Law Commons^™

Pink Tax And Other Tropes, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Law reform advocates should be strategic in deploying tax tropes. Through an examination of five common tax phrases—the “nanny tax,” “death tax,” “soda tax,” “Black tax,” and “pink tax”—this Article demonstrates that tax rhetoric is more likely to influence law when used to describe specific economic injustices resulting from actual government duties, as opposed to figurative inequalities. In comparison, slogans describing figurative taxes are less likely to influence law and human behavior, even if they have descriptive force in both popular and academic literature as a short-hand for group-based disparities. This Article catalogues and evaluates what makes for effective tax …

Yesterday's Protester May Be Tomorrow's Saint: Reimagining The Tax System Through The Work Of Dorothy Day, Bridget J. Crawford, W. Edward Afield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article offers a critical exploration of Day's views on the relationship between the tax system and Catholic social theory. Part I of this Article provides a biographical sketch of Dorothy Day and an overview of the Catholic Worker movement. Part II explores Day's views on taxation, pacifism, and social justice. It attempts to reconcile her belief in wealth redistribution with her nonpayment of federal income taxes and her failure to seek tax-exempt status for the Catholic Worker. Part III examines Day's tax resistance in the context of Catholic social teaching, particularly as that thought was developing during Day's lifetime …

Estate Planning For Cannabis Business Owners: An Introduction, Bridget J. Crawford, Jonathan G. Blattmachr

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

As more states legalize cannabis sales, estate planners may increasingly be called upon to advise clients with interests in cannabis-related businesses. This essay seeks to assist estate planners in two ways. First, it aims to raise general awareness of cannabis business owners' unique concerns. Second, the essay provides an overview of some of the fundamental issues about which cannabis business owners are likely to seek estate planning advice: business formation matters, wealth transfers, the ability of trusts to own cannabis-related businesses, and gift, estate, and income tax considerations.

In most states that permit legal cannabis sales, there is limited (or …

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 …

Taxation As A Site Of Memory: Exemptions, Universities, And The Legacy Of Slavery, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Many universities around the United States are attempting to grapple with their institution’s history of direct and indirect involvement with transatlantic slavery. One of the first schools to do so was Brown University, which appointed a special committee in 2003 to study its historic institutional ties to slavery. After three years of investigation and discussion, the Brown committee recommended the creation of a public campus memorial and widespread educational efforts. In 2015, Georgetown University undertook a similar investigation on its campus; the working group ultimately recommended renaming certain university buildings, erecting public memorials, creating an academic center of the study …

Basis And Bargain Sales: Income Tax And Other Concerns, Bridget J. Crawford, Jonathan G. Blattmachr

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this article, the authors explain the income tax consequences of the sale during lifetime and at death of property for less than fair market value. The authors focus in particular on the tax consequences of a bargain sale by a transferor who wishes to confer some financial benefit on a family member, but leave the rest of her estate to charity. Generally speaking, death-time bargain sales may be preferable to similar transactions during lifetime, if the assets have a low basis pre-death, because of the step up in income tax basis under section 1014. The authors also discuss in …

Tax Talk And Reproductive Technology, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The tax system both reacts to and helps create attitudes about the value of certain behaviors and choices. This Article makes three principal claims—one empirical, one normative, and one interpretative. The Article demonstrates through data that a representative sample of fertility clinics in the United States does not make information about the tax consequences of compensated human egg transfers—commonly called egg “donation”—publicly available. In 2015, in a case of first impression, the United States Tax Court decided in Perez v. Commissioner that a compensated egg transferor must report as income any amount she receives for her eggs. Although the Tax …

Ministerial Magic: Tax-Free Housing And Religious Employers, Bridget J. Crawford, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Religious organizations enjoy many of the same benefits that other non-profit organizations do. Churches, temples and mosques, for example, generally are exempt from local real estate taxes. Economically speaking, a tax exemption has the same effect as a subsidy; freedom from tax liability means that the organization can devote its financial resources to other activities. But where an exemption afforded to a religious employee is broader than the equivalent exemption available to a secular employee, a significant Establishment Clause concern is raised. The parsonage exemption of Internal Revenue Code Section 107 presents such an issue: ministers are permitted to exclude …

The Futility Of Walls: How Traveling Corporations Threaten State Sovereignty, Darren Rosenblum

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Inversions--mergers in which one firm merges with another abroad to avoid taxes in its home country--have spread as globalization has reduced many of the transactional costs associated with relocating. As firms acquire the power to choose the laws that govern them, they challenge the sovereignty of nation-states, who find their ability to tax and regulate firms depleted. States and firms compete in a game of cat and mouse to adapt to this new global reality. The subversion of state power by these firms reveals the futility of walls, both literal and regulatory. This Essay describes the phenomenon of these “traveling …

The Critical Tax Project, Feminist Theory, And Rewriting Judicial Opinions, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Introduction to Symposium on Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions.

Magical Thinking And Trusts, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

At a time of monumental economic inequality in the United States, wealthy individuals and their tax-motivated behavior have come under significant scrutiny from all corners. In 2019, the Supreme Court issued its first major ruling in over sixty years on the state income taxation of trusts. In North Carolina Department of Revenue v. Kimberley Rice Kaestner 1992 Family Trust, the Court declined to close what some critics consider to be a major loophole that benefits the trusts that wealthy individuals create for family members. This Article makes two principal claims—one interpretative and the other normative. This Article explains why the …

The Unconstitutional Tampon Tax, Bridget J. Crawford, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Thirty-five states impose a sales tax on menstrual hygiene products, while products like spermicidal condoms and erectile dysfunction medications are tax-free. This sales tax--commonly called the “tampon tax”--represents an expense that girls and women must bear on top of the cost of biologically necessary items that they need in order to attend school, work, and otherwise participate in public life. This article explores the constitutionality of the tampon tax and argues that it is an impermissible form of gender discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause. First, menstrual hygiene products are a unique proxy for female sex, and therefore any disadvantageous …

Tampon Taxes, Discrimination, And Human Rights, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article makes two contributions to the study of taxation. First, it argues that the “tampon tax”--an umbrella term to describe sales, VAT, and similar “luxury” taxes imposed on menstrual hygiene products--illustrates how deeply embedded gender is in legal structures such as the tax system that are thought to be neutral. Second, this Article posits that tax reform is an essential tool in achieving both gender equality and human rights. In recent months, activists around the globe have harnessed the power of the Internet to raise awareness of the tampon tax. In response to pressure from constituents, five states and …

Valuation, Values, Norms: Proposals For Estate And Gift Tax Reform, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In their contributions to this Symposium, Professor Joseph Dodge, Professor Wendy Gerzog, and Professor Kerry Ryan offer concrete proposals for improving the existing estate and gift tax system. Professor Dodge and Professor Gerzog are especially interested in accuracy in valuation, and advance specific proposals with respect to split-interest transfers and family limited partnerships. Professor Dodge makes an additional proposal to improve the generation-skipping transfer tax system, an understudied area of the law. Professor Gerzog's Symposium contribution draws particular attention to the legal fiction on which the estate and gift tax marital deductions rely. She would restrict the availability of the …

Foreword: The Supreme Court's Estate Planning Jurisprudence, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Sophisticated trust and estate counsel must keep up with near-daily developments in the substantive state law of wills, trusts and estates, as well as state and federal laws of wealth transfer taxation. Because of the sheer volume of statutory law and administrative regulations that estate planners must master, it is easy to lose sight of the important role that federal courts play in shaping the field of estate planning. Federal tax cases are routinely heard by the United States Tax Court, the Federal District Courts, the Court of Federal Claims and appellate courts in all circuits. Yet very few tax …

Portability, Marital Wealth Transfers, And The Taxable Unit, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Prior to 2011, the most efficient estate tax planning for married couples required a minimal level of asset equalization. In order to take maximum advantage of all existing wealth transfer tax exemptions and credits, each spouse needed to own, in an estate tax sense, enough assets to be able to fully utilize the estate tax credit or applicable exemption. This changed with the enactment of estate tax portability in the Economic Growth and Economic Recovery and Relief Act of 2011, which became permanent under the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. “Portability” refers to the ability of a surviving spouse …

When Are Damages Tax Free?: The Elusive Meaning Of “Physical Injury”, Ronald H. Jensen

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Part I of this article traces the evolution in the tax treatment of litigation damages from 1918 through the enactment of the 1996 Amendments and reviews the various rationales that have been offered for such treatment. In Part II, I set forth a number of hypothetical cases illustrating some of the issues created by the 1996 Amendments. In Parts III through Part VI, I set forth my analyses of these issues. Finally, In Part VII, I critique the 1996 Amendments and make a proposal that would eliminate much of the uncertainty and inequity that the 1996 Amendments created while satisfying …

The Past, Present, And Future Of Critical Tax Theory: A Conversation, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The publication of Taxing America in 1997 is a key milestone in the development of critical tax theory as an intellectual discipline. By identifying and bringing together lawyers and scholars with an interest in the political and discriminatory aspects of tax law, Professor Karen B. Brown and Professor Mary Louise Fellows created one of the first—if not the first—working group of critical tax theorists. The significance of Taxing America is underappreciated both by self-identified critical tax scholars and by others. A published history of the “Critical Tax Conference” notes its antecedents in conferences held in 1995 and 1997, but makes …

Authentic Reproductive Regulation, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this response to I. Glenn Cohen’s article, Regulating Reproduction, Professor Crawford notes the ways in which Professor Cohen’s questioning of “best interests” logic challenges legal scholars to reexamine received wisdom. She then evaluates Professor Cohen’s critique of “best interests” in the context of income taxation of surrogates. Professor Crawford concludes that Professor Cohen’s “unmasking” project—designed to reveal the authentic reasons for reproductive regulation—enhances the discourse about reproductive law and policy

Stealth Preemption: The Irs's Nonprofit Corporate Governance Initiative, James J. Fishman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Internal Revenue Service, the primary federal regulator of charities, has initiated a corporate governance initiative. The intervention by the Internal Revenue Service into an area traditionally the preserve of state nonprofit corporate law has little relationship to issues of tax compliance. This corporate governance initiative has been accomplished in the face of IRS acknowledgement that it has no statutory authority relating to these issues. Yet, the power of the Service to recognize tax exempt status and the method it has used to ensure it vision of correct corporate governance practices through a series of questions when an organization applies …

Sticky Copyrights: Discriminatory Tax Restraints On The Transfer Of Intellectual Property, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article focuses on the federal estate and gift tax treatment of copyright termination rights. The ability of a creative individual to terminate prior copyright transfers serves to protect against economic exploitation. Once a copyright's value has been established in the marketplace, the author (or the author's heirs) enjoys a "second look" at the gift, sale, license or other transfer of a copyright. But copyright termination rights--intended to enhance the economic well-being of authors and artists--undermine estate planning strategies available to owners of other types of property. There is no policy justification for such discrimination, and so this Article proposes …

Commentary: The Federalization Of Nonprofit Regulation And Its Discontents, James J. Fishman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Internal Revenue Service, at the instigation of the Senate Finance committee-the Service's primary congressional overseer-has commenced a corporate governance initiative by issuing announcements and guidelines, as well as providing educational advice as to how charities' internal affairs should be ordered. The Service also has revised the Form 990 Annual Information Return, a publicly available document, so that it contains mandatory corporate governance questions.2 Nonprofit organizations traditionally have been creatures of state law and overseen by state agencies and regulators.3 What is unique about the corporate governance initiative is the Service's admission that it lacks express statutory authority for this …

Tax Avatars, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Anyone who has spent time in cyberspace understands the concept of an alter ego. In online games, chat rooms and on the internet generally, users select one or more avatars to represent themselves. Avatars function as the end-user’s alter ego. The avatar may be a three-dimensional character in a multiplayer game or a two-dimensional icon on a bulletin board. This article uses the concept of avatars to explain the tax treatment of real-life alter egos: agents under a power of attorney. Specifically, the article discusses (1) how traditional, standard legal instruments can be used to create legal alter egos; (2) …

One Flesh, Two Taxpayers: A New Approach To Marriage And Wealth Transfer Taxation, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article critically examines the estate and gift tax rules currently applicable to martial wealth transfers and proposes a new system in which all transfers between spouses will be subject to taxation. The article begins by tracing the historic development of what the author calls the "one flesh, one taxpayer" approach to wealth transfer taxation. Over a period of more than thirty years, the marital deduction evolved from a tool for achieving geographic uniformity into an institution based on an unreal and idealized story of proper gender roles and the economic significance of marriage. After describing the wealth transfer tax …

Checkpoints On The Conversion Highway: Some Trouble Spots In The Conversion Of Nonprofit Health Care Organizations To For-Profit Status, James J. Fishman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay does not address the truly important policy issues: whether for-profit healthcare should be allowed or encouraged; how the quality of care compares to nonprofits or what criteria should be used to evaluate the quality of care; or what the impact of these conversions is on the communities they serve. It discusses less significant issues: those of process—how can we shape and control this tidal wave of change so that the public will be served and charitable assets preserved to the maximum extent possible? The focus is upon the valuation of these charitable assets; the appropriate process of conversion; …