Law Commons^™

Back To The Future: Marriage And Divorce Under The 2017 Tax Act, Mark W. Cochran

Faculty Articles

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the 2017 Tax Act) significantly altered the federal tax consequences of marriage and divorce by mostly eliminating the so-called "marriage penalty" from the individual income tax rates and abolishing the deduction for alimony payments. These changes represent the latest congressional tinkering with issues that have persisted since the earliest days of the modem income tax, turning back the clock with regard to taxation for both married and divorced couples. For the first time, since the enactment of the Tax Reform Act of 1969, the rate brackets for married taxpayers filing joint returns …

The Once And Future Property Tax: A Dialogue With My Younger Self, Edward A. Zelinsky

Faculty Articles

As I look back on my youth (expansively defined as the first 40 years of my life), everywhere I went, the local real property tax was perceived as both bad and doomed. If I could speak with the brash young law student/graduate student/alderman I once was, he would undoubtedly tell me, with great confidence, that by the beginning of the next century (which then seemed very far away) the property tax would no longer play a role in the system of local public finance.

Alas, he was wrong.

This essay explains why the young man I once was, confident of …