Law Commons^™

Taxes And Competitiveness, Michael S. Knoll

All Faculty Scholarship

Around the world, the tax laws are shaped by concerns with competitiveness. This paper provides a general theory of how taxes impact competitiveness. As part of that theory, this paper also introduces the concept of tax-based competitiveness neutrality. A tax system is competitively neutral when taxes do not cause competitors to change their relative valuations of any investments. This paper then uses that theory to evaluate tax policy in two high profile and important areas. The paper begins by describing two models of competitiveness, called the conduit or new money model and the investor or old money model. The central …

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 …