Law Commons^™

Tax Code Section 527 Groups Not An End-Run Around Mccain-Feingold, Edward B. Foley, Donald B. Tobin

Faculty Scholarship

This article ... will analyze both the statutory and constitutional questions concerning whether 527organizations are ‘‘political committees’’ under FECA and thus subject to the $5,000 cap on the contributions they receive from each donor. The article will also consider whether other forms of tax-exempt organizations besides 527s—most notably so-called 501(c)(4) organizations—provide an alternative means of circumventing this $5,000 contribution limit.

Group Taxation: Ifa Singapore Branch Report, Cecil Duncan Macrae

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

What Corporate Tax Shelters Can Teach Us About The Structure Of Subchapter C, Glenn E. Coven

Faculty Publications

Coven argues that the rules extending nonrecognition treatment to the incorporation of property never have been properly integrated with the double taxation of corporations. As a result, the duplicate burden or benefit is applied retroactively. That defect, Coven believes, has been long overlooked, but now that it has been exploited by one popular version of the loss replicating corporate tax shelter, it must be addressed. The remedy applied by Congress to the tax shelter in section 358(h) is insufficient, does not operate correctly and undermines the integrity of the code, he says.

This article proposes a more comprehensive solution that …

Shape Up Or Ship Out: Accountability To Third Parties For Patent Ambiguities In Testamentary Documents, Angela M. Vallario

All Faculty Scholarship

The attorney's preparation of a testamentary document (hereinafter sometimes referred to as a will or revocable trust) should clearly and accurately reflect the client's last wishes. Although these testamentary documents should reflect the client's intent, they often fall short of accomplishing that goal. There are numerous examples of will and trust construction cases that exhaust tremendous resources in an effort to ascertain the client's wishes or intent. Many of these cases involve the construction of patent and/or latent ambiguities which should have been resolved by appropriate drafting. This article's scope is limited to patent ambiguities caused by the attorney's negligence …

Cancellation Of Debt And Other Incidential Items Of Income: Puritan Tax Rules In The U.S., Richard C.E. Beck

Articles & Chapters

This article examines some miscellaneous and incidental forms of income from a comparative point of view. It appears that U.S. law includes as income more types of incidental items than most other countries. The items briefly considered here are (in no particular order) found money and property, gambling gains, gains from a personal hobby, isolated criminal profits, prizes and awards for merit, damages from non-physical personal injury, and gains from sale of a personal residence. The article concludes with a more thorough examination of income from the cancellation of debts (COD income) of an individual. These items have in common …

Proposed Regulations On Noncompensatory Options: A Light At The End Of The Tunnel, Walter D. Schwidetzky

All Faculty Scholarship

It has become increasingly common for partnerships to issue options. There is a dearth of authority on the federal tax treatment of options to acquire interests in partnerships. In this context, there are two main categories of options, services options and noncompensatory options. Services options, unsurprisingly, are options to acquire partnership interests where the option is received in exchange for services. Noncompensatory options cover the rest of the waterfront. The simplest version of the latter would be partnership analog to normal options found outside the partnership context: the option holder pays the partnership an option premium to acquire an option …

Putting Sec Heat On Audit Firms And Corporate Tax Shelters: Responding To Tax Risk With Sunshine, Shame And Strict Liability, Linda M. Beale

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Putting Sec Heat On Corporate Tax Shelters And Audit Firms: Responding To Tax Risk With Sunshine, Shame And Strict Liability, Linda M. Beale

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Book-Tax Conformity And The Corporate Tax Shelter Debate: Assessing The Proposed Section 475 Mark-To-Market Safe Harbor, Linda M. Beale

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Family Limited Partnerships: Discounts, Options, And Disappearing Value, Karen C. Burke, Grayson M.P. Mccouch

UF Law Faculty Publications

Family partnerships have been become increasingly popular as a means of avoiding estate and gift taxes. As other estate freezing techniques have been closed off by statutory anti-abuse rules, estate planners have increasingly resorted to partnerships as a vehicle for transferring assets within a family at deeply discounted values. Discounts ranging from one-third to over one-half of the value of the underlying assets are routinely claimed, and often allowed, based on lack of marketability and lack of control, even where these disabilities have no lasting or ascertainable economic effect. Nevertheless, the use of family partnerships to suppress value for transfer …

Congress, Public Values, And The Financing Of Private Choice, Mary L. Heen

Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines the financing dimension of private choice, with a focus on Congress’s taxing and spending decision-making processes. The Article begins with an overview of the financing and performance dimensions of privatization decisions, followed by an analysis of how taxation relates to both dimensions. Private choice can be financed individually, that is, paid for by an individual’s own resources, facilitated by general tax reduction. Alternatively, private choice can be financed collectively by using tax revenues (or borrowed funds) to pay for privately provided goods and services. The tendency in political debate to conflate those two forms of financing, as …

Litigation Expenses And The Alternate Minimum Tax, Brant J. Hellwig, Gregg D. Polsky

Scholarly Articles

Not available.

One Flesh, Two Taxpayers: A New Approach To Marriage And Wealth Transfer Taxation, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article critically examines the estate and gift tax rules currently applicable to martial wealth transfers and proposes a new system in which all transfers between spouses will be subject to taxation. The article begins by tracing the historic development of what the author calls the "one flesh, one taxpayer" approach to wealth transfer taxation. Over a period of more than thirty years, the marital deduction evolved from a tool for achieving geographic uniformity into an institution based on an unreal and idealized story of proper gender roles and the economic significance of marriage. After describing the wealth transfer tax …

Recent Developments In Federal Income Taxation: The Year 2003, Ira B. Shepard, Martin J. Mcmahon Jr.

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 2003 - and sometimes a little farther back in time if we find the item particularly humorous or outrageous. Most Treasury Regulations, however, are so complex that they cannot be discussed in detail and, anyway, only a devout masochist would read them all the way through; just the basic topic and fundamental principles are highlighted. Amendments to the Internal Revenue Code generally are not discussed except to …

Basis Shifting - A Radical Approach To An Intractable Problem, Glenn E. Coven

Faculty Publications

Coven asserts that one of the lingering ambiguities in subchapter C is how an appropriate tax benefit can be obtained from the tax basis that "disappears" when a shareholder's interest is completely redeemed but the transaction is treated as a dividend because stock held by others is attributed to the former shareholder. He believes that Treasury was content to rely on manifestly inadequate regulations to resolve that issue until taxpayers discovered how to convert those regulations into a potent tax shelter. The amendment to those regulations, proposed in 2002, however, was fatally flawed, according to Coven.

In this article, Coven …

Wither Firpta, Fred B. Brown

All Faculty Scholarship

Under FIRPTA, foreign persons are subject to U.S. tax on dispositions of directly held interests in U.S. real property as well as on dispositions of stock in certain U.S. real property holding corporations. Congress enacted FIRPTA to combat several techniques used by foreign persons to avoid U.S. tax on dispositions of U.S. real estate. However, since FIRPTA's enactment, changes in the tax law would defeat these tax avoidance techniques. Consequently, this raises the issue of whether FIRPTA continues to make sense as a policy matter.

This article suggests that the repeal of portions of FIRPTA may be in order and …

Aba Section Of Taxation Report Of The Task Force On Judicial Deference, Linda Galler, Irving Salem, Ellen P. Aprill, Aba Section Of Taxation, Task Force On Judicial Deference

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Recognizing the need for clearer standards regarding the degree of deference that the federal courts should confer on guidance issued by the Department of Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service, the Tax Section, under the direction of former ABA Section of Taxation Chair Pamela F. Olson, created a Task Force on Judicial Deference in 2000. It was charged with the mission of not only examining the state of the law pertaining to judicial deference across the broad range of administrative pronouncements issued by the Treasury and the IRS, but also sharing its conclusions and possible solutions with the Section of …

Seeking Consistency In Relating Capital To Current Expenditures, Henry Ordower

All Faculty Scholarship

Identifies relational duration as the key factor that distinguishes capital from current expenditures for tax purposes and argues that inventory cost is fundamentally identical to capitalization. Barriers to deductibility such as illegal payment prohibitions should also be barriers to capitalization or inventory absorption.

Innocent Spouses: A Critique Of The New Laws Governing Joint And Several Tax Liability, Lily Kahng

Faculty Articles

This article provides a framework for such interpretation and implementation of the new innocent spouse laws. The author presents an overview of the current tax law treatment of married joint filers under which joint and several liability is imposed unless relief is available under the new innocent spouse laws. The article then examines the tax rationales that have traditionally been offered for imposing joint and several liability. The author concludes that because the fiction of marital unity is deeply embedded in our tax system, joint and several liability for married joint filers is likely to remain the law. While it …

The Allocation Of Profits Between Related Entities And The Oppression Remedy: An Analysis Of Ford Motor Co. V. Omers, Kim Brooks, Anita Anand

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In Ford Motor Co. v. Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement Board, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice reviewed the transfer pricing arrangements between parent and subsidiaries Ford US and Ford Canada in the context of a going-private transaction. Its review was the key to resolving the two main issues in the case: first, did the transfer-pricing arrangements understate Ford Canada's profits so as to undermine the fair value of Ford Canada's shares? And second, did the transfer-pricing arrangement oppress or unduly disregard the interests of Ford Canada's minority shareholders so as to give rise to the oppression remedy?

In this comment, …

Delimiting The Concept Of Income: The Taxation Of In-Kind Benefits, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The issue of which in-kind benefits should be taxed and how these benefits should be valued have concerned tax legislators, administrators, and academics since the introduction of the personal income tax system. Building her theoretical analysis on the income concept advanced by Henry Simons and relying on traditional tax policy notions of equity, neutrality, and administrative practicality, the author asserts that employees must be fully taxed on employer-provided in-kind benefits. To this effect, the article offers guidelines for distinguishing between taxable in-kind benefits and non-taxable conditions of employment. The author argues that the correct method of valuation of in-kind benefits …

Book Review. The Price Of Progress: Public Services, Taxation And The American Corporate State, 1877-1929 By R. Rudy Higgens-Evenson, Ajay K. Mehrotra

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Abandoning Principles: Qualified Tuition Programs And Wealth Transfer Taxation Doctrine, Wayne M. Gazur

Publications

In 1996 Congress gave its imprimatur to a modest qualified tuition program provision. Over the course of the next five years the provision was expanded, providing additional wealth transfer taxation and income taxation benefits. This essay proposes that unless limited, such benefits are inconsistent with established taxation principles and also have the potential to undermine the integrity of the wealth transfer tax structure and the progressive nature of the income tax.

Tax Treatment Of Charitable Contributions In Canada: Theory, Practice, And Reform, David G. Duff

All Faculty Publications

Tax recognition for charitable contributions in Canada takes the form of a deduction where the contribution is made by a corporation or for the purpose of gaining or producing income from a business, a nonrefundable credit where individuals make qualifying gifts to eligible recipients, and a reduction or exemption from capital gains tax on gifts to eligible recipients of qualifying cultural property, publicly traded securities, or ecologically sensitive land. This article reviews different rationales for the tax recognition of charitable contributions, concluding that the most persuasive rationale is to indirectly subsidize the quasi-public goods and services that charities provide and …

The Most Rational Branch: Guinn V. Legislature And The Judiciary's Role As Helpful Arbiter Of Conflict, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

When the Nevada Supreme Court decided Guinn v. Legislature, one would have thought from reading the popular press accounts that the court had forcibly displaced the State legislature by means of a violent coup d'etat. Newspaper accounts of the decision referred to it as a usurpation of power in violation of clear constitutional language, belittling the court in language sometimes more appropriate to the baseball bleachers than to serious editorial commentary. Following suit, politicized elements of the citizenry began a recall effort (seemingly unsuccessful as of this writing) directed at the court as well as joining the chorus of criticisms. …

Taxing The New Intellectual Property Right, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine

Faculty Publications

How should the acquisition of domain names be treated under the current tax regime for intellectual property? This article proposes that domain names that function as source identifiers should be treated under the tax regime applicable to trademarks. Generic domain names, however, possess inherent goodwill that dictates different treatment.

"Tax Services" As A Trojan Horse In The Auditor Independence Provisions Of Sarbanes-Oxley, Matthew J. Barrett

Journal Articles

This article argues that the failure of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOx) to prohibit auditors for public companies from also providing tax services to audit clients or their executives and selling tax shelters to anyone remains a Trojan horse that threatens both the investing public and the auditing profession. Although SOx enacted several reforms designed to enhance auditor independence, the legislation and implementing regulations that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) subsequently promulgated allow an auditor for a publicly traded company to provide tax services to the company as long as the audit committee preapproves the engagement.

As the …

A Good Old Habit, Or Just An Old One? Preferential Tax Treatment For Reorganizations, Yariv Brauner

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article proposes to repeal the preferential tax treatment of certain merger and acquisition transactions known as "reorganizations," and tax them like all other sales or exchanges. In the last 80 years this preference has been a cornerstone of our tax system. It is also one of the most stable rules in the tax code. Nevertheless, its normative justification is weak, and has never been rigorously debated in the legal literature. This article rejects the stated rationale for this rules - that such transactions trigger insufficient realization and therefore it is both unfair and impractical to currently tax them. It …

Tax Protest, A Homosexual, And Frivolity: A Deconstructionist Meditation, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

In this contribution to a symposium entitled Out of the Closet and Into the Light: The Legal Issues of Sexual Orientation, I recount and then ponder the story of Robert Mueller. Mueller, a gay man, spent more than a decade protesting the discriminatory treatment of gays and lesbians under the Internal Revenue Code. As a result of his tax protest, Mueller was jailed for more than a year, and then was twice pursued by the IRS for taxes and penalties. In pondering Mueller's story, I consider it both as a telling example of the forcible closeting of gay and lesbian …

Litigation Expenses And The Alternative Minimum Tax, Gregg D. Polsky, Brant J. Hellwig

Scholarly Works

One of the chief features of the alternative minimum tax (the "AMT") is a broadened tax base, accomplished in part through the disallowance of deductions that are not central to measuring an individual's net income. Yet in achieving its objective of limiting deductions, the AMT casts a wide net. Thus, in certain instances, an individual can be robbed of the tax benefit of expenses that were critical to the production of the income being taxed. An extreme example of this problem is the treatment of certain litigation expenses under the AMT. If an individual incurs attorney fees and other associated …