Law Commons^™

Reversing The Fortunes Of Active Funds, Adi Libson, Gideon Parchomovsky

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In 2019, for the first time in the history of U.S. capital markets, passive funds surpassed active funds in terms of total assets under management. The continuous growth of passive funds at the expense of active funds is a genuine cause for concern. Active funds monitor the management and partake of decision-making in their portfolio companies. Furthermore, they improve price efficiency and managerial performance by engaging in informed trading. The buy/sell decisions of active funds provide other market participants reliable information about the quality of firms. The cost of active investing is significant and it is exclusively borne by active …

Steiner V. Utah: Designing A Constitutional Remedy, Michael S. Knoll, Ruth Mason

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In an earlier article, we argued that the Utah Supreme Court failed to follow and correctly apply clear U.S. Supreme Court precedent in Steiner v. Utah when the Utah high court held that an internally inconsistent and discriminatory state tax regime did not violate the dormant commerce clause. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court recently declined certiorari in Steiner, but the issue is unlikely to go away. Not every state high court will defy the U.S. Supreme Court by refusing to apply the dormant commerce clause, and so the Court will sooner or later likely find itself facing conflicting interpretations of …

The Dormant Foreign Commerce Clause After Wynne, Michael S. Knoll, Ruth Mason

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This Essay surveys dormant foreign Commerce Clause doctrine to determine what limits it places on state taxation of international income, including both income earned by foreigners in a U.S. state and income earned by U.S. residents abroad. The dormant Commerce Clause similarly limits states’ powers to tax interstate and foreign commerce; in particular, it forbids states from discriminating against interstate or international commerce. But there are differences between the interstate and foreign commerce contexts, including differences in the nationality of affected taxpayers and differences in the impact of state taxes on federal tax and foreign-relations goals. Given current Supreme Court …

The Tcja And The Questionable Incentive To Incorporate, Part 2, Michael S. Knoll

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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has put the question should a business be organized as a passthrough entity or as a corporation at center stage. The TCJA eliminated much of the tax disadvantage from using the corporate form, but did Congress go so far that it advantaged corporations relative to pass-through entities? Some prominent commentators say yes. They argue that the federal income tax now encourages individual owners of pass-through businesses to restructure their business as subchapter C corporations, and they predict that the TCJA will lead to a cascade of incorporations. The principal driver of the shift …

The Tcja And The Questionable Incentive To Incorporate, Michael S. Knoll

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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has put the question should a business be organized as a passthrough entity or as a corporation at center stage. The TCJA eliminated much of the tax disadvantage from using the corporate form, but did Congress go so far that it advantaged corporations relative to pass-through entities? Some prominent commentators say yes. They argue that the federal income tax now encourages individual owners of pass-through businesses to restructure their business as subchapter C corporations, and they predict that the TCJA will lead to a cascade of incorporations. The principal driver of the shift …

The Tao Of The Dao: Taxing An Entity That Lives On A Blockchain, David J. Shakow

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In this report, Shakow explains how a decentralized autonomous organization functions and interacts with the U.S. tax system and presents the many tax issues that these structures raise. The possibility of using smart contracts to allow an entity to operate totally autonomously on a blockchain platform seems attractive. However, little thought has been given to how such an entity can comply with the requirements of a tax system. The DAO, the first major attempt to create such an organization, failed because of a programming error. If successful examples proliferate in the future, tax authorities will face significant problems in getting …

Marginal Rates Under The Tcja, Reed Shuldiner

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In this report, Shuldiner argues that although the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act appears to offer an across-the board reduction in individual marginal tax rates augmented by an additional 20 percent reduction in rates on unincorporated business income, the situation is significantly more complex.

Was The Amt Effectively Repealed?, Reed Shuldiner

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The individual alternative minimum tax (AMT) was a much disliked feature of the tax law prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Yet, despite repeated promises to repeal the AMT as part of tax reform, the TCJA dropped AMT repeal in favor of increasing the AMT exemption and its phaseout threshold. The question raised by this development is whether the AMT changes should be viewed as yet another stop-gap tweak of the AMT or whether the changes should be viewed as returning the AMT to its roots as a tax on high-income taxpayers using excessive loopholes. In this …

Before International Tax Reform, We Need To Understand Why Firms Invert, Michael S. Knoll

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A wave of corporate inversions by U.S. firms over the past two decades has generated substantial debate in academic, business, and policy circles.

The core of the debate hinges on a couple of key economic questions: Do U.S. tax laws disadvantage U.S.-domiciled companies relative to their foreign competitors? And, if so, do inversions improve the competitiveness of U.S. multinational firms both abroad and at home?

There is unfortunately little, if any, empirical work directly determining whether U.S.-based MNCs are currently tax-disadvantaged compared to their foreign rivals, or measuring the amount by which (if any) U.S.-based MNCs improve their competitive position …

Taxation, Competitiveness, And Inversions: A Response To Kleinbard, Michael S. Knoll

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In this report, I argue that the inversion situation is more nuanced, complex, and ambiguous than Edward D. Kleinbard acknowledges, and I challenge Kleinbard’s claim that U.S. multinationals are on a tax par with their foreign competitors.

How The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Should Interpret Wynne, Michael S. Knoll, Ruth Mason

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In this special report, Knoll and Mason discuss how the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court should apply Wynne when it hears on remand First Marblehead v. Commissioner of Revenue. The authors conclude that when it originally heard the case, the Massachusetts court mistakenly considered, as part of its internal consistency analysis, whether Gate Holdings Inc. experienced double state taxation. As developed by the U.S. Supreme Court and most recently applied in Wynne, the internal consistency test is not concerned with actual double taxation that may arise from the interaction of different states’ laws. Rather, the test is designed to determine …

Catalogs, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein

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It is a virtual axiom in the world of law that legal norms come in two prototypes: rules and standards. The accepted lore suggests that rules should be formulated to regulate recurrent and frequent behaviors, whose contours can be defined with sufficient precision. Standards, by contrast, should be employed to address complex, variegated, behaviors that require the weighing of multiple variables. Rules rely on an ex ante perspective and are therefore considered the domain of the legislator; standards embody a preference for ex post, ad-hoc, analysis and are therefore considered the domain of courts. The rules/standards dichotomy has become a …

The Taxation Of Cloud Computing And Digital Content, David Shakow

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“Cloud computing” raises important and difficult questions in state tax law, and for Federal taxes, particularly in the foreign tax area. As cloud computing solutions are adopted by businesses, items we view as tangible are transformed into digital products. In this article, I will describe the problems cloud computing poses for tax systems. I will show how current law is applied to cloud computing and will identify the difficulties current approaches face as they are applied to this developing technology.

My primary interest is how Federal tax law applies to cloud computing, particularly as the new technology affects international transactions. …

Economic And Legal Arguments In Ppl V. Commissioner, Michael S. Knoll

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In late February 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in PPL Corp. v. Commissioner. The Court took that case, which involves a claim by a U.S. corporation for foreign tax credits for taxes paid in accordance with the 1997 U.K. Windfall Profit Tax Act, in order to resolve a conflict between the Third Circuit, which denied the credit in PPL, and the Fifth Circuit, which allowed the credit in Entergy Corp. v. Commissioner. Nominally, the U.K. Act imposed a tax on recently privatized regulated companies of 23 percent of the difference between their estimated …

The Connection Between Competitiveness And International Taxation, Michael S. Knoll

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The term “competitiveness” is a highly elastic concept that has been used in a myriad of different ways. However, in discussions of the connection between international taxation and competitiveness, there are two conceptions of competitiveness that are frequently used, but are not always clearly distinguished from one another. One conception emphasizes the competition between firms to be profitable and grow by acquiring productive assets. The other conception focuses on the competition between states to attract investment capital and people by varying their regulations.

Those two conceptions of competitiveness each imply a distinct definition of a domestic industry and a different …

A Preface To Neoclassical Legal Thought, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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Most legal historians speak of the period following classical legal thought as “progressive legal thought.” That term creates an unwarranted bias in characterization, however, creating the impression that conservatives clung to an obsolete “classical” ideology, when in fact they were in many ways just as revisionist as the progressives legal thinkers whom they critiqued. The Progressives and New Deal thinkers whom we identify with progressive legal thought were nearly all neoclassical, or marginalist, in their economics, but it is hardly true that all marginalists were progressives. For example, the lawyers and policy makers in the corporate finance battles of the …

Business Taxes And International Competitiveness: Understanding How Taxes Can Distort Capital Ownership And Designing A Nondistortive International Tax System, Michael S. Knoll

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Around the world, policymakers are obsessed with the competitiveness of their domestic companies and domestically based multinational corporations (MNCs). Such concerns frequently influence policy, especially tax policy. In this paper, I develop a theory of how taxes affect the international competitiveness of businesses. I then use that theory to evaluate basic tax policy decisions, such as the choice between residence- and source-based taxation and the level of tax rates, and to understand the impact various provisions in the U.S. Internal Revenue Code are likely to have on the competitiveness of U.S.-based corporations and MNCs.

A Comprehensive Theory Of Deal Structure: Understanding How Transactional Structure Creates Value, Michael S. Knoll, Daniel M. G. Raff

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No abstract provided.

State Finance In Times Of Crisis, Brian Galle, Jonathan Klick

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As recent events illustrate, state finances are pro-cyclical: during recessions, state revenues crash, worsening the effects of economic downturns. This problem is well-known, yet persistent. We argue here that, in light of predictable federalism and political economy dynamics, states will be unable to change this situation on their own. Additionally, we note that many possible federal remedies may result in worse problems, such as creating moral hazard that would induce states to take on excessively risky policy, both fiscal and otherwise. Thus, we argue that policy makers should consider so-called “automatic” stabilizers, such as are found in the federal tax …

Taxation And The Competitiveness Of Sovereign Wealth Funds: Do Taxes Encourage Sovereign Wealth Funds To Invest In The United States?, Michael S. Knoll

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Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) control vast amounts of capital and have made and are continuing to make numerous large, high-profile investments in the United States, especially in the financial services industry. Those investments in particular and SWFs in general are highly controversial. There is much discussion of the advantages and disadvantages to the United States of investments by SWFs and there is an intense and ongoing debate over what should be the United States’ policy towards investments by SWFs. In the course of that debate, some critics have called upon the US government to abandon its long-held public position of …

Immigration Restriction As Redistributive Taxation: Working Women And The Costs Of Protectionism In The Labor Market, Howard F. Chang

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In this paper, I argue that tax and transfer policies are more efficient than immigration restrictions as instruments for raising the after-tax incomes of the least skilled native workers. Policies to protect these native workers from immigrant competition in the labor market do no better at promoting distributive justice and are likely to impose a greater economic burden on natives in the country of immigration than the tax alternative. These immigration restrictions are especially costly given the disproportionate burden that they place on households with working women, which discourages female participation in the labor force. This burden runs contrary to …

Samuel Zell, The Chicago Tribune, And The Emergence Of The S Esop: Understanding The Tax Advantages And Disadvantages Of S Esops, Michael S. Knoll

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Samuel Zell’s acquisition of the Chicago Tribune Company (the Tribune) in December 2007 using a little-known type of Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) made headlines. In a complicated transaction, which took nearly a year to complete, the Tribune converted from a subchapter C corporation to a subchapter S corporation, established an ESOP that purchased 100 percent of the company’s equity, and sold Zell a call option giving him the right to purchase 40 percent of the company’s equity. Press reports claim that Zell’s novel structure enabled Zell to outbid other suitors. And financial commentators predict that many acquirers will employ …

The Taxation Of Private Equity Carried Interests: Estimating The Revenue Effects Of Taxing Profit Interests As Ordinary Income, Michael S. Knoll

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In this Article, I estimate the tax revenue effects of taxing private equity carried interests as ordinary income rather than as long-term capital gain as under current law. Under reasonable assumptions, I conclude that the expected present value of additional tax collections would be between 1 percent and 1.5 percent of capital invested in private equity funds, or between $2 billion and $3 billion a year. That estimate, however, makes no allowance for changes in the structure of such funds or the composition of the partnerships, which might substantially reduce tax revenues below those estimates.

Corporate Taxation And International Charter Competition, Mitchell Kane, Edward B. Rock

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Corporate Charter competition has become an increasingly international phenomenon. The thesis of this article is that this development in the corporate law requires a greater focus on the corporate tax law. We first demonstrate how a tax system’s capacity to distort the international charter market depends both upon its approach to determining corporate location and the extent to which it taxes foreign source corporate profits. We also show, however, that it is not possible to remove all distortions through modifications to the tax system alone. We present instead two alternative methods for preserving an international charter market. The first best …

Well-Being, Inequality And Time: The Time-Slice Problem And Its Policy Implications, Matthew D. Adler

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Should equality be viewed from a lifetime or “sublifetime” perspective? In measuring the inequality of income, for example, should we measure the inequality of lifetime income or of annual income? In characterizing a tax as “progressive” or “regressive,” should we look to whether the annual tax burden increases with annual income, or instead to whether the lifetime tax burden increases with lifetime income? Should the overriding aim of anti-poverty programs be to reduce chronic poverty: being badly off for many years, because of low human capital or other long-run factors? Or is the moral claim of the impoverished person a …

Taxes And Competitiveness, Michael S. Knoll

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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 …

Tax Practice In A Circular Revolution: A Review Of Pli's Circular 230 Deskbook, Bridget J. Crawford

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This short review essay evaluates the Practicing Law Institute's Circular 230 Deskbook by Jonathan G. Blattmachr, Mitchell M. Gans and Damien Rios. For attorneys, accountants and others who "practice" before the IRS, the Circular 230 Deskbook is a masterful analysis and an important guide to the Internal Revenue Service's labyrinthine rules and regulations governing tax penalties, reportable transactions and the conduct of tax practitioners. Most tax attorneys and accountants have reacted to the recent changes to Circular 230 by appending banner notices to all written communications. Without fully understanding the underlying rules, however, a practitioner cannot be sure that a …

The New Dividend Puzzle, William W. Bratton

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No abstract provided.

Taxing Sunny Days: Adjusting Taxes For Regional Living Costs And Amenities, Michael S. Knoll, Thomas D. Griffith

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Taxpayers pay tax on their nominal income without regard to their regional cost of living or the value of their regional amenities. Although commentators have argued that the income tax's failure to account for such differences is unfair - because residents of high-cost and low-amenity regions pay higher taxes than residents of low-cost and high-amenity regions - that argument is unpersuasive because migration tends to eliminate regional differences in living standards. The tax system's failure to adjust for regional differences is, however, likely to misallocate resources across regions in two ways. First, it is likely to discourage taxpayers from settling …

Simplifying The Transition To A (Progressive) Consumption Tax, Mitchell L. Engler, Michael S. Knoll

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No abstract provided.