Law Commons^™

Sticks And Snakes: Derivatives And Curtailing Aggressive Tax Planning, David M. Schizer

Faculty Scholarship

The most important tax problem of recent months is the impact of aggressive tax planning on corporate tax revenue. The Secretary of the Treasury blames the "tax shelter industry," in which tax lawyers and investment bankers develop and market tax-motivated transactions. This Article analyzes aggressive tax planning, and recommends ways to impede it, in a context rife with opportunities for planning: the tax rules for complex financial instruments known as derivatives. While planning opportunities are prevalent elsewhere in the tax law as well, this Article focuses on derivatives because the problem is particularly acute – indeed, derivatives have been called …