Law Commons^™

Taxing Combat, Samuel Kan

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

When you are being shot at or dodging landmines you are in a combat zone. Diplomatic niceties aside, these brave warriors are in danger because of the policies of their Government and we must take care of them. Quite frankly, we must act to insure that we do not have a repeat of what happened in Somalia. In Somalia, the families of the soldiers who lost their lives could not receive the benefits that should have gone to them under the Tax Code because the President never declared it a combat zone.

We don’t know exactly where we’re at in …

Crisis-Driven Tax Law: The Case Of Section 382, Albert H. Choi, Quinn Curtis, Andrew T. Hayashi

Articles

At the peak of the 2008 financial crisis, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued Notice 2008–83 (the Notice), administrative guidance that limited Internal Revenue Code (the Code) section 382, an important tax rule designed to discourage tax-motivated acquisitions. Although styled as a mere interpretation of existing law, the Notice has been widely viewed as an improper exercise of the IRS’s authority that undermined its legitimacy. But did the Notice work? There were many extraordinary interventions during the financial crisis that raised questions about eroding the rule of law and the long-term destabilizing effects of bail­outs. In a financial crisis, regulators …

The Enforcement Of Irs Summonses And Section 7609, Madeline Tusa

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Note argues that because the Tenth Circuit decision ignores important policy concerns dealing with the efficiency of the IRS, failing to comply with notice requirements under Section 7609(a) should be analyzed under the totality of the circumstances standard. Part I discusses the history and development of Section 7609(a) and notice requirements for third-party summonses in IRS investigations. Part II outlines the general requirements for the enforcement of an IRS summons and how Section 7609(a) is analyzed in light of those requirements. Part III discusses the current circuit split and the significance of each respective court’s holdings and reasoning. …

How The 1 Percent Pays Taxes; How The 99 Percent Could: The Subchapter T Worker Cooperative Tax Loophole, Michael Haber

Journal of Law and Policy

The ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted Congress the right to tax income “from whatever source derived.” Since its inception, the tax code has become long and complicated, filled with broad taxation rules and innumerable exceptions. Over time, the tax code has been amended with the stated purpose of promoting “fairness, efficiency, and enforceability.” However, the complexity of the tax code has led to abuse of “tax loopholes” by wealthy taxpayers who want to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. While abuse is likely to continue, as legislators remain intent on lowering taxes on …

How The 1 Percent Pays Taxes; How The 99 Percent Could: The Subchapter T Worker Cooperative Tax Loophole, Michael Haber

Journal of Law and Policy

The ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted Congress the right to tax income “from whatever source derived.” Since its inception, the tax code has become long and complicated, filled with broad taxation rules and innumerable exceptions. Over time, the tax code has been amended with the stated purpose of promoting “fairness, efficiency, and enforceability.” However, the complexity of the tax code has led to abuse of “tax loopholes” by wealthy taxpayers who want to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. While abuse is likely to continue, as legislators remain intent on lowering taxes on …

Eliminating Arbitrary Age Descrimination In 401(K) And Pension Plan Eligibility Requirements: A Simple Fix To Encourage Younger Workers To Save For Retirement, Andrew J. Clopton

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Current federal law allows companies to exclude their youngest workers from participating in 401(k) and other pension plans. Public policy should encourage young workers to contribute to retirement as early as practicable, rather than impose obstacles to saving. Workers who begin saving even a few years earlier improve their retirement security and reduce the likelihood they will be dependent on the government later in life. While “age discrimination” is conventionally thought of as the mistreatment of older workers, this concept applies equally to employees who are differentiated based solely on their young age. Thus, Congress should amend the Internal Revenue …

Understanding The Amt, And Its Unadopted Sibling, The Amxt, James R. Hines Jr., Kyle D. Logue

Articles

Four million Americans with extensive tax preferences are subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). By taxing a broad definition of income, the AMT makes it possible to have a tax system that both encourages certain activities with generous tax preferences and maintains a semblance of distributional equity. The same rationale supports the imposition of an Alternative Maximum Tax (AMxT), which would cap tax liabilities of individuals with very few preference items and thereby afford Congress greater flexibility in designing the income tax. The original 1969 AMT proposal included an AMxT; it is difficult to justify imposing one without the …

The Case For The Retention Of The State Death Tax Credit In The Federal Transfer Tax Scheme: "Just Say No" To A Deduction, John M. Janiga, Louis S. Harrison

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

How Long Can This Go On? The Controversy Over The Application Of The Statute Of Limitations To S Corporations And Their Shareholders, J. Marcus Sommers

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The New Section 1202 Tax-Free Business Sale: Congress Rewards Small Businesses That Survived The Great Recession, Beckett G. Cantley

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

On September 27, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Creating Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 (“SBJA”) that contains a temporary amendment to Internal Revenue Code (“IRC”) § 1202. The amendment permits original shareholders of eligible corporation stock to sell the stock without being taxed on the sale. The temporary amendment initially only applied to certain stock acquired after the enactment of the SBJA and before January 1, 2011, but the amendment was extended on December 17, 2010 for another year ending January 1, 2012. With the impending sunset of the 15% capital gains rate at the end of 2012, …

The Proper Tax Treatment Of The Transfer Of A Compensatory Partnership Interest, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

If a person receives property as payment for services, whether for past or future services, the receipt typically constitutes gross income to the recipient. If a person performs services for a partnership or agrees to perform future services, and if the person receives a partnership interest as compensation for the past or future services, one might expect that receipt to cause the new partner to recognize gross income in an amount equal to the fair market value of the partnership interest. After all, if a corporation compensated someone for services rendered or to be rendered by transferring the corporation's own …

Is The Report Of Lazarus's Death Premature? A Reply To Cameron And Postlewaite, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

Over a year ago, Ms. Faith Cuenin and I wrote an article in this Review (which I hereafter refer to as the "2004 Article") about the tax treatment of guaranteed payments under section 707(c) that are made in kind.' We concluded that a partnership does not recognize gain or loss on the making of a guaranteed payment with appreciated or depreciated property. We also concluded that the partner's basis in the property received will equal its fair market value at the time of payment, and that the payment does not affect the partner's outside basis in his partnership interest except …

Prevention Of Double Deductions Of A Single Loss: Solutions In Search Of A Problem, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn

Articles

In the current tax system, a corporation is treated as a separate taxable entity. This tax system is sometimes referred to as an entity tax or a double tax system. Since a corporation is a separate and distinct entity from its owners, the shareholders, the default rule is that transfers between them are treated as realization events. Without a specific Internal Revenue Code (Code) provision providing otherwise, such transactions will also require the parties to recognize the realized gain or loss. Congress has enacted several nonrecognition corporate provisions when forcing the recognition of income could prevent changes to the form …

Guaranteed Payments Made In Kind By A Partnership, Douglas A. Kahn, Faith Cuenin

Articles

If a partnership makes a payment to a partner for services rendered in the latter's capacity as a partner or for the use of capital, to the extent that the payment is determined without regard to partnership income, it is characterized by the Internal Revenue Code as a "guaranteed payment" and is treated differently from other partnership distributions.' In addition, if a partnership makes a payment in liquidation of a retiring or deceased partner's interest in the partnership, part of that payment may be characterized as a guaranteed payment by section 736(a)(2). We will discuss in Part VI of this …

Gifts, Gafts And Gefts: The Income Tax Definition And Treatment Of Private And Charitable 'Gifts' And A Principled Policy Justification For The Exclusion Of Gifts From Income, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn

Articles

Gifts have been given special treatment by the income tax laws since the first post-16th Amendment tax statute was adopted in 1913. The determination of how the income tax law should treat gifts raises a number of issues. For example: should gifts be given special treatment? If so, what should qualify as a gift? Should gifts to a private party be taxable to the donee? Should gifts to a private party be deductible by the donor? Should the donee's basis in a gift of property be determined by reference to the basis that the donor had, and should any modifications …

The Constitutionality Of Taxing Compensatory Damages For Mental Distress When There Was No Accompanying Physical Injury, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

Since 1919, statutory tax law has excluded from gross income compensatory damages received on account of a personal injury or sickness.1 The current version of that exclusion is set forth in section 104 (a) (2) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.2 The construction of that exclusion, both by the courts and by the Commissioner, underwent significant alterations over the 80-year period that the provision has existed.3 The statute itself was amended several times, most recently in 1996.4 It is the 1996 amendment that has raised a constitutional issue concerning the validity of a portion of the statute.5

Taxation Of Damages After Schleier - Where Are We And Where Do We Go From Here?, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

This article will examine the reasoning of the Schleier decision and speculate as to how taxation of pre-1996 damages will likely apply in light of Schleier. First, the article will set forth a very brief history of the judicial and administrative constructions of the statutory exclusion, and explore tax policy justifications for providing an exclusion from gross income for certain damages. These latter two items (set forth in Parts II and III of this article) are areas that have been extensively addressed previously by several commentators, including the author of this article.' The reason for exploring tax policy issues is …

Section 338 And Its Foolish Consistency Rules - The Hobgoblin Of Little Minds, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

The purposes of this Article are to examine whether there is any longer a reason for concern because a target corporation can choose selected assets for nonrecognition and to what extent the 1994 regulations properly deal with potentially abusive circumventions of tax goals. Before examining the current status of the consistency requirements, the historical background that led to the adoption of Section 338 and the operation of the section is discussed. The historical background includes: the judicially created Kimbell-Diamond rule, the codification and modification of that rule by the old version of Section 334(b)(2), the operation of the old version …

Compensatory And Punitive Damages For A Personal Injury: To Tax Or Not To Tax, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

Since the adoption in 1919 of the Revenue Act of 1918, damages received on account of personal injuries or sickness have been excluded by statute from gross income.1 This exclusion, which does not apply to reimbursements for medical expenses for which the taxpayer was previously allowed a tax deduction,2 is presently set forth in section 104(a)(2). One might expect that a provision having recently attained the ripe age of 75 years without change in its basic language would have a settled meaning. However, recent litigation under section 104(a)(2) bristles with unsettled issues. Does the exclusion apply to punitive damages? To …

Tax Policy And Panda Bears, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Articles

In this article. Professors Kahn and Lehman argue that the concept of tax expenditure is flawed as a tool for measuring the propriety of tax provisions. It assumes the existence of on true and correct standard of federal income taxation that applies to all circumstances. To make that a assumption, the proponents of the concept implicitly make a particular moral claim about the relative importance of a wide range of values, including efficiency, consumption/savings neutrality, privacy, distributional equity, administrabiliy, charity, and pragmatism. They then measure a tax provision's "normalcy" exclusively by how it conforms to their Platonic concept of income. …

Tax Expenditure Budgets: A Critical View, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Articles

During the past few months, Tax Notes has featured an extended discussion about the "normalcy" (or lack thereof) of accelerated depreciation. Two contributions to that discussion came from Professor Calvin Johnson of the University of Texas Law School, who disagreed with certain aspects of an article that Professor Kahn wrote in 1979. And the debate shows no sign of slowing down. The interchange over the details of accelerated depreciation offers a useful backdrop against which to consider a more general issue: the intellectual coherence of the tax expenditure budgets. The larger concept of tax expenditures was what motivated Kahn to …

Should General Utilities Be Reinstated To Provide Partial Integration Of Corporate And Personal Income—Is Half A Loaf Better Than None?, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

The General Utilities doctrine is the name given to the now largely defunct tax rule that a corporation does not recognize a gain or a loss on making a liquidating or nonliquidating distribution of an appreciated or depreciated asset to its shareholders. The roots of the doctrine, can be traced to a regulation promulgated in 1919 that denied realization of gain or loss to a corporation when making a liquidating distribution of an asset in kind. No regulatory provision existed which specified the extent to which realization would or would not be triggered by a nonliquidating distribution such as a …

Wilderness And Natural Area Preservation In The United States: A Survey Of National Laws, George W. Pring, Stephen Miller

Proceedings of the Sino-American Conference on Environmental Law (August 16)

32 pages.

Contains 5 pages of endnotes.

Does Charity Begin At Home? The Tax Status Of A Payment To An Individual As A Charitable Deduction, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

In White v. United States, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed a district court decision and held that the taxpayers could deduct expenses they paid directly to their dependent son to support his missionary activities away from home. In Brinley v. Commissioner, the Tax Court sitting in Texas refused to follow the Tenth Circuit in White, and held that while the missionary son was entitled to deduct his personal expenses, the parents could not deduct their payment of the son's expenses.

This Note supports the result in Brinley and argues that the …

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 …

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 …

Tax Treatment Of Prepublication Expenses Of Authors And Publishers, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note analyzes the tax treatment of prepublication costs. Part I presents the analytic framework of the business expense/ capital expenditure distinction and searches for practical, income- reflecting criteria that achieve theoretically correct results. Part II covers the historic treatment of prepublication expenditures, concluding that neither the courts nor the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have been consistent in their approach and that both have largely ignored the income-reflecting goals outlined in Part I. Part III applies the income-reflecting approach in order to develop a principled method of examining the tax consequences of various prepublication expenses.

Tax Treatment Of Previously Expensed Assets In Corporate Liquidations, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that although the Tennessee-Carolina majority adopts overbroad language and ignores established tax principles, a more careful refinement of its theory will yield the same proper result, without, in most situations, departing from accepted principles. The proper inquiry must focus first on whether the corporation has received any benefit, and then on whether that gain should be exempted by the nonrecognition provisions of section 336, or on any other basis. Part I of this Note examines these questions from a theoretical perspective, and concludes that expensed assets remaining at the time of liquidation give rise to corporate income, …

Dial V. Navajo-Hopi Relocation Commission: Relocation Benefits

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …