Law Commons^™

Interlinking Between Income Tax, Citizenship And Democracy? A Case Study Of Canada And China, Jinyan Li

Conference Papers

The interlink between taxation, citizenship and democracy appears to be obvious in Western democracies: citizens are voters, taxpayers and beneficiaries of public spending funded by tax revenues. The literature on the politics of taxation suggests that democratic institutions affect taxation at every stage of the policy-making process, the type of elections and governance model influence the level of redistribution and complexity of the tax system, democracies generally choose policies that are more favorable to the poor than non-democracies, the tax mix varies with the nature of the political regime, and more repressive governments rely less on personal income taxation. Political …

Changemakers: Finding The Perfect Niche, Michael Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Tax Symposium: Introduction, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Michigan Journal of International Law

This issue of MJIL features four out of the many outstanding papers that were presented at a conference on Taxation and Citizenship held at Michigan Law in October 2015 and co-organized by Allison Christians and myself. The impetus for the conference was the realization that the unique U.S. practice of taxing its citizens on worldwide income, regardless of where they reside, has become a major flashpoint in the relationship between the United States and its citizens living overseas, and sometimes also between the United States and the country those citizens resided in.

Citizenship Overreach, Peter J. Spiro

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article examines international law limitations on the ascription of citizenship and national self-definition. The United States is exceptionally generous in its extension of citizenship. Alone among the major developed states, it extends citizenship to almost all persons in its territory at the moment of birth. This birthright citizenship is constitutionally protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. At the same time that it is generous at the front end, U.S. citizenship is sticky at the back. Termination of citizenship on the individual’s part can involve substantial fees. Expatriation is contingent on tax compliance and, in some cases, will implicate the recognition …

A Global Perspective On Citizenship-Based Taxation, Allison Christians

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article contends that, with regard to individuals who reside permanently outside of the United States, the global assistance sought under FATCA to enforce U.S. income taxation solely on the basis of citizenship violates international law. It argues that insisting upon foreign cooperation with the FATCA regime, under threat of serious economic penalties, is inconsistent with universally accepted norms regarding appropriate limits to the state’s jurisdiction to tax, while also being normatively unjustified. Accordingly, FATCA should be rejected by all other nation states to the extent it imposes any obligations with respect to individuals who permanently reside outside of, and …

Minimalism About Residence And Source, Wei Cui

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this Article, I relate the discomfort with fundamental principles in taxing individuals’ worldwide income to a problem that has attracted greater attention in recent years: the assignment of geographical sources to income. I suggest that there is substantial similarity between critiques of residence rules (of which critiques of citizenship-based taxation are examples) and critiques of source rules. However, I argue that problematic residence and source rules are only symptoms, not causes, of unsatisfactory conceptual paradigms in international taxation. Many scholars portray source and residence rules as inadequate means for achieving purportedly given normative objectives in the age of intense …

Defining Residence For Income Tax Purposes: Domicile As Gap-Filler, Citizenship As Proxy And Gap-Filler, Edward A. Zelinsky

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this paper, I place the United States’ adherence to citizenship-based taxation in the context of the states’ tax systems. Forty-one states impose general income taxes on the worldwide incomes of their respective residents. These state tax systems are important repositories of experience that confirm the administrative benefits of citizenship-based taxation. Domicile today plays an important role in state tax systems as a gap-filler when more objective statutory residence laws fail to assign any state of residence to the taxpayer. Citizenship is an administrable proxy for domicile and serves a similar gap-filling role in the taxation of individuals whose income …

Citizens Abroad And Social Cohesion At Home: Refocusing A Cross-Border Tax Policy Debate, Michael Kirsch

Journal Articles

Modern developments raise significant questions about the future importance (or non-importance) of formal citizenship status. For example, while many have interpreted the European Union project, with its emphasis on the free movement of individuals, as portending the decreasing relevance of nationality, recent developments, such as the “Brexit” vote, suggest that national identity remains an important factor for many individuals. While much of the public debate over citizenship focuses on areas, such as immigration, that are more obviously tied to formal citizenship status, this debate also impacts cross-border tax policy.

Over the past decade, several scholars have addressed the use of …

Citizens Abroad And Social Cohesion At Home: Refocusing A Cross-Border Tax Policy Debate, Michael S. Kirsch

Michael Kirsch

Over the past decade, a number of scholars have addressed the United States’ continuing use of citizenship as a jurisdictional basis upon which to tax the foreign-source income of individuals in the modern international setting. Some writers, including myself, have defended this citizenship-based taxation (“CBT”), while others have rejected it and proposed some form of residence-based taxation (“RBT”) for citizens.This Article considers the competing normative arguments raised in this context, and attempts to distill the strengths and weaknesses of each. In so doing, it attempts to highlight the most important factors upon which the debate hinges, and illustrates the importance …

Tax Treaties And The Taxation Of Services In The Absence Of Physical Presence, Michael Kirsch

Journal Articles

It is old news that modern technological developments have strained long‐standing international tax policies and principles. Tax treaties have attempted to keep pace by fitting these new developments within the existing framework. This brief article addresses one aspect of technological developments that can directly affect individual taxpayers—the increasing ability to deliver personal services electronically across borders, without the need for the service provider to have a physical presence in the “source” country. In particular, it focuses on recent developments with the U.N. Model, which may allow source‐based taxation of at least some types of services income even in the absence …

Revisiting The Tax Treatment Of Citizens Abroad: Reconciling Principle And Practice, Michael S. Kirsch

Michael Kirsch

In an increasingly mobile world, the taxation of citizens living abroad has taken on increased importance. Recent international administrative developments — most notably, the weakening of foreign bank secrecy and expansion of global information sharing norms — have further raised the profile of this issue. While U.S. law traditionally has taxed U.S. citizens living abroad in the same general manner as citizens living in the United States, a number of scholars have proposed abandoning the use of citizenship as a jurisdictional basis to tax. In its place, they would apply residence-based principles — i.e., exercising full taxing rights over U.S. …

Heal The Suffering Children: Fifty Years After The Declaration Of War On Poverty, Francine J. Lipman, Dawn Davis

Scholarly Works

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the War on Poverty. Since then, the federal tax code has been a fundamental tool in providing financial assistance to poor working families. Even today, however, thirty-two million children live in families that cannot support basic living expenses, and sixteen million of those live in extreme poverty. This Article navigates the confusing requirements of an array of child-related tax benefits including the dependency exemption deduction, head of household filing status, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Child Tax Credit. Specifically, this Article explores how altering the definition of a qualifying child …

Revisiting The Tax Treatment Of Citizens Abroad: Reconciling Principle And Practice, Michael Kirsch

Journal Articles

In an increasingly mobile world, the taxation of citizens living abroad has taken on increased importance. Recent international administrative developments — most notably, the weakening of foreign bank secrecy and expansion of global information sharing norms — have further raised the profile of this issue. While U.S. law traditionally has taxed U.S. citizens living abroad in the same general manner as citizens living in the United States, a number of scholars have proposed abandoning the use of citizenship as a jurisdictional basis to tax. In its place, they would apply residence-based principles — i.e., exercising full taxing rights over U.S. …

The Tax Code As Nationality Law, Michael S. Kirsch

Michael Kirsch

This article questions the frequently-asserted axiom that Congress's taxing power knows no bounds. It does so in the context of recently-enacted legislation that creates a special definition of citizenship that applies only for tax purposes. Historically, a person was treated as a citizen for tax purposes (and therefore taxed on her worldwide income and estate) if, and only if, she was a citizen under the nationality law. As a result of the new statute, in certain circumstances a person might be treated as a citizen for tax purposes (and therefore taxed on her worldwide income and estate) for years or …

Taxing Citizens In A Global Economy, Michael S. Kirsch

Michael Kirsch

This Article addresses a fundamental issue underlying the U.S. tax system in the international context: the use of citizenship as a jurisdictional basis for imposing income tax. As a general matter, the United States is the only economically developed country that taxes its citizens abroad on their foreign income. Despite this broad general assertion of taxing jurisdiction, Congress allows citizens abroad to exclude a limited amount of their income earned from working outside the United States. Influential lobbying groups, including businesses that employ significant numbers of U.S. citizens abroad, argue that this exclusion is necessary in order to keep American …

Citizenship And Worldwide Taxation: Citizenship As An Administrable Proxy For Domicile, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

The United States' worldwide taxation of its citizens is less different from international, residence-based norms than is widely believed and is sensible as a matter of tax policy. An individual's citizenship is an administrable, if sometimes overly broad, proxy for his domicile, his permanent home. Both citizenship and domicile measure an individual's permanent allegiance rather than his immediate physical presence. Because citizenship and domicile resemble each other, and because other nations often define residence for tax purposes as domicile, the U.S. system of citizenship-based taxation typically reaches the same results as the residence-based systems of these other nations, but reaches …

Taxation And Gendered Citizenship, Nancy Staudt

Faculty Working Papers

This essay notes that the feminist tax policy theorists have made numerous important contributions to our understanding of tax policy's affect on women's lives and experiences. It argues that in doing so, the extant literature has also prioritized the idea of citizenship rights but has failed to acknowledge the importance of citizenship obligations and duties.

Flying Passports Of Convenience, Karl T. Muth

Karl T Muth

This paper proposes an economic alternative to the legal construct of citizenship that currently dominates international law.

Taxing Citizens In A Global Economy, Michael S. Kirsch

Journal Articles

This Article addresses a fundamental issue underlying the U.S. tax system in the international context: the use of citizenship as a jurisdictional basis for imposing income tax. As a general matter, the United States is the only economically developed country that taxes its citizens abroad on their foreign income.

Despite this broad general assertion of taxing jurisdiction, Congress allows citizens abroad to exclude a limited amount of their income earned from working outside the United States. Influential lobbying groups, including businesses that employ significant numbers of U.S. citizens abroad, argue that this exclusion is necessary in order to keep American …

The Tax Code As Nationality Law, Michael S. Kirsch

Journal Articles

This article questions the frequently-asserted axiom that Congress's taxing power knows no bounds. It does so in the context of recently-enacted legislation that creates a special definition of citizenship that applies only for tax purposes. Historically, a person was treated as a citizen for tax purposes (and therefore taxed on her worldwide income and estate) if, and only if, she was a citizen under the nationality law. As a result of the new statute, in certain circumstances a person might be treated as a citizen for tax purposes (and therefore taxed on her worldwide income and estate) for years or …

Vultures In Eagles' Clothing: Conspiracy And Racial Fantasy In Populist Legal Thought, Angela P. Harris

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article has three interrelated aims. First, I will briefly describe the online world of the legal populists. My second aim in this Article is to give an account of legal populism that connects it with the American tradition of conspiracy theory and with the political consciousness of survivalism. My third and final aim in this Article is to examine, as David Williams has done in a wonderful series of articles, the relationship between the nation dreamed of by many legal populists and the one inhabited by state-sanctioned legal insiders.

Case Digest, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Case Digest provides brief analyses of cases that represent current aspects of transnational law. The Digest includes cases that establish legal principles and cases that apply established legal principles to new factual situations. These cases are grouped in topical categories and references are given for further research.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. ALIENS: CITIZENSHIP AND NATURALIZATION ......... 857

II. TAXATION AND FOREIGN COMMERCE .................. 862

III. AIR CARRIER LIABILITY--WARSAW CONVENTION ........ 865