Law Commons^™

The Case For Consumer-Based Use Tax Enforcement, David Gamage, Adam Thimmesch, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay argues that state governments’ current focus on getting vendors to collect their sales and use taxes is insufficient, especially in regard to e-commerce transactions. If state governments want their use taxes to serve as effective and lawful backstops to their sales taxes—as state governments claim is their goal—then states must also focus on the consumer side of the use-tax equation. This essay explains that both economic and rule of law considerations make it imperative for state governments to better enforce their sales and use taxes with respect to consumer taxpayers.

Why A State-Level Carbon Tax Can Include Border Adjustments, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This is our third in a series of articles considering taxation and greenhouse gas mitigation. To date, all state-level attempts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by placing a price on carbon have involved cap-and-trade regimes. In our previous two articles, we considered how importing tax features into a cap and- trade regime could ease distributive concerns and also make cap-and-trade regimes more efficient.

Using Taxes To Support Multiple Health Insurance Risk Pools, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In most markets, it is considered desirable for consumers to have more choices. But health insurance regulation is different. When it comes to health insurance, giving consumers more choices can result in the market collapsing — leaving the sickest and most needy consumers without any good choices at all. To mitigate this problem, the Affordable Care Act’s Exchanges were designed around maintaining a single exchange-based risk pool. However, one problem with this approach taken by the Affordable Care Act is that the regulations designed to maintain the single exchange-based risk pool have the side effect of limiting some potentially positive …

A New Theory Of Equitable Apportionment, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay analyzes the purpose of the equitable apportionment doctrine in state and local tax jurisprudence, arguing that the doctrine remains coherent in the context of single-sales-factor apportionment regimes.

Tax Cannibalization And Fiscal Federalism In The United States, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

We began this project pondering a riddle. Most state governments have adopted what we-and many others-view as clearly suboptimal tax policies, especially in regard to the taxation of corporate income and capital gains. Yet, with the notable exception of those who oppose progressivity and the taxation of capital, state-level tax policymakers have had remarkably little appetite for reform.

This Article provides one major explanation for this riddle by identifying and demonstrating a phenomenon that we label as "tax cannibalization." We argue that flawed state-level tax policies derive in part from perverse incentives inadvertently created by the federal government.

How States Can Respond To The Ahca: Using The Mccarran-Ferguson Act, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.