Taxation-Federal Commons^™

Resolving Unfairness In A Fair Way: How The Grantor Trust Rules Should Be Reformed, Aaron T. Anderson

BYU Law Review

Affluent taxpayers often create one or more grantor trusts to achieve significant tax savings. By leveraging mismatches in the rules between the income and estate tax systems, these taxpayers avoid the compressed income tax brackets of trusts while minimizing the property that is included in their estates for estate tax purposes. Some commentators have argued that reform is needed to remove such mismatches. Yet, trusts that rely on the current grantor trust rules abound.

This Note (1) provides a background and history of the rules and use of grantor trusts, (2) argues that harmonizing the estate and income tax systems …

Wealth Transfer Tax Planning After The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act, John A. Miller, Jeffrey A. Maine

BYU Law Review

On December 17, 2017, Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Among its many impacts, the TCJA increased the inflation-adjusted estate tax basic exclusion amount to $10,000,000 on a temporary basis. This has dramatic implications for many existing and future estate plans, including a major crossover impact on income tax planning. In this Article, we explain the operation of the federal wealth transfer taxes (the estate tax, the gift tax, and the generation skipping transfer tax) in the wake of the TCJA and dissect the basic tax planning techniques for wealth transmission. The overall design of this Article …

Taxing Parents: Welfarist Theories, Shannon Weeks Mccormack

BYU Law Review

The Internal Revenue Code (the "Code") taxes parents inequitably. Couples with a sole earner are undertaxed compared to couples with dual earners and to single parents. Legal tax scholarship (including my own) has identified the many inequities that result from this sole-earner bias and have called for its elimination. But while these arguments have been sufficient for some, they do remain susceptible to the criticism that they are theoretically incomplete.

That critique might proceed as follows. Simply establishing that an inequity exists does not create a full argument for legal reform. After all, it might be argued, the Code plays …

Information Matters In Tax Enforcement, Leandra Lederman, Joseph C. Dugan

BYU Law Review

Most scholars recognize both that the government needs information about taxpayers’ transactions to determine whether their reporting is honest, and that third third-party reporting helps the government obtain that information. Given governments’ reliance on tax collections, it would be risky to think that information or third third-party reporting is not needed by tax agencies. However, a recent article by Professor Wei Cui asserts that “modern governments can practice ‘taxation without information.’” Professor Cui’s argument rests on two claims: (1) “giving governments effective access to taxpayer information through third parties does not explain the success of modern tax administration” because, he …

Mormon Profit: Brigham Young, Tithing, And The Bureau Of Internal Revenue, Samuel D. Brunson

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Per Se Economic Substance, Jesse P. Houchens

BYU Law Review

The economic substance doctrine is used by the IRS and courts to distinguish legal tax avoidance from tax evasion. More specifically, executive and judicial bodies use this doctrine to revoke statutorily compliant tax benefits that arise from transactions that lack, beyond such tax benefits, both a subjective business purpose and an objective economic effect. The most common tool for measuring the objective economic effect of a transaction is the pre-tax profit test. However, disagreement among courts and scholars applying this test has led to taxpayer uncertainty and accusations of reverse-engineered opinions. In this Comment, I reevaluate and propose an alternative, …

R&D Tax Incentives--Growth Panacea Or Budget Trojan Horse?, Stephen E. Shay, J. Clifton Fleming Jr., Robert J. Peroni

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

We Believe In Being Honest: Dependency Exemptions For Lds Missionaries, Annalee Hickman Moser

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Finishing The Job On Section 356(A)(2): Closing Loopholes And Providing Consistent Treatment To Boot In Tax-Free Reorganizations, Trevor Crowley

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

G8 Principles: Identifying The Anonymous, Max Biedermann

Brigham Young University International Law & Management Review

No abstract provided.

Unfair And Unintended: The Tax-Exempt Organization Blocker Loophole, Andrew M. Dougherty

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Wealth Transfer Tax Planning For 2013 And Beyond, John A. Miller, Jeffrey A. Maine

BYU Law Review

On January 1, 2013, Congress avoided the tax part of the so-called “fiscal cliff” when it passed the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA). Among its many impacts, ATRA prevented the application of a number of sunset provisions that would have dramatically altered the operation of the federal wealth transfer taxes. Instead, Congress made permanent two significant transfer tax provisions introduced as temporary measures in 2010: the $5,000,000 indexed basic exclusion amount and the deceased spousal unused exclusion amount. The latter provisions are sometimes referred to as the portability rules because, in effect, they allow one spouse’s estate tax …

The Taxman On Campus: How Aggressive Irs Initiatives Are Increasing Audit And Compliance Risk For Colleges And Universities, William A. Bailey

Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Surrogate Taxation And The Second-Best Answer To The In-Kind Benefit Valuation Riddle, Jay A. Soled

BYU Law Review

For well over a century, theorists have debated how the receipt of inkind benefits, such as meals and lodging furnished for the convenience of an employer and business entertainment opportunities, should be taxed. While debate participants have generally agreed that the receipt of such in-kind benefits constitutes income, the question has remained about whether to value such benefits at fair market value or at the recipient’s subjective value or to use some other metric. Because of administrative considerations in determining the tax base, the Internal Revenue Code (Code) historically used a binary approach: either include the in-kind benefit at its …

The Ubs Case: The U.S. Attack On Swiss Banking Sovereignty, Beckett G. Cantley

Brigham Young University International Law & Management Review

No abstract provided.

Can Tax Expenditure Analysis Be Divorced From A Normative Tax Base?: A Critique Of The 'New Paradigm' And Its Denouement, J. Clifton Fleming Jr., Robert J. Peroni

Faculty Scholarship

Tax expenditure analysis (TEA) requires a baseline for identifying tax provisions that provide subsidies or incentives instead of serving to define the tax base and to implement the tax. With respect to the federal income tax, the baseline historically has been the Schanz-Haig-Simons (SHS) definition of income with a few modifications. Critics have continuously and strongly attacked TEA by characterizing the SHS baseline as unprincipled, imprecise, and insufficiently related to our hybrid income/consumption tax system as it actually exists. Since the baseline is hopelessly defective, so the critics argue, TEA is fatally dysfunctional and the results of its application to …

Restructuring The Tax Treatment For Home Equity Draws: Implementing Consumption Tax Fundamentals To Preserve Home Equity, Allen Holzer

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Recognizing The Larger Sacrifice: Easing The Burdens Borne By Living Organ Donors Through Federal Tax Deductions, M. Lane Molen

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Replacing The Federal Income Tax With A Postpaid Consumption Tax: Preliminary Thoughts Regarding A Government Matching Program For Wealthy Investors And A New Tax Policy Lens, J. Clifton Fleming Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, proposals have been made to replace the federal income tax with a postpaid consumption tax - that is, a federal value added tax ("VAT"), a federal retail sales tax ("RST"), or a federal cash-flow (consumed income) tax. Because these taxes can be constructed so that they are indistinguishable at the level of the ultimate consumer in terms of their principal effects, and because a prominent recent proposal is the RST approach, I have written this article in terms of an RST/income tax comparison. The analysis, however, would be mostly the same if the income tax was compared …

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

Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Tax Protestors And Penalties: Ensuring Perceived Fairness And Mitigating Systemic Costs, Danshera Cords

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Substantially Deferring To Revenue Rulings After Mead, Ryan C. Morris

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Good Old Habit, Or Just An Old One? Preferential Tax Treatment For Reorganizations, Yariv Brauner

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Wells Fargo & Co. And Subsidiaries V. Commissioner: Rethinking The Deductibility Of Certain Pre-Merger Expenditures, Jeffery R. Atkin

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Taxation Of An Attorney's Contingency Fee Of A Punitive Damages Recovery: The Srivastava Approach, Benjamin C. Rasmussen

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Deferral: Consider Ending It Instead Of Expanding It, J. Clifton Fleming Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Preslar V. Commissioner: Debt-Discharge Income And Its Rationale, Chad J. Pomeroy

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Getting Serious About Curtailing Deferral Of Us Tax On Foreign Source Income, Robert J. Peroni, J. Clifton Fleming Jr., Stephen E. Shay

Faculty Scholarship

When a U.S. person conducts business or investment activity abroad through a foreign corporation in a country that imposes only low rates of tax, the so-called deferral privilege allows the U.S. taxpayer to defer substantial amounts of U.S. tax at the cost of only a small foreign levy. Hence, the deferral privilege operates as a tax subsidy of sorts for U.S. persons with operations in low tax foreign countries and provides a major incentive for U.S. persons to shift their business operations and investments to foreign countries that impose little or no tax on the earnings of the foreign corporations.To …

U.S. Taxation Of Profits From Internet Software Sales - An Electronic Commerce Case Study, J. Clifton Fleming Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Deceptively Disparate Treatment Of Business And Investment Interest Expense Under A Cash-Flow Consumption Tax And A Schanz-Haig-Simons Income Tax, J. Clifton Fleming, Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.