Law Commons^™

Keep Charitable Oversight In The Irs, Philip Hackney

Articles

Critics are increasingly calling for Congress to remove charity regulation from the IRS. The critics are wrong. Congress should maintain charity regulation in the IRS. What is at stake is balancing power between the state, charity as civil society, and the economic order. In a well-balanced democracy, civil society maintains its independence from the state and the economic order. Removing charitable jurisdiction from the IRS would blind the IRS to dollars placed in charitable solution increasing tax and political shelters and wealthy dominance of charities as civil society. A new agency without understanding of, or jurisdiction over, tax cannot act …

Taxes As Pandemic Controls, Ashley C. Craig, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

Tax policy can play important roles in limiting the spread of communicable disease and in managing the economic fallout of a pandemic. Taxes on business activities that bring workers or customers into close contact with each other offer efficient alternatives to broad regulatory measures, such as shutdowns, that have been effective but enormously costly. Corrective taxation also helps raise the revenue required to cover elevated government expenditure during a pandemic. Moreover, the restricted consumer choice that accompanies a pandemic reduces the welfare cost of raising tax revenue from higher-income taxpayers, making it a good time for deficit closure. Current U.S. …

Crisis-Driven Tax Law: The Case Of Section 382, Albert H. Choi, Quinn Curtis, Andrew T. Hayashi

Articles

At the peak of the 2008 financial crisis, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued Notice 2008–83 (the Notice), administrative guidance that limited Internal Revenue Code (the Code) section 382, an important tax rule designed to discourage tax-motivated acquisitions. Although styled as a mere interpretation of existing law, the Notice has been widely viewed as an improper exercise of the IRS’s authority that undermined its legitimacy. But did the Notice work? There were many extraordinary interventions during the financial crisis that raised questions about eroding the rule of law and the long-term destabilizing effects of bail­outs. In a financial crisis, regulators …

Exclusion From Income Of Compensation For Services And Pooling Of Labor Occurring In A Noncommercial Setting, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

When cash is received for services, it typically will constitute gross income to the recipient.' But what if the payments are made in a noncommercial setting such as the payment by a parent to a child for mowing the lawn or performing household chores? As discussed later in this Essay, there are reasons to conclude that such payments do not constitute income. The problem of how to treat receipts from a noncommercial activity frequently arises in the context of an exchange of services. A similar problem arises when services are provided by several persons pursuant to a pooling of labor …

Taxation As Regulation: Carbon Tax, Health Care Tax, Bank Tax And Other Regulatory Taxes, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

This paper addresses three questions: 1. Is regulation a legitimate goal for taxation? 2. Which tax is best suited for regulation? 3. Would it be better to allocate just one goal per tax among the major taxes (individual and corporate income tax and VAT)? It then analyzes the proposed bank tax and the enacted health care tax as regulatory taxes, and concludes that the first is desirable (as is a carbon tax) but the second is not.

The Proposed Domestic Reverse Hybrid Entity Regulations: Can The Treasury Department Override Treaties?, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

This article first describes the proposed regulations issued under section 894 addressing the ability of domestic reverse hybrid entities to claim treaty benefits with respect to payments made to their interest holders (the proposed DRH regulations). After describing the proposed DRH regulations, the article next explores the potential that these regulations have to override existing U.S. treaty obligations. After concluding that the proposed DRH regulations are inconsistent with at least one existing treaty, the article concludes by questioning the power of the Treasury Department to promulgate regulations (such as the proposed DRH regulations) that override treaties.

Note: This is a …

Section 338 And Its Foolish Consistency Rules - The Hobgoblin Of Little Minds, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

The purposes of this Article are to examine whether there is any longer a reason for concern because a target corporation can choose selected assets for nonrecognition and to what extent the 1994 regulations properly deal with potentially abusive circumventions of tax goals. Before examining the current status of the consistency requirements, the historical background that led to the adoption of Section 338 and the operation of the section is discussed. The historical background includes: the judicially created Kimbell-Diamond rule, the codification and modification of that rule by the old version of Section 334(b)(2), the operation of the old version …