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Articles 61 - 90 of 110
Full-Text Articles in Law
Third-Party Tax Administration: The Case Of Low- And Moderate-Income Households, Michael S. Barr, Jane K. Dokko
Third-Party Tax Administration: The Case Of Low- And Moderate-Income Households, Michael S. Barr, Jane K. Dokko
Articles
Using a unique household-level data set, this article investigates the taxfiling experiences and refund behavior of low- and moderate-income (LMI) households. We document households' tax-filing behavior, attitudes about the withholding system, use of tax refunds to consume and save, and the mechanisms by which households would prefer to receive their income. We also document the prevalence of the use of tax-preparation services and the receipt of tax refunds and refund-anticipation loans. Finally, we argue that there may be a role for tax administration to enable LMI households to make welfare-improving financial decisions.
The Proper Tax Treatment Of The Transfer Of A Compensatory Partnership Interest, Douglas A. Kahn
The Proper Tax Treatment Of The Transfer Of A Compensatory Partnership Interest, Douglas A. Kahn
Articles
If a person receives property as payment for services, whether for past or future services, the receipt typically constitutes gross income to the recipient. If a person performs services for a partnership or agrees to perform future services, and if the person receives a partnership interest as compensation for the past or future services, one might expect that receipt to cause the new partner to recognize gross income in an amount equal to the fair market value of the partnership interest. After all, if a corporation compensated someone for services rendered or to be rendered by transferring the corporation's own …
Foreign Income And Domestic Deductions, James R. Hines Jr.
Foreign Income And Domestic Deductions, James R. Hines Jr.
Articles
To what extent should taxpayers deduct expenses incurred domestically that contribute to foreign income production? It is widely believed that if the home country does not tax foreign income, then it also should not permit deductions for that portion of domestic expenses attributable to earning foreign income. This prescription is, however, inconsistent with the decision to exempt foreign income from taxation in the first place. The paper shows that, for any system of taxing foreign income, the consistent and efficient treatment is to permit domestic expense deductions for all expenses incurred domestically. This differs from the current U.S. regime, under …
All In The Family As A Single Shareholder Of An S Corporation, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn, Terrence G. Perris
All In The Family As A Single Shareholder Of An S Corporation, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn, Terrence G. Perris
Articles
Subject to a few exceptions, a corporation that has elected to be taxed under subchapter S of chapter 1 of subtitle A of title 26 of the United States tax code is not taxed on its net income. Instead, the income, deductions, credits, and other tax items of an S corporation pass through to its shareholders on a pro rata basis. To qualify for subchapter S treatment, an electing corporation must satisfy the requirements that are set forth in section 1361, one of which is that the corporation can have no more than 100 shareholders. One aspect of that requirement …
Taxing Consumption And Other Sins, James R. Hines Jr.
Taxing Consumption And Other Sins, James R. Hines Jr.
Articles
Federal and state governments in the United States use income and payroll taxes as their primary tools to collect revenue. In the rest of the world, governments also use income and payroll taxes, but rely much more heavily than does the United States on taxing consumption. Consumption taxes take many forms, including general sales taxes, value-added taxes, and excise taxes on the consumption of specific items including gasoline, alcohol, tobacco products, firearms, air travel, telephone communication, and others. The U.S. government does not use a value-added tax, making the United States unique among high-income countries and a rarity in the …
Dividend Policy Inside The Multinational Firm, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.
Dividend Policy Inside The Multinational Firm, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.
Articles
This paper examines the determinants of profit repatriation policies for US multinational firms. Dividend repatriations are surprisingly persistent and resemble dividend payments to external shareholders. Tax considerations influence dividend repatriations, but not decisively, as differentially-taxed entities feature similar policies and some firms incur avoidable tax penalties. Parent companies requiring cash to fund domestic investments, or to pay dividends to common shareholders, draw on the resources of their foreign affiliates through repatriations. Incompletely controlled affiliates are more likely than others to make regular dividend payments and to trigger avoidable tax costs through repatriations. The results indicate that traditional corporate finance concerns …
Federalism And The Commerce Clause: A Comparative Perspective, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Federalism And The Commerce Clause: A Comparative Perspective, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The U.S. Supreme Court has on numerous occasions addressed the constitutionality of state taxes under the U.S. Constitution (most often under the Commerce Clause, but sometimes under the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses). In general, the Supreme Court has granted wide leeway to the states to adopt any tax system they wish, only striking down the most egregious cases of discrimination against out-of-state residents. Thus, for example, the Court has generally refused to intervene against state tax competition to attract business into the state. It has twice upheld a method of calculating how much income of a multinational enterprise …
Taxation In Developing Countries: Some Recent Support And Challenges To The Conventional View, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Yoram Margolioth
Taxation In Developing Countries: Some Recent Support And Challenges To The Conventional View, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Yoram Margolioth
Articles
The general advice given by international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to developing countries over the past few decades has been to replace trade taxes with domestic consumption taxes, particularly value-added taxes (VAT), and to maintain relatively high corporate income tax rates. This article reviews recent literature that supports and challenges this conventional view.
The Internal Markets Of Multinational Firms, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.
The Internal Markets Of Multinational Firms, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.
Articles
The rising economic importance of multinational firms has been accompanied by significant changes in their structure and functioning. Multinational firms, historically characterized as webs of autonomous subsidiaries spread across countries, now represent globally integrated production systems serving worldwide customers. These changes are manifest in the rising significance of intrafirm trade and financial flows for these firms. While there is extensive analysis of aggregate patterns in intrafirm flows of goods and capital, few firm-based studies examine the workings of the internal markets of multinational firms, largely because of the difficulty in accessing the necessary data. A number of our recent projects …
Tax Consequences When A New Employer Bears The Cost Of The Employee's Terminating A Prior Employment Relationship, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn
Tax Consequences When A New Employer Bears The Cost Of The Employee's Terminating A Prior Employment Relationship, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn
Articles
The next few months will be busy ones for moving companies that have NCAA basketball coaches as customers. In the past few months, several men's college basketball coaches have accepted jobs at different schools. Several of those coaches, who were still under contract at their former institution, had buy out provisions that allowed them to terminate their relationship for a set price. John Beilein is a prominent example of this since his buy out price was so high. Last season, Beilein was the head basketball coach at West Virginia University where he was under contract with the school until 2012. …
The New United States Model Income Tax Convention, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Martin B. Tittle
The New United States Model Income Tax Convention, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Martin B. Tittle
Articles
On 15 November 2006, the United States Treasury released its long-awaited new Model Income Tax Convention (“New Model”), which replaced the 1996 US Model (“Old Model”). This article reviews some of the major differences between the New and Old Models, as well as some of the major differences between the New Model and the current (2005) OECD Model Tax Convention. The article also discusses some new trends in US treaty policy which are not reflected in the New Model. The article concludes by evaluating the New Model in light of the emerging trend to use tax treaties not just to …
Comparative Fiscal Federalism: What Can The U.S. Supreme Court And The European Court Of Justice Learn From Each Other's Tax Jurisprudence?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Comparative Fiscal Federalism: What Can The U.S. Supreme Court And The European Court Of Justice Learn From Each Other's Tax Jurisprudence?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
In October 2005, a group of distinguished tax experts from the European Union and the United States, who had never met before, convened at the University of Michigan Law School for a conference on "Comparative Fiscal Federalism: Comparing the U.S. Supreme Court and European Court of Justice Tax Jurisprudence." The purpose of the conference was to shed comparative light on the very different approaches taken by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the U.S. Supreme Court to the question of fiscal federalism. The conference was sponsored by the U-M Law School, U-M's European Union Center, and Harvard Law School's …
The Three Goals Of Taxation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
The Three Goals Of Taxation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The current debate in the United States about whether the income tax should be replaced with a consumption tax has been waged on the traditional grounds for evaluating tax policy: efficiency, equity, and administrability. For example, Joseph Bankman and David Weisbach recently argued for the superiority of an ideal consumption tax over an ideal income tax on three grounds: First, that the consumption tax is more efficient because it does not discriminate between current and future consumption,' while both income and consumption taxes have identical effect on work effort. Second, that the consumption tax is at least as good at …
The Report Of The President's Advisory Panel On Federal Tax Reform: A Critical Assessment And A Proposal, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
The Report Of The President's Advisory Panel On Federal Tax Reform: A Critical Assessment And A Proposal, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
ON November 1, 2005, The President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform ("Panel") submitted its report ("Report") to the Secretary of the Treasury.1 At 272 pages, this is the most important and wide-ranging plan to reform the United States federal tax system since Blueprints for Basic Tax Reform (1977).2 While prospects for immediate action appear dim, the Report will no doubt be the basis of discussion of federal tax reform for a long time to come.
Comparative Fiscal Federalism: What Can The U.S. Supreme Court And The European Court Of Justice Learn From Each Other's Tax Jurisprudence?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Comparative Fiscal Federalism: What Can The U.S. Supreme Court And The European Court Of Justice Learn From Each Other's Tax Jurisprudence?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
Last October, a group of distinguished tax experts from the European Union and the United States convened at the University of Michigan Law School for a conference on "Comparative Fiscal Federalism: Comparing the U.S. Supreme Court and European Court of Justice Tax Jurisprudence." The conference was sponsored by the Law School, the European Union Center, and Harvard Law School's Fund for Tax and Fiscal Research. Attendees from Europe included Michel Aujean, the principal tax official at the EU Commission, Servaas van Thie1, chief tax advisor to the EU Council, Michael Lang (Vienna) and Kees van Raad (Leiden), who run the …
Passport To Toledo: Cuno, The World Trade Organization, And The European Court Of Justice, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Passport To Toledo: Cuno, The World Trade Organization, And The European Court Of Justice, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The purpose of this article is to try to place the debate about Cuno v. DaimlerChrysler in a broader perspective by connecting it with the overall discussion of harmful tax competition. It discusses two hypothetical scenarios under which the city of Toledo, Ohio, is (a) a separate country and (b) a member state of the European Union. If the first hypothetical were true, the tax incentives offered by Toledo would violate the rules of the World Trade Organization; if the second hypothetical were true, the tax incentives would also violate the Treaty of Rome, as interpreted by the European Court …
The Pitfalls Of International Integration: A Comment On The Bush Proposal And Its Aftermath, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
The Pitfalls Of International Integration: A Comment On The Bush Proposal And Its Aftermath, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
In January 2003, the Bush Administration proposed a new system for taxing corporate dividends, under which domestic shareholders in U.S. corporations would not be taxed on dividends they received, provided the corporation distributed these dividends out of after-tax earnings (the “Bush Proposal”). The Bush Proposal was introduced in Congress on February 27, 2003. Ultimately, however, Congress balked at enacting full-?edged dividend exemption. Instead, in the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (“JGTRRA”) as enacted on May 28, 2003, a lower rate of 15% was adopted for dividends paid by domestic and certain foreign corporations,1 and the capital …
Risk, Rents, And Regressivity: Why The United States Needs Both An Income Tax And A Vat, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Risk, Rents, And Regressivity: Why The United States Needs Both An Income Tax And A Vat, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
In this article, Prof. Avi-Yonah argues that the legal academic debate about fundamental tax reform from 1974 onward has been skewed by the assumption that a consumption tax must replace the income tax. He addresses three of the major issue in recent writings on the income/consumption tax debate, and shows how none of the arguments in favor of the consumption tax are conclusive. Avi-Yonah also addresses the various consumption tax proposals that have been made and shows that they are all deficient in comparison with a VAT, as well as failing to achieve the goals of an income tax. Finally, …
The Ingenious Kerry Tax Plan, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
The Ingenious Kerry Tax Plan, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The tax plan proposed by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry at Wayne State University on March 26 is an ingenious set of ideas to encourage domestic job creation. Its greatest strength, however, may be its contribution to long-term economic growth, fairness, and tax law simplification. In this article I will first describe the Kerry proposal, then analyze its advantages, and finally address some counterarguments.
Guaranteed Payments Made In Kind By A Partnership, Douglas A. Kahn, Faith Cuenin
Guaranteed Payments Made In Kind By A Partnership, Douglas A. Kahn, Faith Cuenin
Articles
If a partnership makes a payment to a partner for services rendered in the latter's capacity as a partner or for the use of capital, to the extent that the payment is determined without regard to partnership income, it is characterized by the Internal Revenue Code as a "guaranteed payment" and is treated differently from other partnership distributions.' In addition, if a partnership makes a payment in liquidation of a retiring or deceased partner's interest in the partnership, part of that payment may be characterized as a guaranteed payment by section 736(a)(2). We will discuss in Part VI of this …
Exchanges Of Multiple Stocks And Securities In Corporate Divisions Or Acquisitive Reorganizations, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey S. Lehman
Exchanges Of Multiple Stocks And Securities In Corporate Divisions Or Acquisitive Reorganizations, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey S. Lehman
Articles
If specified conditions are satisfied, the Internal Revenue Code provides nonrecognition for gain or loss realized when stocks and securities of one corporation are exchanged for stocks and securities of another corporation. When the exchange is made as part of a corporate division (a split-off or a split-up), the principal nonrecognition provision is section 355; and when the exchange is made as part of an acquisitive reorganization, the principal nonrecognition provision is section 354. Complete nonrecognition is provided only when stock is exchanged solely for stock and securities are exchanged solely for securities of no greater principal amount. If, in …
Revisiting The Roles Of Legal Rules And Tax Rules In Income Redistribution: A Response To Kaplow & Shavell, Ronen Avraham, David Fortus, Kyle D. Logue
Revisiting The Roles Of Legal Rules And Tax Rules In Income Redistribution: A Response To Kaplow & Shavell, Ronen Avraham, David Fortus, Kyle D. Logue
Articles
The debate over whether legal rules should be used to redistribute resources in society or whether redistribution should be left exclusively to the tax-and-transfer system has long occupied philosophers, political theorists, economists, and legal academicians. For many years, the conventional wisdom on this question among legal scholars seemed to be that blanket generalizations were inappropriate. All systems of redistribution distort individuals' choices and entail administrative costs. Therefore, the argument went, a universal preference for using the tax-and-transfer system to redistribute is not justified. Rather, the choice among institutions to accomplish society's redistributive goals was considered to be "an empirical one …
Gifts, Gafts And Gefts: The Income Tax Definition And Treatment Of Private And Charitable 'Gifts' And A Principled Policy Justification For The Exclusion Of Gifts From Income, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn
Gifts, Gafts And Gefts: The Income Tax Definition And Treatment Of Private And Charitable 'Gifts' And A Principled Policy Justification For The Exclusion Of Gifts From Income, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn
Articles
Gifts have been given special treatment by the income tax laws since the first post-16th Amendment tax statute was adopted in 1913. The determination of how the income tax law should treat gifts raises a number of issues. For example: should gifts be given special treatment? If so, what should qualify as a gift? Should gifts to a private party be taxable to the donee? Should gifts to a private party be deductible by the donor? Should the donee's basis in a gift of property be determined by reference to the basis that the donor had, and should any modifications …
Back To The 1930s? The Shaky Case For Exempting Dividends, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Back To The 1930s? The Shaky Case For Exempting Dividends, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
This article is based in part on the author’s U.S. Branch Report for Subject I of the 2003 Annual Congress of the International Fiscal Association, to be held next year in Sydney, Australia (forthcoming in Cahiers de droit fiscal international, 2003). He would like to thank Emil Sunley for his helpful comments on that earlier version, and Steve Bank, Michael Barr, David Bradford, Michael Graetz, and David Hasen for comments on this version. Special thanks are due to Yoram Keinan for his meticulous work on the EU regimes (see Appendix). All errors are the author’s. In this report, Prof. Avi-Yonah …
For Haven's Sake: Reflections On Inversion Transactions, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
For Haven's Sake: Reflections On Inversion Transactions, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
This article discusses “inversion” transactions, in which a publicly traded U.S. corporation becomes a subsidiary of a newly established tax haven parent corporation. In the last three years, an increasing number of these transactions have been taking place, undeterred by the shareholderlevel tax imposed by the IRS on them in 1994. The article first discusses the reasons for the increasing popularity of the transactions and the tax goals they aim at achieving (primarily avoiding subpart F and U.S. earnings stripping). The article then discusses the tax policy implications of these transactions. In the short run, the article suggests that the …
(How) Should Trade Agreements Deal With Income Tax Issues?, Joel Slemrod, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
(How) Should Trade Agreements Deal With Income Tax Issues?, Joel Slemrod, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
What is the relationship between the international tax regime, as embodied in bilateral international tax treaties, and multilateral free trade agreements like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATr)?' Are their fundamental goals consistent or inconsistent? If they are inconsistent, should the tax treaties or the GATT be changed to remedy the inconsistency? If they are consistent, should the scope of either be expanded to include the other?
Tax Competition And E-Commerce, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Tax Competition And E-Commerce, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
In the last four years, there has been increasing concern by developed countries about the potential erosion of the corporate income tax base by "harmful tax competition" (in the European Union since 1997, in the OECD since 1998). However, the data on tax competition available to date present a mixed and somewhat puzzling picture. On the one hand, there is considerable evidence that effective corporate income tax rates in many countries have been declining, and that the worldwide effective tax rates on multinational enterprises (MNEs) have been going down as well. On the other hand, macroeconomic data from developed countries …
Globalization And Tax Competition: Implications For Developing Countries, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Globalization And Tax Competition: Implications For Developing Countries, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The current age of globalization can be distinguished from the previous one (from 1870 to 1914) by the much higher mobility of capital than labor (in the previous age, before immigration restrictions, labor was at least as mobile as capital). This increased mobility has been the result of technological changes (the ability to move funds electronically), and the relaxation of exchange controls. The mobility of capital has led to tax competition, in which sovereign countries lower their tax rates on income earned by foreigners within their borders in order to attract both portfolio and direct investment. Tax competition, in turn, …
Making Sense Of U.S. International Taxation: Six Steps Toward Simplification, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Making Sense Of U.S. International Taxation: Six Steps Toward Simplification, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The Joint Committee on Taxation of the U.S. Congress issued a three-volume study in April 2001 entitled Study of the Overall State of the Federal Tax System and Recommendations for Simplification. Among the more than 100 recommendations of the Joint Committee Study, ten relate to international taxation. Of these, only one can be regarded as achieving significant simplification – the proposal to reduce the number of antideferral regimes from six to two. The other recommendations were limited to relatively minor changes of detail in various international provisions. Even these small steps toward simplifying the notoriously complex U.S. international tax …
Globalization And Tax Competition: Implications For Developing Countries, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Globalization And Tax Competition: Implications For Developing Countries, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
This article analyses the effects of tax competition on developing countries. Since the 1980s, globalization and greater capital mobility have led many developing countries to adopt the policy of competing with one another to attract capital investment. One of the main forms taken by this competition has been the granting of tax holidays and other tax reductions to investing multinationals. This paper reviews the normative arguments for and against this type of tax competition, from a global perspective. It then examines these arguments in depth from the point of view of developing countries. The conclusion in general is that, since …