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Tax Law

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

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Interest deduction

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Op Ed: Throwing Cold Water On Expensing Of Assets, Deborah A. Geier Apr 2009

Op Ed: Throwing Cold Water On Expensing Of Assets, Deborah A. Geier

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Deborah A. Geier rebuts a proposal for full expensing (except for 10-year depreciation of buildings) for all assets and all taxpayers to accomplish simplification, arguing that such a proposal would need to be combined with a repeal of the interest deduction.


Expensing And The Interest Deduction, Deborah A. Geier Sep 2007

Expensing And The Interest Deduction, Deborah A. Geier

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The difficulty of envisioning an effective provision that would deny interest deductions in this context may be reason enough to advocate for the alternative proposal described at the beginning of this viewpoint. The mixing of consumption tax provisions with the income tax treatment of debt in the U.S. tax system already provides too many opportunities for tax arbitrage. The expensing proposal would exacerbate these problems. The alternative proposal of broadening the base and lowering the rates (especially if coupled with eliminating the capital gains preference and integrating the corporate and individual taxes) would go far toward reducing the unfortunate mixing …