Both the tax code and subsidy theory, one of the most utilized scholarly theories developed to analyze the deduction from an economic and morally neutral perspective, fail to properly account for these negative externalities. In order to do so, one needs to look beyond the economic models utilized by subsidy theorists. For instance, there should be some limit to the types of harms …

Comparative Tax Law: Theory And Practice, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Guy Inbar, Omri Marian, Linneu Mello

Articles

On 3 October 2009, a Conference on Comparative Tax Law in Theory and Practice took place at the University of Michigan Law School. It was organized by Reuven Avi-Yonah (Professor, University of Michigan Law School) and Mathias Reimann (Editor, American Journal of Comparative Law and Professor, University of Michigan Law School), and was attended by Hugh Ault (Professor of Law, Boston College Law School), Victor Thuronyi (Senior Counsel, International Monetary Fund), Brian Arnold (Professor Emeritus, University of Western Ontario), William Barker (Professor, The Dickinson School of Law, Penn State), Michael Livingston (Professor, Rutgers School of Law-Camden), Carlo Garbarino (Professor of …

Between Formulary Apportionment And The Oecd Guidelines: A Proposal For Reconciliation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In the last 30 years, a debate has been raging in international tax circles between advocates of the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines and the arm’s length standard (ALS) they embody, on the one hand, and advocates of formulary apportionment (FA) on the other. After the adoption of the 1995 regulations and the new OECD Guidelines, the debate became quieter for a while, because everyone was waiting to see whether the issue had been resolved. However, while there have been few decided cases, it is clear by now that the transfer pricing problem is as bad as it ever was. That …

Foreword: On Publishing Anonymously, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

In this foreword to the fall 2010 issue of the Pittsburgh Tax Review, I explain the troubling set of circumstances that led to our decision to publish one of the articles anonymously. All of the articles in this issue share a focus on suggestions for state and local tax reform in Pennsylvania. The circumstances surrounding the decision to publish this one article anonymously raise a host of questions regarding the extent to which tax professionals are free to make suggestions for tax reform without being subject to employer censorship.

Decentralizing Family: An Inclusive Proposal For Individual Tax Filing In The United States, Anthony C. Infanti

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The debate in the United States over individual versus joint federal income tax filing is at something of a crossroads. For decades, progressive - and, particularly, feminist - scholars have urged us to abolish the joint return in favor of individual filing. On the rare occasion when scholars have described what such an individual filing system might look like, the focus has been on the ways in which the traditional family must be accommodated in an individual filing system. These descriptions generally do not take into account - let alone remedy - the tax system’s ongoing failure to address the …

Taxing Civil Rights Gains, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

In this article, I take a novel approach to the question of what constitutes a "tax." I argue that the unique burdens placed on same-sex couples by the federal and state "defense of marriage" acts (the DOMAs) constitute a tax on gay and lesbian families.

Classifying the DOMAs as a "tax" has important substantive and rhetorical consequences. As a tax, the DOMAs are subject to the same constitutional restrictions as other taxes. This opens them to challenge under the federal constitution's direct tax clauses and the uniformity clauses present in many state constitutions. Where such constitutional challenges are unavailable or …

Equity And Efficiency In Intellectual Property Taxation, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine

Articles

This article examines the federal income tax regime governing intellectual property using normative criteria in evaluating taxes: equity and efficiency. The article first evaluates the current intellectual property tax scheme in terms of horizontal equity, identifying differences in tax treatment of what appear to be similar intellectual property activities. It argues that disparate tax treatments between seemingly similar intellectual property owners signal that flaws may exist in the tax system. The article then assesses the efficiency of the intellectual property tax system, examining numerous tax subsidies for intellectual property and their effectiveness in promoting economic growth. It argues that many …

Summary And Recommendations (Symposium On Designing A Federal Vat, Part I), Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

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For the past thirty-five years, the debate on fundamental tax reform in the United States has centered on whether some type of consumption tax would replace all or part of the federal income tax. In my opinion, this debate has now been decided. Given recent budgetary developments and the impending eligibility of the baby boom generation for Social Security and Medicare, we cannot dispense with the revenue from the corporate and individual income tax. Moreover, we will need huge amounts of additional revenue, and most informed observers believe that the only plausible source for such revenues is a federal value-added …

Taxing Inheritances, Taxing Estates, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

This Article considers two aspects of converting the U.S. transfer tax system to one in which burdens are imposed on the basis of receipt rather than gift. The first aspect is the economic impact of distinguishing transfer tax liabilities by numbers of children in a family in addition to the total amount of transferred wealth. The second aspect is the nature of the event that triggers tax liability. Taxing on the basis of receipt raises complicated issues about generation-skipping transfers, transfers to trusts, and transfers that involve foreign as well as domestic parties, all of which are potentially influenced by …

Reply To Becker And Fuest, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

It is an understatement to say that the appropriate taxation of foreign business income is a controversial and potentially confusing topic. One of the mysteries of international taxation has been that the prescriptions of what, until recently, was the accepted academic wisdom differs so sharply from widespread international practice. In an important contribution, Richman (1963) noted that a home government confronted with the choice of where it would prefer one of its resident taxpayers to allocate a single unit of capital would weigh the after-foreign-tax return from investing abroad against the pre-tax return from investing at home. From this observation, …

Protecting Our Aging Retirees: Converting 401(K) Accounts Into Federally Guaranteed Lifetime Annuities, Lawrence A. Frolik

Articles

America’s retirees are faced with a potential financial disaster. Economic security in retirement has long depended on Social Security, private savings and employer provided retirement plans. While much attention has been paid to the financial problems of Social Security and the lack of private saving for retirement, little attention has been paid to an alarming development in employer provided retirement plans: the likely inability of retirees during the long years of their retirement to successfully manage their retirement funds accumulated in 401(k) and similar accounts. We as a society have set up a funding system for retirement that assumes retirees …

Cognitive Capture, Parliamentary Parentheses, And The Rise Of Fractional Apportionment, Stanley I. Langbein

Articles

No abstract provided.

Gain From The Sale Of An Income Interest In A Trust, Douglas A. Kahn

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A tax doctrine that is related to the anticipatory assignment of income doctrine, but yet different from that doctrine is variously referred to as the "substitute for ordinary income doctrine" or the "anticipation of income doctrine." This latter doctrine arises on the sale of an item. The test often utilized to determine whether that latter doctrine applies is whether the sale of an item substantively represents the receipt of a substitute for future income - i.e., are the proceeds of the sale given "in lieu of" ordinary income that the seller would have otherwise received at a later date. The …

The Last Best Hope For Progressivity In Tax, E. J. Mccaffery, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

We argue that a spending tax, as opposed to an income or wage tax, is the “last best hope” for a return to significantly more progressive marginal tax rates than obtain today. The simple explanation for this central claim looks to incentive effects, especially for “rich people,” as both economists and commentators are inclined to focus. High marginal tax rates under an income tax fall on and hence deter the socially productive activities of work and savings. High marginal rates under a wage tax fall on and hence deter the socially productive activity of work alone. But high marginal rates …

Of Coase, Calabresi, And Optimal Tax Liability, Kyle D. Logue, Joel Slemrod

Articles

The Article proceeds as follows. Part II offers a primer on the Coase Theorem, beginning with the classic case of neighbor externalizing on neighbor (farmer and rancher), and it explains the basic invariance propositions. Part III shifts the focus to Coasean situations involving buyers and sellers in a market or contractual relationship, buyers and sellers whose market interactions cause harm to third parties. Using supply-and-demand diagrams, we illustrate (in a new way) some of the most basic findings of the economic analysis of law, including both the Coasean invariance and efficiency propositions and the Calabresian least-cost avoider idea. Also in …