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Full-Text Articles in Law

Utility Of Personal Service Corporations For Athletes, Bret M. Kanis Nov 2012

Utility Of Personal Service Corporations For Athletes, Bret M. Kanis

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.


Retirees Beware: Don't Worry About The British-- 2013 Is Coming, Douglas A. Kahn, Lawrence W. Waggoner Jul 2012

Retirees Beware: Don't Worry About The British-- 2013 Is Coming, Douglas A. Kahn, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

Retirees beware. The easy money policy of the Federal Open Market Committee and the 15 percent tax rate on qualified dividends have encouraaged retirees, especially middle-income retired savers, to reorient their nest eggs away from certificates of deposit, treasuries, and money market funds to dividend-paying stocks and mutual funds. According to the IRS, 43 percent of taxpayers age 65 or older reported qualified dividend income amounting to nearly half of the qualified dividend income reported by all taxpayers. By contrast, 46 percent of taxpayers age 65 or older reported net capital gains amounting to 30.5 percent of the net capital …


Vive La Petite Difference: Camp, Obama, And Territoriality Reconsidered, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah May 2012

Vive La Petite Difference: Camp, Obama, And Territoriality Reconsidered, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The recent tax reform proposals by House Ways and Means Committee Chair David Camp, R-Mich., and by President Obama seem to offer starkly contrasting visions of how to reform the taxation of foreign-source income earned by U.S.-based multinational enterprises.1 Both acknowledge the problem, which is that U.S.-based MNEs currently have more than $1 trillion of ‘‘permanently reinvested’’ income offshore, which they cannot bring back to the U.S. without incurring a 35 percent tax penalty. However, they seem to offer radically different solutions: Under the Camp proposal, a participation exemption will enable U.S.-based MNEs to bring back the income without paying …


The Great American Tax Novel, Lawrence Zelenak Apr 2012

The Great American Tax Novel, Lawrence Zelenak

Michigan Law Review

David Foster Wallace-author of the celebrated novel Infinite Jest and among the most acclaimed American fiction writers of his generation-killed himself in 2008 at the age of forty-six. He left in his office hundreds of pages of The Pale King, an unfinished novel set in the fictional Peoria, Illinois regional examination center ("REC") of the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS" or "the Service") in 1985. Although many chapters of the novel were seemingly complete, Wallace left no indication (other than what could be gleaned from the chapters themselves) of the order of the chapters (pp. vi-vii). Michael Pietsch, who had served …


The Supreme Court Lends States A Break: Department Of Revenue Of Kentucky V. Davis And The Civic Responsibility Exception To The Negative Commerce Clause, Ryan D. Wheeler Feb 2012

The Supreme Court Lends States A Break: Department Of Revenue Of Kentucky V. Davis And The Civic Responsibility Exception To The Negative Commerce Clause, Ryan D. Wheeler

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.


Reforming The Tax Code: A Tale Of Two Purposes And Paralysis, Gene Magidenko Jan 2012

Reforming The Tax Code: A Tale Of Two Purposes And Paralysis, Gene Magidenko

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Though the presidential election of 2012 is still some time away, national politics have been in the thick of one for several months now. One of the top issues being debated is the tax code. Most agree that the tax code should be simplified, but to say that the proposals to do this are various is an understatement. This perennial question of reform has been a fixture of the national debate for a long time, so little of what can be said about it is particularly novel. All the same, a brief overview of the purposes behind our system of …


I.R.C. Section 1014(E) And Gifted Property Reconveyed In Trust, Mark R. Siegel Jan 2012

I.R.C. Section 1014(E) And Gifted Property Reconveyed In Trust, Mark R. Siegel

Akron Tax Journal

The taxpayer’s method of property acquisition is significant in determining the proper income tax or adjusted basis in the property. Distinct adjusted basis rules apply to the transferee of property acquired by purchase, gift, and inheritance. A buyer who purchases property for cash receives an adjusted basis in the property acquired equal to its cost. For property acquired by gift, the general rule is that the donee’s adjusted basis equals the donor’s adjusted basis immediately prior to the transfer. A third income tax basis regime applies to the taxpayer who happens to acquire property by inheritance upon the death of …


Penalty Protection Opinions And Advisor Conflicts Of Interest, David T. Moldenhauer Jan 2012

Penalty Protection Opinions And Advisor Conflicts Of Interest, David T. Moldenhauer

Akron Tax Journal

This article has five parts. The second part describes the statutory and regulatory standards for taxpayers seeking to rely on tax advice to avoid penalties. The third part describes the cases where a taxpayer has sought to rely on the opinion of a tax advisor with a conflict of interest. Those cases involve three types of situations: (1) tax advisors acting as promoters or brokers of a tax shelter; (2) tax advisors with referral arrangements with tax shelter promoters; and (3) tax advisors that are developers or implementers of a tax strategy. Typically, in the first two types of situations, …


Failing Corporate Tax Transparency And The Immediate Need To Reduce Overburdening Duplicative Tax Reporting Requirements, Ilya A. Lipin Jan 2012

Failing Corporate Tax Transparency And The Immediate Need To Reduce Overburdening Duplicative Tax Reporting Requirements, Ilya A. Lipin

Akron Tax Journal

The benefits to corporate taxpayers from the continuing additions to disclosure requirements have not been obvious. Despite expenditures by corporate taxpayers on compliance, there is evidence that the Service has not been using all of the information it receives from additional disclosure forms.28 Duplicative disclosures of the same or similar tax information that lead to additional costs are of immediate concern to the corporate taxpayer.29 The estimated corporate taxpayers’ compliance tax burden is summarized in Appendix 1. Part II of this article describes in detail key existing reporting requirements such as reportable transaction disclosure statement and Form 8886, disclosure statements …


Achieving Meaningful Civil Tax Penalty Reform And Making It Stick, Jeremiah Coder Jan 2012

Achieving Meaningful Civil Tax Penalty Reform And Making It Stick, Jeremiah Coder

Akron Tax Journal

This essay examines the historical use of penalties within the tax code, reviews a number of reports that led to the last round of significant penalty reform legislation, and considers existing problems of penalty administration. Several proposals are outlined to ensure that if and when Congress acts to simplify and revise the penalty regime, the reforms will have lasting impact. Part II covers the growth of penalties in the tax system from its original simple form through its significant expansion to the time that the IRS and Congress worked to cut back the complexity of the civil tax penalty regime …


Capital Gains Jabberwocky: Capital Gain, Intangible Property, And Tax, Stephen T. Black Jan 2012

Capital Gains Jabberwocky: Capital Gain, Intangible Property, And Tax, Stephen T. Black

Hofstra Law Review

In the current US tax system, capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income. What does that mean for the sale of IP and intangible assets? Is it possible to convert ordinary income to capital gain by changing the form of the transaction?

This article will address anomalies in the tax characterization of intangible assets. Four cases will be presented, each of which, arguably, could consistently produce capital gains. As will be shown, however, the treatment of these cases (and others) is anything but consistent. At the conclusion of the four cases, it should be clear that …


Retirees Beware: Don't Worry About The British, 'Taxmageddon' Is Coming, Douglas A. Kahn, Lawrence W. Waggoner Jan 2012

Retirees Beware: Don't Worry About The British, 'Taxmageddon' Is Coming, Douglas A. Kahn, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

"Taxmageddon" is coming. Unless Congress extends the current rates or reaches an agreement on tax reform, dividends will then be taxed as ordinary income at a marginal rate as high as 39.6 % and net capital gains will then be taxed at 20%. For high-income taxpayers, a 3.8% Medicare surtax will be added to the taxation of net capital gains, dividend income, interest, and other investment income, bringing the highest marginal rate to 43.4%.


Transfer Pricing Disputes In The United States, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2012

Transfer Pricing Disputes In The United States, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Book Chapters

In 1988, the US Treasury Department published a study of inter-company pricing (the 'White Paper') that included the following endorsement of the so-called arm's length standard (ALS) for examining the reasonableness of transactions between related parties for tax purposes: The arm's length standard is embodied in all U.S. tax treaties; it is in each major model treaty, including the U.S. Model Convention; it is incorporated into most tax treaties to which the United States is not a party; it has been explicitly adopted by international organizations that have addressed themselves to transfer pricing issues; and virtually every major industrial nation …


An Empirical Study Of Innocent Spouse Relief: Do Courts Implement Congress's Legislative Intent, Stephanie Mcmahon Jan 2012

An Empirical Study Of Innocent Spouse Relief: Do Courts Implement Congress's Legislative Intent, Stephanie Mcmahon

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Under existing law spouses are jointly and severally liable for their joint tax returns. As a result, the IRS may pursue either spouse for any taxes owed on those returns. Concerned that the IRS was seeking taxes from the “wrong” spouse under the joint and several liability regime, Congress expanded relief for “innocent” spouses in 1998. Many critics of this relief complain that, as it is applied, the statute offers too little relief to spouses, generally wives, who sign returns while being deceived or compelled by their mates. However, there has been no empirical study of whether the current relief …


Political Hot Potato: How Closing Loopholes Can Get Policymakers Cooked, Stephanie Mcmahon Jan 2012

Political Hot Potato: How Closing Loopholes Can Get Policymakers Cooked, Stephanie Mcmahon

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Loopholes in the law are weaknesses that allow the law to be circumvented. Once created, they prove hard to eliminate. Acase study of the evolving tax unit used in the federal income tax explores policymakers' response to loopholes. The1913 income tax created an opportunity for wealthy married couples to shift ownership of family income between spouses, then to file separately, and, as a result, to reduce their collective taxes. In 1948, Congress closed this loophole by extending the income-splitting benefit to all married taxpayers filing jointly. Congress acted only after the federal judiciary and Treasury Department pleaded for congressional …


The Effective Tax Rate Of The Largest Us And Eu Multinationals, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Yaron Lahav Jan 2012

The Effective Tax Rate Of The Largest Us And Eu Multinationals, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Yaron Lahav

Articles

The United States has the second highest statutory corporate tax rate in the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) (after Japan).1 This has not always been the case. After the Tax Reform Act of 1986 lowered the U.S. rate from 46% to 34%,2 the United States had one of the lowest statutory corporate tax rates in the OECD.3 In the past twenty-five years, however, the U.S. rate has remained essentially unchanged (it was raised to 35% in 1993),4 while most other OECD countries reduced their statutory rate so that the OECD average statutory corporate tax rate is 25.1%.


The Tax Revenue Capacity Of The U.S. Economy, James R. Hines Jr. Jan 2012

The Tax Revenue Capacity Of The U.S. Economy, James R. Hines Jr.

Book Chapters

The United States imposes smaller tax burdens than do other large high-income countries, its 24.8 percent ratio of tax collections to GDP in 2010 representing the lowest fraction among the G-7. The United States also differs from other G-7 countries in relying relatively little on expenditure-type taxes. It follows that there is significant unused tax capacity in the United States that could be deployed to pay the country’s debts, but that the most promising source of additional tax revenue is expenditure taxation that is widely perceived to have very different distributional features than the income taxes on which the U.S. …


Symposium On International Taxation And Competitiveness: Introduction And Overview, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Nicola Sartori Jan 2012

Symposium On International Taxation And Competitiveness: Introduction And Overview, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Nicola Sartori

Articles

In February, 2012, the Treasury and White House unveiled President Obama's Framework for Business Tax Reform. A major proposal was to abolish the deferral on income earned by foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations ("CFCs").