Law Commons^™

Review Of Double Taxation And The League Of Nations, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Reviews

Should we continue adapting the OECD Model to address tax challenges arising from digitalization of the economy or has the time come for radical reform? Sunita Jogarajan asked that question in her last study of the League of Nations' work on double taxation in the 1920s. The historical analysis provided in her book seems to suggest that the international tax regime will continue to inevitably evolve and the OECD Model can adapt. Her extensive archival research, conducted at the League of Nations Archives, the United Kingdom National Archives (London) and the Seligman Archives, Columbia University (New York), clearly demonstrates that …

The Persistent Appeal Of S Corporations: How Tax Cuts Might Not Help Small Corporations, Manas Kumar

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

This Note will first review the tax preferences for entity choice under the old tax regime for the sake of context. It will then compare the tax benefits of electing to C and S corporation status under the regime created by the Act. The Note will conclude with an analysis of the factors sustaining the tax appeal of pass-through firms for lower-earning businesses with special attention to the largely unaltered state of tax law and business entity choice. It proposes that the Act did not sufficiently reform the Internal Revenue Code to close up the tax advantage that high-earning corporations …

The International Provisions Of The Tcja: Six Results After Six Months, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

Over six months have passed since the enactment of the TCJA, so it is now possible to reach some preliminary conclusions on its impact. The main ones are:

1. The transition tax plus anticipated GILTI tax minus territoriality have resulted in higher GAAP effective tax rates for 2017. In some cases they approach 35% for large multinationals with a lot of offshore income. For the first six months of 2018, however, overall corporate tax revenues are sharply down because of the 21% rate plus expensing. This is the exact reverse of the situation before TCJA in which MNEs showed very …

The Beat And Treaty Overrides: A Brief Response To Rosenbloom And Shaheen, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Brett Wells

Law & Economics Working Papers

In a recent paper posted on SSRN, Profs. David Rosenbloom and Fadi Shaheen argue that the Base Erosion Anti-Abuse Tax (BEAT) (IRC section 59A), as enacted in 2017, is a potential violation of Articles 23 and 24 of US tax treaties. In addition, they argue that the BEAT does not override those treaties and therefore the treaties can be relied upon to overcome the effects of the BEAT. In our opinion, this conclusion is wrong, for two reasons. First, we believe that the BEAT is not a treaty violation. Second, we believe that even if the BEAT were found to …

Perils Of Tax Reform, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

Tax reforms dangle possibilities of improving the tax system, but are fraught with perils that are evident from the 2017 U.S. experience and caution against frequent reforms of its ilk. The first peril is that reforms containing tax provisions selected simply on the basis of their projected revenue contributions will produce less tax revenue than anticipated, illustrative calculations suggesting shortfalls of roughly 8–16 percent. The second peril is that reforms will not advance the objectives of efficiency and tax equity to the extent that they include provisions intended to influence future tax legislation or government spending. The third peril is …

Perpetual Motion Machines: Esops Don’T Pay For Themselves, Andrew Stumpff Morrison

Law & Economics Working Papers

In this article, Stumpff addresses policy issues regarding employee stock ownership plans and demonstrates how some claims in support of ESOPS aren’t supported by the math.

Reworking The Revolution: Treasury Rulemaking & Administrative Law, David Berke

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

How administrative law applies to tax rulemaking is an open and contested question. The resolution of this question has high stakes for the U.S. tax system. The paradigm is shifting away from so-called “tax exceptionalism”—where Treasury action is considered effectively exempt from the Administrative Procedure Act (the “APA”) and related administrative law doctrines. This paradigm-shift is salutary. However, currently prevailing anti-exceptionalist theory—an administrative framework for tax that is rapidly gaining credence within both the federal judiciary and the legal academy—threatens to destabilize the U.S. tax system. This formalistic approach to administrative law in tax rulemaking has the potential to invalidate …

Tax Havens As Producers Of Corporate Law, William J. Moon

Michigan Law Review

A review of Christopher M. Bruner, Re-Imagining Offshore Finance: Market-Dominant Small Jurisdictions in a Globalizing Financial World.

A Unifying Approach To Nexus Under The Dormant Commerce Clause, Adam B. Thimmesch

Michigan Law Review Online

The Supreme Court has long debated the existence and scope of its power to restrict state regulation under the so-called negative or dormant Commerce Clause. The Court took a broad view of that power in the late 1800s, but it has refined and restricted its role over time. One area where the Court has continued to wield considerable power, however, has been in the context of state taxes. Specifically, the Court has continued to restrict states' power to compel out-of-state vendors to collect their sales and use taxes based on a physical-presence "nexus" rule. That rule dates back to the …

Proposal For A Non-Subsidized, Non-Retirement-Plan, Employee-Owned Investment Vehicle To Replace The Esop, Sean M. Anderson, Andrew Stumpff Morrison

Law & Economics Working Papers

The authors have previously been critical of the existing American legal exemption and subsidy regime for employee stock ownership plans (“ESOPs”). By definition such plans create dangerously undiversified investment programs tying employees’ retirement security to the financial health of a single company – which, to compound the problem, is the employees’ employer, thereby correlating participants’ retirement security risk with the risk of losing their jobs. No demonstrated compensating policy benefit justifies this extraordinary large-scale departure from basic principles of financial prudence. One context, however, where a plausible case might be made for employee ownership is that which arises when a …

The Elephant Always Forgets: Us Tax Reform And The Wto, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Martin G. Vallespinos

Law & Economics Working Papers

The “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” (TCJA) enacted on December 22, 2017 includes several provisions that raise WTO compliance issues. At least one such provision, the Foreign-Derived Intangible Income (FDII) rule, is almost certain to draw a challenge in the WTO and is likely to lead to another US loss and resulting sanctions. This outcome would be another addition to the repeated losses suffered by the US for export subsidies from the 1970s to 2004, which led to the imposition of sanctions and the ultimate repeal of the offending regime. The important question for 2018 and beyond is whether the …

Beat It: Tax Reform And Tax Treaties, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) includes several provisions that may be viewed as potential violations of US tax treaties. However, most of those potential violations, such as new IRC section 951A and to a large extent new IRC section 59A, are covered by the Savings Clause (US model article 1(4)). The only remaining question is whether IRC section 59A (the “Base Erosion Anti-Abuse Tax”, or BEAT) violates the non-discrimination provision (article 24), which is exempted from the Savings Clause. The answer is no, because foreign related parties are not comparable to US related parties receiving interest or royalties.

How Terrible Is The New Tax Law? Reflections On Tra17, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

Overall, TRA17 is not much worse than TRA86 or TRA14. It increases the deficit, but not by an impossible amount; it is distributionally skewed, but less so than is usually assumed; and its details are not terrible (on the international side they are a big improvement over prior law). There is one big problem, the pass through provisions, and we can only hope that as its horrible implications unfold it will be a prime candidate for repeal.

The Elephant Always Forgets: Tax Reform And The Wto, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

The “Tax Cuts and Jobs ACT” (TCJA) enacted on December 22, 2017, includes several provisions that raise WTO compliance issues. At least one such provision, the Foreign-Derived Intangible Income (FDII) rule, is almost certain to draw a challenge in the WTO and is likely to lead to another US loss and resulting sanctions. This outcome would be another addition to the repeated losses suffered by the US for export subsidies from the 1970s to 2004, which led to the imposition of sanctions and the ultimate repeal of the offending regime. The important question for 2018 and beyond is whether the …

Innovative Approach To Anti-Beps And The Coherence Of International Tax Law, Haiyan Xu

SJD Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of three articles:

• Avi-Yonah, Reuven,. co-author. "Evaluating BEPS: A Reconsideration of the Benefits Principle and Proposal for UN Oversight." H. Xu, co-author. Harv. Bus. L. Rev. 6, no. 2 (2016): 185-238
• Reuven S. Avi-Yonah & Haiyan Xu, A Global Treaty Override? The New OECD Multilateral Tax Instrument and Its Limits, 39 Mich. J. Int'l L. 155 (2018).
• Avi-Yonah, Reuven S. "China and BEPS." Haiyan Xu, co-author. Laws 7, no. 1 (2018): 4-30.