Law and Economics Commons^™

Public Health And Racial Inequality: Why The Opportunity Zone Program Fails Low-Income Communities And Costs Lives, Katie Raitz

UC Irvine Law Review

“The rich man’s dog gets more in the way of vaccination, medicine and medical care than do the workers upon whom the rich man’s wealth is built."

Poor health outcomes are linked to long-standing wealth disparities for people of color in the United States. Wealth inequality has gotten worse over the past decades, despite attempts to improve it. The 2017 Opportunity Zone (OZ) tax program is the federal government’s most recent economic-development intervention. The OZ program provides for low-income census tracts in each state to be designated as “Opportunity Zones” and offers tax benefits for people who make investments in …

Trust Planning And The Washington State Capital Gains Tax, Jadrian M. Coppieters

Seattle University Law Review SUpra

On April 25, 2021, the Washington state legislature enacted a new state capital gains tax. Prior to the enactment of the new state capital gains tax, Washington had been one of the few states that did not impose a tax on either income or capital gains. The limitations imposed by the Washington state constitution have forced the legislature to characterize the tax as an excise tax, rather than treat it as an income tax as would the federal government and every other state. Based on the statute’s structure and its presentation as an excise tax, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the …

The New International Tax Regime, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

On October 8, 2021, over 130 countries committed themselves to the most far-reaching changes in the international tax regime since its inception in 1923. Slated to begin on the anniversary year of 2023, this new regime (ITR 2.0) adopts significant changes from the old one (ITR 1.0). Specifically, ITR 2.0 eliminates the physical presence requirement and the arm’s length standard for a significant portion of the profits of large multinationals that have been essential elements of ITR 1.0 since the 1930s, in a way that is more consistent with ITR 1.0’s Benefits Principle (BP). ITR 2.0 also explicitly implements the …

Fiscal Decolonization-Indigenous Fiscal Autonomy And Tax Jurisdiction, Riad Kherallah

LLM Theses

This thesis focuses on the relationship between Indigenous fiscal autonomy and self-determination. Indigenous nations’ ability to achieve self-determination is dependent upon their ability to autonomously finance self-government. Unfortunately, Canada’s colonial policies have weakened Indigenous economies and rendered them dependent upon the Crown. Due to Indigenous nations’ lack of fiscal autonomy, Crown policies designed to promote Indigenous self-government have proven inadequate. This thesis argues for using the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a blueprint for developing more equitable economic relations. While there are various elements to Crown-Indigenous economic relations, this thesis focuses on the distribution of …

International Tax Law- Status Quo, Trends And Perspectives, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

This chapter will argue that developments in the past decade have significantly bolstered the International Tax Regime, so that it does a much better job in protecting PIT and CIT from erosion due to cross-border tax evasion and avoidance than it did before 2010. Specifically, the adoption of FATCA and the consequent development of Automatic Exchange of Information (AEI) and the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) have significantly protected PIT, while the OECD BEPS project has significantly improved CIT, especially if the current BEPS 2.0 effort is successfully concluded.

The International Tax Regime At 100: Reflections On The Oecd's Beps Project, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

This essay will consider the outcome of Pillars One and Two in light of the history of international taxation since the foundation of the international tax regime in 1923. Specifically, it will consider how Pillar One fits with efforts to redefine the source of active income in light of the digital revolution, and the ways in which Pillar Two implements the single tax principle, which can be traced back to the first model treaty from 1927. Both of those ideas were already articulated and developed in my own early writing on international taxation from the 1990s, when the Internet was …

Business Interruption Insurance In The Time Of Covid-19: Who Should Foot The Bill?, Paul Mchugh

Journal of Law and Policy

COVID-19-related business closures led to thousands of business interruption insurance claims and lawsuits across the country. However, throughout the history of business interruption policies, obstacles such as virus exclusions and “physical damage” requirements have been added in response to prior pandemics and catastrophic losses. These exclusions and requirements have led to many hurdles and outright denials for those seeking payment on their policies. So, then, can business owners still find some economic refuge in these policies? Despite outright denials in many courts, at least a handful of federal judges as well as a number of members of Congress seem to …

No Teacher Left Behind: Reforming The Educators Expense Deduction, Mary Morris

Indiana Law Journal

American educators are notoriously overworked and underpaid. With high performance demands and near-stagnant pay, teachers tend to burn out quickly, which in turn negatively affects the quality of education that their students receive. This effect is most evident in Title I schools, public schools with low funding allocation and high concentrations of low-income students.

One of the benefits that teachers do receive is the Educators Expense Deduction, a federal income tax deduction permitting teachers to write off up to $250 of unreimbursed supplies purchased for the classroom. This deduction was codified in 2002 and has not been amended since, in …

Taxing Option Luck, Jeesoo Nam

UC Irvine Law Review

As economic inequality reaches new heights every decade, academics stress the importance of the tax system in matters of equity. In contemporary winner-take-all markets, much of the massive income and wealth accumulated by the rich are the result of deliberate and calculated economic gambles that turned out in their favor. Yet theories of distributive justice such as Ronald Dworkin’s brute luck egalitarianism have committed themselves to the position that even if these market outcomes are the results of luck, the unequal outcomes are justified insofar as investors chose to take such risks.

This Article argues, in contrast to the aforementioned …

Tax Benefits, Higher Education And Race: A Gift Tax Proposal For Direct Tuition Payments, Bridget J. Crawford, Wendy C. Gerzog

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article combines three topics--taxes, higher education, and race--to evaluate the tax system's role in exacerbating racial inequalities. Part II frames the discussion with a brief overview of the economics of higher education: how much it costs, how much debt the average student incurs to afford it, and how that debt burden varies by race. Part III describes the major income and wealth transfer tax benefits for higher education, including I.R.C. § 2503(e)'s exclusion of direct tuition payments from gift tax. Part IV demonstrates how this gift tax exclusion disproportionately benefits white families already more likely to avail themselves …

Stanley Surrey, The 1981 Us Model, And The Single Tax Principle, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Gianluca Mazzoni

Law & Economics Working Papers

2021 marks the 40th anniversary of the 1981 U.S. Model Tax Treaty as well as the 5th anniversary of the 2016 US Model Tax Treaty. The first author has repeatedly argued that the 1981 Model gave life to the single tax principle (“STP”). The 2016 Model updates effectively implemented the principle that cross-border income should be taxed once – that is not more and but also not less than once. For example, the 2016 Model does not reduce withholding taxes on payments of highly mobile income that are made to related persons that enjoy low or no taxation with respect …

Rebellion, Rascals, And Revenue: Pleasingly Gaudy And Preposterous, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod’s REBELLION, RASCALS AND REVENUE: TAX FOLLIES AND WISDOM THROUGH THE AGES (Princeton University Press, 2021) is a wonderful book, which should be read by any student of taxation. To most tax policy makers and academics, tax history may seem a bit arcane, because they believe that the study of taxation and especially public finance economics is a story of progress and that we know better how to design good tax systems than our ancestors. To this attitude, Keen and Slemrod offer a decisive rejoinder: We do not necessarily understand taxation better than our predecessors, and …

Tax Treaties, The Constitution, And The Noncompulsory Payment Rule, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

US Tax treaties have been regarded as self-executing since the first treaty (with France) was ratified in 1932. Rebecca Kysar has argued this raises a doubt on whether the treaties are constitutional, because tax treaties (like other treaties) are negotiated by the executive branch and ratified by the Senate with no involvement by the House, and all tax-raising measures must originate in the House under the Origination Clause (U.S. Const. Art I, section 7, clause 7). Her preferred solution is to make tax treaties non-self executing, but that would reverse the universal practice since 1932, and is therefore unlikely. Moreover, …

The Us Taxpayer Bill Of Rights: Reflections On A Toddler, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

In the US the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TBOR) is only seven years old, and moreover no successful challenge to the IRS under it has been brought so far. The following first describes the existing case law under the US TBOR. The main conclusion is that the US TBOR is a toddler with uncertain prospects. The article then offers some observations on the application of the TBOR to corporate taxpayers.

Is Gilti Constitutional?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

In this article, Avi-Yonah argues that the global intangible low-taxed income regime may be an unconstitutional attempt to tax the foreign-source income of foreign entities, and he offers an alternative.

Taxing Big Data: A Proposal To Benefit Society For The Use Of Private Information, Ziva Rubinstein

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Artificial intelligence, the technology that is currently shaping our world, relies on the data that each individual supplies. In 2017, the Economist magazine asserted that “the world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data.” This assertion is supported by the current data market, which became a hundred-billion-dollar industry in the data broker market alone. However, despite its immense value, individuals are not compensated when their data is collected, shared, or when that data is used to replace them in the job market. Further, companies are legally avoiding taxes on this resource, both during its collection and on the …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Effective Taxation In Africa: Confronting Systemic Vulnerability Through Inclusive Global Tax Governance, Okanga Ogbu Okanga, Lyla Latif

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Implicit within the African fiscal architecture are embedded vulnerabilities to exogenous factors which challenge their domestic revenue mobilization (DRM) strategies. These DRM challenges are attributable to asymmetrical power relationships that exist within the international tax regime (ITR). The rules governing international taxation have largely been devised by developed countries resonating their own economic purposes, resulting in a regressive relationship that overlooks African perspectives in the creation of tax norms. Consequently, policymaking, and scholarship have focused extensively on curbing these power asymmetries that have resulted in vulnerable African tax systems. Continental and domestic approaches are now aligned towards fostering reform of …

Taxing Capital In The Age Of Intangibles, Eurallyah Akinyi, Dan Ciuriak

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The rise of the intangibles economy has led to a significant erosion of corporate tax revenue in the innovation-intensive advanced economies, even as the share of national income flowing to capital rose. For developing countries, the erosion is worse and comes on top of substantial erosion of corporate tax revenues from the tangibles economy due to weak tax administration and corruption. In this paper, we take up the questions of how big is the taxing problem that the intangibles economy has raised, and whose problem is it. Further, we consider how well the proposed OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework measures up in …

Reversing The Fortunes Of Active Funds, Adi Libson, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

In 2019, for the first time in the history of U.S. capital markets, passive funds surpassed active funds in terms of total assets under management. The continuous growth of passive funds at the expense of active funds is a genuine cause for concern. Active funds monitor the management and partake of decision-making in their portfolio companies. Furthermore, they improve price efficiency and managerial performance by engaging in informed trading. The buy/sell decisions of active funds provide other market participants reliable information about the quality of firms. The cost of active investing is significant and it is exclusively borne by active …

The Carbon Price Equivalent: A Metric For Comparing Climate Change Mitigation Efforts Across Jurisdictions, Gabriel Weil

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Climate change presents a global commons problem: Emissions reductions on the scale needed to meet global targets do not pass a domestic cost-benefit test in most countries. To give national governments ample incentive to pursue deep decarbonization, mutual interstate coercion will be necessary. Many proposed tools of coercive climate diplomacy would require a onedimensional metric for comparing the stringency of climate change mitigation policy packages across jurisdictions. This article proposes and defends such a metric: the carbon price equivalent. There is substantial variation in the set of climate change mitigation policy instruments implemented by different countries. Nonetheless, the consequences of …

The Impact Of Particular Provisions Of The 2017 Tax Cuts And Jobs Act On The United States Economy Amidst The Covid-19 Pandemic, Hillary Obinna Maduka

LL.M. Essays & Theses

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is the most significant overhaul of the U.S. federal tax system in the last two decades. This paper seeks to discuss some of its most significant provisions and examine their overall impact on the U.S. economy, especially throughout the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

This paper begins by undertaking an overview of the legislative history of the Act and then proceeds to discuss three provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts which have had a tremendous impact on the U.S. economy by altering some major provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code of 1986. …