Law Commons^™

The Commerciality Doctrine As Applied To The Charitable Tax Exemption For Homes For The Aged: State And Local Tax Perspectives, David A. Brennen

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This essay examines the question of how state and local government officials should consider federal tax law principles, like the commerciality doctrine, when they challenge state and local property tax exemptions that rely, at least in part, on tax-exempt charitable status for federal income tax purposes. In particular, this essay uses the example of continuing care retirement communities to consider tax-exempt law’s commerciality doctrine in an attempt to discern distinctions between “homes for the aged” that are “charitable,” and thus entitled to exemption, and those that are too commercial, and thus not entitled to exemption. In fact, one might say …

Taxation, Craig D. Bell

University of Richmond Law Review

This article reviews significant developments in the law affect-ing Virginia taxation. Each section covers recent legislative changes, judicial decisions, and selected opinions or pronouncements from the Virginia Department of Taxation and the Attorney General of Virginia over the past year. The overall purpose ofthis article is to provide Virginia tax and general practitioners with a concise overview of the recent developments in Virginia taxation most likely to have an impact on their practices. This article will not, however, discuss many of the numerous technical legislative changes to the State Taxation Code of Title 58.1.

Philosopher Kings And International Tax: A New Approach To Tax Havens, Tax Flight, And International Tax Cooperation, Steven Dean

Faculty Scholarship

Tax flight treaties could help to solve the $50 billion-a-year problem that tax flight (the evasion of income taxes through the use of offshore tax havens) poses for the United States. Tax flight treaties would offer tax havens a substantial portion of the increased tax revenues that they could generate by providing the United States with the enforcement assistance it needs. Those payments, potentially representing as much as half of the added tax revenue produced by tax flight treaties (and in all probability an amount that is greater than any GDP gains attributable to eliminating waste and other economic distortions …

Ethics And Standards Of Tax Practice In The New Age Of Transparency: From Self-Assessment To Self-Audit, Emily A. Parker, Robert D. Probasco

Robert Probasco

No abstract provided.

Section 965: A Traditional Corporate Tax Policy Evaluation, Jessica C. Kornberg

ExpressO

The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 dramatically reduced the tax on foreign subsidiary dividend payments to their United States parent companies. By many accounts, §965 introduces perverse incentives into the tax code. Critics of §965 argue that the possibility of a future repatriation holiday encourages multinationals to hoard even greater profits abroad and lobby for their tax-free return. In the long run, §965 may exacerbate rather than mitigate the deferral of foreign source income taxation. Now that §965 is set to expire and the repatriation taxes it triggered have been collected, its full impact is beginning to come clear. …

The Patent Office Meets The Poison Pill: Why Legal Methods Cannot Be Patented, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

In 2003, for the first time in its 170-year history, the United States Patent Office began awarding patents for novel legal innovations, in addition to traditional inventions such as the telephone or airplane. Commentators have accepted the Patent Office's power to grant legal method patents, but at the same time have criticized this new type of patent on policy grounds. But no one has suggested that the Patent Office exceeded its authority by awarding patents for legal methods, until now.

In the Patent Act of 1952, which is still in effect today, Congress established certain requirements for patentability, including a …

Patents On Legal Methods? No Way!, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

An “invention,” as used in the United States patent laws, refers to anything made by man that employs or harnesses a law of nature or a naturally occurring substance for human benefit. A watermill, for instance, harnesses the power of gravity to run machinery. But legal methods, such as tax strategies, are not inventions in this sense, because they employ “laws of man” — not laws of nature to produce a useful result.

The Impact On Maryland's Budget Of Allowing Same-Sex Couples To Marry, M.V. Lee Badgett, Amanda K. Baumle, Shawn Kravich, Adam P. Romero

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Taxing Citizens In A Global Economy, Michael S. Kirsch

Journal Articles

This Article addresses a fundamental issue underlying the U.S. tax system in the international context: the use of citizenship as a jurisdictional basis for imposing income tax. As a general matter, the United States is the only economically developed country that taxes its citizens abroad on their foreign income.

Despite this broad general assertion of taxing jurisdiction, Congress allows citizens abroad to exclude a limited amount of their income earned from working outside the United States. Influential lobbying groups, including businesses that employ significant numbers of U.S. citizens abroad, argue that this exclusion is necessary in order to keep American …

Taxation Of Profit Interests And The Reverse Mancur Olson Phenomenon, Darryll K. Jones

Journal Publications

The Article proceeds from this point through four acts, each of which highlights, largely without subjective judgment whenever possible, the rent-seeking and rent extraction motivations animating the outcomes. Indeed, the Article agrees with the idea that rent seeking and rent extractions are rational behaviors and indeed may even have a legitimate place in tax law. So, in Act I the Article describes the law as it came to be as a result of Diamond v. Commissioner, a relatively small dollar amount case that challenged the unstated political compromise theretofore existing. Diamond and its aftermath provide the first evidence of successful …