Law Commons^™

W(H)Ither Economic Substance?, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Transactions that claim inappropriate tax benefits are a perennial problem. When the IRS claims a transaction is abusive, courts generally examine whether the taxpayer had a business purpose and whether the transaction had economic substance (essentially a prospect of profit before taxes). This two-pronged "economic substance doctrine" developed from a series of Supreme Court cases.

Unfortunately, the economic substance doctrine provides a poor proxy for the real question, which was the focus of the early cases-whether the claimed tax results are consistent with Congress's intent. One important drawback of the shift from a focus on congressional intent to a focus …

Addressing Imperfections In The Tax System: Procedural Or Substantive Reform?, Leandra Lederman, Stephen W. Mazza

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In his book "Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else", David Cay Johnston, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, covers a wide array of topics, including some that are quite complex, in a very readable way. The federal income tax system generally and tax compliance in particular are important focuses of the book, but the theme that implicitly connects chapters that otherwise appear unrelated is a variety of aspects of income inequality.

Although "Perfectly Legal" does not make a clear case that politicians and …

Federal Tax Collection Controversies In The Era Of Drye, Steve R. Johnson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

By "tax collection controversies," I mean cases in which it has been established that the taxpayer owes additional taxes, those taxes remain unpaid, and the IRS is attempting to enforce collection out of the taxpayer's assets. Such cases are numerous and involve attorneys in general legal practice as well as tax specialists. For example, the taxpayer may be your client for non-tax matters, and may expect you to handle her tax collection controversy as well. Or, your client may not be the taxpayer herself, but instead someone who co-owns property with the taxpayer. Your client expects you to make sure …

Are There Procedural Deficiencies In Tax Fraud Cases? A Reply To Professor Schoenfeld, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

"Civil"Lzing Tax Procedure: Applying General Federal Learning To Statutory Notices Of Deficiency, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Tax procedure has been rather isolated from the main currents of civil procedure. Using the statutory notice of deficiency as an exemplar, the article explores how viewing tax procedure issues from the perspective of general civil litigation can facilitate procedural regularity and foster fairness to United States Tax Court contestants. The statutory notice is the document by which the IRS forewarns a taxpayer of impending assessment of tax greater than the amount reported on the taxpayer's return. The article identifies three functions of the notice and their general civil litigation analogues. First, like legal process, it provides the taxpayer with …