Taxation-Federal Commons^™

Commentary: Does The United States Need An Alternative Tax Base?, James W. Childs

Akron Tax Journal

This article looks at the alternative tax systems of France, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia and compares that to the system in the United States. It uses this comparison to discuss whether an alternative tax base is necessary in the United States.

Internal Revenue Code Section 7701(B): A More Certain Definition Of Resident, Rolf E. Kroll

Penn State International Law Review

The purpose of this Note is four-fold. First, it seeks to articulate the central concepts underlying taxation of nonresidents and residents. In so doing, the discussion endeavors to show the importance of section 7701(b) of the Internal Revenue Code. Second, it attempts to cancas the case law and pertinent regulations and rulings and highlight the ambiguities therein. Third, the discussion will address the essential features of section 7701(b) and illustrate Congress' new approach to the problem of determining resident status for aliens. Finally, the policy implications of 7701(b) are examined and suggestions for further improvement are made.

The Supreme Court's Misconstruction Of A Procedural Statute-A Critique Of The Court's Decision In Badaracco, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

When a taxpayer files an honest' federal income tax return for a taxable year, section 6501(a) of the Internal Revenue Code2 limits the period of time during which the Government can assess a tax for that year to a three-year period commencing with the date that the return was filed. The three-year limitations period is extended for an additional three years by section 6501(e)(1)(A) if the taxpayer's return omits properly includible gross income in an amount in excess of twenty-five percent of the gross income that was reported. If a taxpayer fails to file a return for a taxable year …

Disparate Tax Treatment Of Different Types Of Business Organizations: Where Should We Go From Here?, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

If several persons wish to join together in a common enterprise in order to pool their capital or labor or some of each, they may choose among a variety of available organizational structures that will serve that purpose. The most common entity forms are partnerships (including joint ventures), corporations, and trusts. While, in its typical structure, each of those entity forms has its own distinct characteristics, the structure of such organizations often is modified by agreement so as to adopt attributes of another type of entity. Because of this, the substantive distinction between entity types is blurred.

United States Taxation Of Its Citizens Abroad: Incentive Or Equity, Renee J. Sobel

Vanderbilt Law Review

The United States, unlike many sovereignties, has exercised worldwide income tax jurisdiction over its individual citizens since the inception of the income tax. Since 1926, however, United States citizens working abroad have received special treatment in the taxation of their foreign earned income. By the use of a tax credit, direct double taxation has been avoided. In addition, various exclusions and deductions have been permitted. Such tax preferences have been justified on the grounds that they promote tax equity and that they serve as incentives to encourage Americans to work overseas.

This Article considers whether the special treatment of United …

Dissenting Opinions By Supreme Court Justices In Federal Income Tax Controversies, Walter J. Blum

Michigan Law Review

What is to be learned from this review of the various analyses offered in dissenting tax opinions over the past five terms of the Supreme Court? When the Court has decisively interpreted narrow or technical language in the statute, dissenters all too often indulge in lengthy analyses that can only serve to create further confusion. Only when the Court focuses on a judicially made rule or an issue with constitutional implications is a broader dissent appropriate. If dissenters generally adhered to the guidelines set forth at the outset of this Article the tax world would, I believe, be at least …

The Supreme Court's Misconstruction Of A Procedural Statute--A Critique Of The Court's Decision In Badaracco, Douglas A. Kahn

Michigan Law Review

Before addressing the lessons to be derived from Badaracco, it is necessary to make good on the author's claim that it can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of a reasonably skeptical reader that the Court's decision was patently wrong and resulted from a poor technique of statutory construction. This is a heavy burden, especially since the decision was reached by an overwhelming majority of the Court and since two courts of appeals and at least one student law review note reached the same result. The reader must judge whether the author succeeds in satisfying it. This Article will first …

Death Of A Partner: Pre And Post-Mortem Planning, Jerome Hesch

Akron Tax Journal

There are several alternative techniques which can be employed to alleviate the income tax problems associated with the death of a partner. The sophisticated tax advisor will understand, however, that some of the suggested techniques may not be practical for all situations. The purpose of this article is to describe these planning techniques and to guide the tax advisor as to which technique is appropriate for his client.

The Deep Structure Of Capital Gains, William D. Popkin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The capital gains preference has been viewed as a means by which taxpayers are spared being taxed fully in a single year for income earned over a number of previous years. This Article argues that the tax preference for capital gains was intended to provide economic incentives by encouraging transferability, risk, and investment, not to achieve equity by a crude form of income averaging. This Article critically evaluates judicial doctrine in light of these economic policies and concludes that courts have not effectively bridged the gap between policy and the statutory language and structure. The author explains how the tax …

Fairness In Rate Cuts In The Individual Income Tax, Alan L. Feld

Faculty Scholarship

The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (the 1981 Act) made significant changes in federal income, estate, and gift taxation, touching virtually every taxpayer.¹ The centerpiece of the 1981 Act consisted of rate reductions in the individual income tax.² These reductions, said to average 23%, served a number of different but related objectives. First, those in favor of the tax cuts posited that all taxpayers would benefit from equitable, across-the-board reductions in an excessive and growing tax burden.³ Related to this objective was an anticipated reduction in the size of the federal government, because less tax money …

International Tax Evasion And Tax Fraud: Typical Schemes And The Legal Issues Raised By Their Detection And Prosecution, Hugh Spall

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Home Office Deductions: May A Taxpayer Have More Than One Principal Place Of Business?, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that the Tax Court's more liberal interpretation is correct because it more nearly reflects Congress's intent. Part I seeks a basis for preferring one of the competing interpretations in the text of section 280A and in the section's legislative history, but finds none. Looking, of necessity, to the purposes that Congress sought to advance with section 280A, Part II argues that those purposes do not demand a restrictive reading of "principal place of business." Such a reading, moreover, would undermine fundamental and longstanding congressional tax policies. In the absence of a more explicit statement of congressional intent, …

The Decline And Fall Of Taxable Income, Glenn E. Coven

Michigan Law Review

After first exploring the intellectual climate that has facilitated the congressional disregard of taxable income, this Article will examine three areas in which taxable income is no longer the exclusive mechanism for allocating the burden of taxation. That examination will outline the undesirable consequences of the decline of taxable income, and demonstrate that Congress need not have disregarded taxable income to secure the desired pattern of taxation. Because the use of multiple rate schedules constitutes the most significant deviation from the concept of taxable income in terms of the number of taxpayers that it affects and the popular resentment against …

Accelerated Depreciation Revisited—A Reply To Professor Blum, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

Professor Blum's comment addresses the proper or neutral tax treatment to be accorded three of the items discussed in my recent article on accelerated depreciation - namely, annuities, prepaid expenses, and exhaustible assets. Blum disputes my analysis in all three cases. While Blum's article is eminently readable, I do not believe that it refutes my earlier work to any extent. In this reply to Professor Blum, I will deal separately with each of the three items he examines. First, however, it is useful to consider the meaning of the term "tax neutrality" and to set forth my views as to …

Artists, Art Collectors And Income Tax, Alan L. Feld

Faculty Scholarship

The federal income tax law treats artists and art collectors differently. Similar transactions concerning artworks produce disparate income tax results, depending on whether they involve the artist or the collector. On balance, these results seem to favor the collector over the artist. But notwithstanding the dismay of some artists and their advocates, the differences in result flow, in the main, from the differences in the source of the taxpayer's investment in the work.

The collector buys the work with after-tax income. Any gain is properly treated as an investment return and is eligible for capital gain benefits.' The collector, however, …

Accelerated Depreciation—Tax Expenditure Or Proper Allowance For Measuring Net Income?, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

Since the 1950s, it has become fashionable to attack various provisions of the Internal Revenue Code by calling them "subsidies" rather than "proper" means of measuring taxable income. These "subsidies" through Code provisions have come to be referred to as "tax expenditures," a term coined by Professor Stanley Surrey in a speech he made as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy on November 15, 1967. In that speech, Professor Surrey stated that our tax system often deliberately departs "from accepted concepts of net income," so that by granting exemptions, deductions, and credits that are not appropriate to an …

Wright V. Commissioner, 62 T.C. 377 (1974), Aff'd, 543 F.2d 593 (7th Cir. 1976), Ruth L. Gokel

Florida State University Law Review

Income Tax- PROPERTY SETTLEMENT IN DIVORCE- AN UNSETTLED AREA OF SETTLED LAW.

Carter's Projected "Zero-Based" Review Of The Internal Revenue Code: Is Our Tax Code To Be "Born Again"?, L. Hart Wright

Michigan Law Review

The evolution of today's Internal Revenue Code, which began with the mere embryo that Congress created in 1913, has absorbed over the ensuing sixty-four years more creative energy on the part of more co-authors than any other law in history. Despite this unstinted expenditure of "blood, sweat, and tears," the resulting document--were it possessed of human senses--would recognize that, for a foreseeable period, its life will be anything but serene. The plight in which it would find itself could even be compared to that early morning scene observed one hundred years ago by General Custer, when hostile forces were massed …

The Judicial Public Policy Doctrine In Tax Litigation, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note evaluates the merits of Revenue Ruling 74-323. First, it asserts that, while not arbitrary, the Service's resolution of the preemption issue was not mandated by the language of amended section 162 or by the relevant legislative history. Second, it maintains that it is both appropriate and procedurally feasible to apply the judicial public policy doctrine to violations of federal civil rights laws that impose no fine, imprisonment, loss of license, or other criminal penalty. The denial of a deduction in this situation would extend the public policy doctrine beyond both section 162(c)(2) and the judicial doctrine as it …

Alternative Gains Tax Treatments Of Decedents' Appreciated Capital Assets, D. Allen Grumbine

Vanderbilt Law Review

The present treatment of appreciated assets under section 1014' of the Code permits a great deal of accrued appreciation to escape the income tax. While decedents pay a greater estate tax because asset appreciation swells their estates, they pay no gains tax at death on this accrued appreciation. Moreover, the recipients of the decedent's property generally take a stepped-up basis for the property equal to its fair market value at the time of death. A great deal of criticism has been leveled at this system, and numerous proposals have been made for remedying the situation: imposition of a capital gains …

Deductibility Of Expenses For Child Care And Household Services: New Section 214, Alan L. Feld

Faculty Scholarship

It is increasingly common to find families composed of husband, wife and young children, where both husband and wife are gainfully employed. For some, this pattern is regarded as preferable to the older "ideal" family, where the husband was the sole breadwinner and the wife cared for the children, performed household chores and perhaps engaged in social or charitable activities. Where both spouses are gainfully employed, it is often necessary for the family to employ household help to care for the children and do the housework. These expenditures are "necessary" to the gainful employment of both spouses in the sense …

Mandatory Buy-Out Agreements For Stock Of Closely Held Corporations, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

A buy-out of a shareholder's stock is a sale of his stock holdings in a specific corporation pursuatnt to a pre-existing contract. In recent years such arrangements have, deservedly, become an increasingly popular planning device for shareholders in closely held corporations; they make it possible to limit the class of potential shareholders, provide liquidity for the estate of a deceased shareholder, and establish a value for stock which has no active market. There are two popular categories of buy-out plans. If the prospective purchaser of a decedent's shares is the corporation that issued them, the plan is called an "entity …

Payments To Widows--Taxable Income?, Thomas L. Jones

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Federal Income Taxes And The Civil Fraud Penalty, Raymond Whiteaker

Vanderbilt Law Review

The drive against tax evaders is now in full swing after a complete reorganization of the Internal Revenue Service, and the new Commissioner has promised an efficient enforcement of all revenue laws. Although the effective administration of the federal income tax rests primarily upon the willingness of the taxpayer voluntarily to disclose his correct income, Congress has provided certain civil and criminal penalties to punish those who have not fulfilled their obligations to the United States Treasury. This article will deal only with the administration and operation of the civil fraud penalty.

The most severe civil penalty that may be …

The 1943 Revenue Bill, Randolph E. Paul

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Intergovernmental Tax Immunity: Do We Need A Constitutional Amendment?, Robert C. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Taxation-Intergovernmental Immunity-Taxation Of The Income Of Federal Employees By A State

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Limitations On Progressive Taxation Of Gross Income, Robert C. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Treatment For Federal Income Tax Purposes Of Errors In The Deduction Of Other Taxes, Robert C. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Time For Taking Deductions For Losses And Bad Debts For Income Tax Purposes, Robert C. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.