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Full-Text Articles in Law
A Proposed Replacement Of The Tax Expenditure Concept And A Different Perspective On Accelerated Depreciation, Douglas A. Kahn
A Proposed Replacement Of The Tax Expenditure Concept And A Different Perspective On Accelerated Depreciation, Douglas A. Kahn
Law & Economics Working Papers
The thesis of this article is that the tax expenditure concept is grounded on an erroneous vision of the structure of an income tax system. The tax expenditure concept adopts a binary view of income taxation. It posits that there is an ideal or pure income tax system whose provisions are elements of the normal structure of that system without any influence from non-tax policy considerations. Tax provisions are described either as falling within those core provisions or outside of them. There are no other categories. To the contrary, this article contends that tax provisions lie on a continuum in …
Understanding The Amt, And Its Unadopted Sibling, The Amxt, James R. Hines Jr., Kyle Logue
Understanding The Amt, And Its Unadopted Sibling, The Amxt, James R. Hines Jr., Kyle Logue
Law & Economics Working Papers
U.S. taxpayers are currently required to pay the greater of their liabilities under the regular income tax and their liabilities under the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Despite its unpopularity, the AMT serves the function of permitting Congress to offer tax preferences for certain activities and expenditures while maintaining a progressive tax system. This paper examines this role of the AMT, and explores the possibility of adding an Alternative Maximum Tax (AMxT) that would augment the impact of the AMT. An AMxT limits a taxpayer’s liability to the minimum of the amount due under the regular income tax and the amount …
Territoriality: For And Against, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Territoriality: For And Against, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Law & Economics Working Papers
This article will survey the main arguments for and against territoriality and conclude that it is the wrong way to go in the short run, but can perhaps be adopted in the medium to long run in conjunction with more fundamental international tax reform. The main reason that territoriality should not be adopted now is that the OECD may be about to recommend worldwide consolidation for all its members as part of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project, and if the OECD does that, all of the standard arguments in favor of territoriality and against abolishing deferral disappear.
And Yet It Moves: A Tax Paradigm For The 21st Century, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
And Yet It Moves: A Tax Paradigm For The 21st Century, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Law & Economics Working Papers
A central premise of tax scholarship of the last thirty years has been the greater mobility of capital than labor. Recently, scholars such as Edward Kleinbard have recommended that the US adopt a variant of the 'dual income tax' model used by the Scandinavian countries, under which income from capital is subject to significantly lower rates than labor income because of its supposedly greater mobility. This article argues that the premise upon which this argument is built is mistaken, because for individual US taxpayers (as opposed to corporations), there are significant limitations on their ability to avoid tax by moving …
Taxing The Platypygous, James J. White
Taxing The Platypygous, James J. White
Articles
This Article maintains that obesity in the United States is an enormous public health issue that causes the health care costs of the obese Americans greatly to exceed those of citizens of normal weight. Recognizing that that much of that cost will be born by publicly financed programs and that the taxes supporting those programs will constitute an externality that the fat impose on the thin, the Article proposes a tax on high calorie food-but only when that food is purchased by the obese. The Article addresses many of the administrative, moral and other objections to a tax aimed at …
Unitary Taxation And International Tax Rules, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Unitary Taxation And International Tax Rules, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Law & Economics Working Papers
Any proposal to adopt Unitary Taxation (UT) of multinationals has to contend with whether such taxation is compatible with existing international tax rules and in particular with the bilateral tax treaty network. Indeed, some researchers have argued that the separate accounting (SA) method and the arm’s length standard are so embodied in the treaties that they form part of customary international law and are binding even in the absence of a treaty. In this paper we will argue that UT can be compatible with most of the existing tax treaties, and that developing countries in particular can implement it in …
Carbon Tax, Health Care Tax, Bank Tax, And Other Regulatory Taxes, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Carbon Tax, Health Care Tax, Bank Tax, And Other Regulatory Taxes, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Book Chapters
The momentous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (PPACA) took sides in a long-running dispute about whether taxation can legitimately be used for purposes other than raising revenue for the government. The context was the imposition by Congress of a monetary penalty on individuals who refuse to buy health insurance. Opponents of the Act argued that calling this levy a tax added nothing to its constitutional validity since "the noncompliance penalty . .. does not meet the historical criteria for a tax" because "the clear purpose of …