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Full-Text Articles in Law
Silent Tax Changes: The Political Economy Of Indexing For Inflation, Alan L. Feld
Silent Tax Changes: The Political Economy Of Indexing For Inflation, Alan L. Feld
Faculty Scholarship
The federal income tax adjusts many but not all of its dollar components automatically to account for inflation. In this article I analyze the benefits and burdens this process confers on some taxpayers and the political logic behind them. I discuss the choice of the proper index for making the adjustments, as well as the effects of the failure to adjust specific dollar amounts. I conclude that some adjustments have become overly generous, while unadjusted provisions suffer slow repeal, sometimes intentionally. Indexation thus can have the effect of tax legislation by stealth.
Another Word On Child Care, Alan L. Feld
Another Word On Child Care, Alan L. Feld
Faculty Scholarship
Professors Schaffer and Berman have written a stimulating brief in support of a deduction for child care expenses in computing federal taxable income. But, in addition, by the range of considerations which their article takes into account, it illustrates the difficulty in opting for deductibility or nondeductibility on the basis of a rational consideration of income tax policies. The difficulty derives primarily from the fact that child care expenditures partake of both a personal (consumption) element and a business (income earning) element.1 To the extent it represents the latter, it does not represent personal income appropriately subject to tax; …