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Full-Text Articles in Law
Alimony Treatment For A Single Payment, Douglas A. Kahn
Alimony Treatment For A Single Payment, Douglas A. Kahn
Articles
Before 1942 alimony paid to a former spouse was not included in the spouse’s gross income. In 1942 Congress adopted the antecedent to section 71. Although an alimony recipient must recognize gross income, section 215 provides the payer with a nonitemized deduction for the payment. Therefore, the alimony tax provisions provide a congressionally approved income-splitting arrangement which can benefit the parties by shifting income from a high-bracket taxpayer to one in a lower tax bracket. The parties can divide the resulting savings between them by altering the amount paid to the former spouse.
Rudkin Testamentary Trust -- A Response To Prof. Cohen, Douglas A. Kahn
Rudkin Testamentary Trust -- A Response To Prof. Cohen, Douglas A. Kahn
Articles
In the August 3 issue of Tax Notes, Prof. Stephen Cohen wrote an article about Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s opinions in three tax cases. Of those three cases, only the opinion she wrote in William L. Rudkin Testamentary Trust v. Commissioner, 467 F.3d 149 (2d Cir. 2006), Doc 2006- 21522, 2006 TNT 203-4, is worthy of comment. Although the Second Circuit’s decision in that case was affirmed by the Supreme Court under the name Knight v. Commissioner, the construction of the critical statutory language that Justice Sotomayor adopted was rejected and criticized by Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a unanimous court. …
Obama's International Tax Plan: A Major Step Forward, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Obama's International Tax Plan: A Major Step Forward, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
President Barack Obama last week personally introduced a set of proposals to reform U.S. international taxation that are the most significant advance toward preserving the income tax on cross-border transactions since the enactment of the subpart F rules by the Kennedy administration in 1962. (For prior coverage, see Doc 2009-10047 or 2009 TNT 84-1.) In essence, the Obama proposals introduce a 21stcentury version of the vision begun by Thomas Adams in 1918 and continued by Stanley Surrey in 1961: a world in which source and residence taxation are coordinated so as to achieve the underlying goals of the international tax …
The Oecd Harmful Tax Competition Report: A Tenth Anniversary Retrospective, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
The Oecd Harmful Tax Competition Report: A Tenth Anniversary Retrospective, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
Eleven years ago the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development published its report "Harmful Tax Competition: An Emerging Global Issue." The Report identified for the first time two problem areas facing international income taxation of geographically mobile activities: tax havens and harmful preferential tax regimes. It sought to initiate activities to eliminate both types of problems.
Risks, Rents And Regressivity Revisited, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Risks, Rents And Regressivity Revisited, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
This article seeks to survey the debate in the United States about whether the tax base should be income or consumption, and then focus on some recent arguments that have been made in favour of a consumption tax. In the author's opinion, none of these arguments are convincing, and he would favour adopting a consumption tax in addition to, and not in lieu of, the existing income tax.
How Globalization Affects Tax Design, James R. Hines Jr., Lawrence H. Summers
How Globalization Affects Tax Design, James R. Hines Jr., Lawrence H. Summers
Articles
The economic changes associated with globalization tighten financial pressures on governments of high-income countries by increasing the demand for government spending while making it more costly to raise tax revenue. Greater international mobility of economic activity, and associated responsiveness of the tax base to tax rates, increases the economic distortions created by taxation. Countries with small open economies have relatively mobile tax bases; as a result, they rely much less heavily on corporate and personal income taxes than do other countries. The evidence indicates that a ten percent smaller population in 1999 is associated with a one percent smaller ratio …
Reconsidering The Taxation Of Foreign Income, James R. Hines Jr.
Reconsidering The Taxation Of Foreign Income, James R. Hines Jr.
Articles
The purpose of this Article is to analyze the consequences of taxing active foreign business income,1 and in particular, to compare a regime in which a home country taxes foreign income to a regime in which it does not. In practice, countries typically do not adopt such extreme policy positions. For example, a country such as France, which largely exempts foreign business income from taxation, nevertheless taxes small pieces of foreign income;2 and a country such as the United States, which attempts to tax the foreign incomes of U.S. corporations, permits taxpayers to defer home country taxation in some circumstances, …
Allocating Business Profits For Tax Purposes: A Proposal To Adopt A Formulary Profit Split, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Kimberly A. Clausing, Michael C. Durst
Allocating Business Profits For Tax Purposes: A Proposal To Adopt A Formulary Profit Split, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Kimberly A. Clausing, Michael C. Durst
Articles
The current system of taxing the income of multinational firms in the United States is flawed across multiple dimensions. The system provides an artificial tax incentive to earn income in low-tax countries, rewards aggressive tax planning, and is not compatible with any common metrics of efficiency. The U.S. system is also notoriously complex; observers are nearly unanimous in lamenting the heavy compliance burdens and the impracticality of coherent enforcement. Further, despite a corporate tax rate one standard deviation above that of other OECD countries, the U.S. corporate tax system raises relatively little revenue, due in part to the shifting of …