Tax Law Commons^™

Cleaning The Muck Of Ages From The Windows Into The Soul Of Income Tax, John Passant

John Passant

The aim of this paper is to provide readers with an insight into Marx’s methods as a first step to understanding income tax more generally but with specific reference to Australia’s income tax system. I do this by introducing readers to the ideas about the totality that is capitalism, appearance and form, and the dialectic in Marx’s hands. This will involve looking at income tax as part of the bigger picture of capitalism, and understanding that all things are related and changes in one produce changes in all. Appearances can be deceptive and we need to delve below the surface …

Through The Lens Of Innovation, Mirit Eyal-Cohen

Mirit Eyal-Cohen

The legal system constantly follows the footsteps of innovation and attempts to discourage its migration overseas. Yet, present legal rules that inform and explain entrepreneurial circumstances lack a core understanding of the concept of innovation. By its nature, law imposes order. It provides rules, remedies, and classifications that direct behavior in a consistent manner. Innovation turns on the contrary. It entails making creative judgments about the unknown. It involves adapting to disarray. It thrives on deviations as opposed to traditional causation. This Article argues that these differences matter. It demonstrates that current laws lock entrepreneurs into inefficient legal routes. Using …

Marriage Penalty: How Stacking Income Affects The Secondary Earner’S Decision To Work, Kevin M. Walsh

Kevin M Walsh

Our progressive tax rate structure is aimed at taxing citizens fairly and based on their ability to pay. The rate structure, however, partially loses its purpose when analyzing the income taxation of married individuals. If a married couple decides to file jointly they are sometimes taxed at higher rates than individuals are depending on the incomes of the couple. This has created what we know today as the “marriage penalty,” and it can serve as a deterrent to the secondary earner from working.

There is no simple solution to address how the marriage penalty, in combination with necessary expenses, affects …

Critical Tax Policy: A Pathway To Reform?, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

The Global Recession of 2008 and ensuing austerity measures have renewed the urgency surrounding the call for fundamental tax reform. Before embarking on fundamental tax reform, this Article proposes adding a critical lens to existing US tax policy to ensure that any proposals for change are informed, transparent, and responsive to the needs (and abilities) of individual taxpayers. This Article makes the case for a specific method of inquiry – Critical Tax Policy – that is built on the articulation of difference rather than false assumptions of sameness. Critical Tax Policy incorporates the insights of a growing international tax equity …

Compromising The Safety Net: How Limiting Tax Deductions For High-Income Donors Could Undermine Charitable Organizations, Patrick Tolan

Patrick E. Tolan Jr.

President Obama’s recent budget proposals have contemplated reducing the top rate for charitable deductions (and all itemized deductions) to twenty-eight percent. Because America’s largest donors are those in the highest marginal tax brackets, efforts to limit deductibility of charitable donations could have a chilling effect on charitable giving.

In this article the author looks at motivations for charitable donations and specifically at the impact of tax deductibility as a motivating factor. It takes a historical look at the philanthropic surveys and econometric models and examines empirical data concerning impacts of significant changes to the tax code in the 1980s that …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Finding The Constitutional Right To Education In San Antonio School District V. Rodriguez, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court abolished the scrutiny regime because it impermissibly interfered with an important fact, liberty. And yet, even in earlier cases which ostensibly upheld the scrutiny regime, it is difficult to see that the Court ever did so to the detriment of facts it considered important. In short, the Court often (always?) found itself raising the level of scrutiny for a fact in the same case it upheld the regime, leaving us to wonder if the scrutiny regime ever actually had any effect at all, or even whether the Court felt it was relevant. As …

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

A Foundation For International Taxation: The Institutional Competence Of Nations, Eric T. Laity

ExpressO

This Article proposes a conceptual foundation for the field of international tax law. The Article refers to this foundation as the institutional competence of nations in global economic development. A nation’s institutional competence is its discretion to make decisions in pursuit of our collective goal of global economic development, discretion that is subject to a number of standards and limitations.

The Article constructs the institutional competence of nations in global economic development from institutional economics, simple game theory, and the literature on social norms. The Article expresses the institutional competence of nations through standards and limitations that reduce the abuse …

The High School Attainment Credit: A Tax Credit Encouraging Students To Graduate From High School, David Richard Hansen

ExpressO

High school dropouts are a serious problem facing America today. High school dropouts are more likely to be unemployed, earn less money when employed, place a larger burden on the government by requiring public assistance (welfare), and are more likely to be prone to a life of crime and violence than high school completers. While government at all levels continues to focus on schools and teachers in solving the dropout problem, this paper shows how parents are where the focus should lie. This paper proposes a revolutionary tax credit, the High School Attainment Credit (“HSAC”), which would cost-effectively eradicate the …

Social Security, Generational Justice, And Long-Term Deficits, Neil H. Buchanan

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

This paper assesses current methods for evaluating the long-term viability and desirability of government activities, especially Social Security and other big-ticket budget items. I reach four conclusions: (1) There are several simple ways to improve the current debate about fiscal policy by adjusting our crude deficit measures, improvements which ought not to be controversial, (2) Separately measuring Social Security’s long-term balance is inappropriate and misleading, (3) The methods available to measure very long-term government financing (Fiscal Gaps and their cousins, Generational Accounts) are of very limited value in setting public policy today, principally because there is no reliable baseline of …

What Is Fiscal Responsibility? Long-Term Deficits, Generational Accounting, And Capital Budgeting, Neil H. Buchanan

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

This article assesses three basic approaches to assessing the future effects of the government’s fiscal policies: traditional measures of the deficit, measures associated with Generational Accounting, and measures derived from applying Capital Budgeting to the federal accounts. I conclude that Capital Budgeting is the best of the three approaches and that Generational Accounting is the least helpful. Acknowledging that there might be some value in learning what we can from a variety of approaches to analyzing fiscal policy, I nevertheless conclude that Generational Accounting is actually a misleading or--at best--empty measure of future fiscal developments. The best approach to providing …