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Wither Firpta, Fred B. Brown

All Faculty Scholarship

Under FIRPTA, foreign persons are subject to U.S. tax on dispositions of directly held interests in U.S. real property as well as on dispositions of stock in certain U.S. real property holding corporations. Congress enacted FIRPTA to combat several techniques used by foreign persons to avoid U.S. tax on dispositions of U.S. real estate. However, since FIRPTA's enactment, changes in the tax law would defeat these tax avoidance techniques. Consequently, this raises the issue of whether FIRPTA continues to make sense as a policy matter.

This article suggests that the repeal of portions of FIRPTA may be in order and …