Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 10 of 10
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.
Misguided Relief: The Real Property Tax Addition To The Standard Deduction, Alan L. Feld
Misguided Relief: The Real Property Tax Addition To The Standard Deduction, Alan L. Feld
Faculty Scholarship
The push to use federal money for benevolent purposes occasionally produces more cost than benefit, particularly when the outlay comes in the form of taxes forgiven. The Housing Assistance Tax Act of 2008 added a supplement to the basic standard deduction. A nonitemizing taxpayer may claim a deduction for real property taxes paid, up to $500, $1,000 in the case of a joint return. Initially, the change applied only to 2008, but subsequent legislation extended its life through 2009, and pending legislation would make it a permanent part of the Code. Although well intentioned, the real property tax provision makes …
Families For Tax Purposes: What About The Steps, Wendy G. Gerzog
Families For Tax Purposes: What About The Steps, Wendy G. Gerzog
All Faculty Scholarship
At least 4.4 million families in the U.S. are blended ones that include step-children and step-parents. For tax purposes, these steps receive preferential treatment for their status because they are on the one hand included as family members for many income tax benefit sections, but on the other hand excluded as family members for business entity attribution purposes and for gift and estate tax anti-abuse provisions. In the interests of fairness and uniformity, steps should be treated as family members for all tax purposes where steps have in fact voluntarily acted as their biological or adoptive counterparts, both when such …
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 …
Who's Afraid Of Redistribution? An Analysis Of The Earned Income Tax Credit, Jennifer Bird-Pollan
Who's Afraid Of Redistribution? An Analysis Of The Earned Income Tax Credit, Jennifer Bird-Pollan
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
In the 2008 Presidential campaign, the American public was reminded time and again of the differences in the economic policies of the nominees: John McCain would cut taxes, and Barack Obama would raise them, although only on those earning over $250,000. In the final days of the campaign, the McCain camp accused Obama of proposing “redistribution,” and the Obama camp quickly denied that description. So why do presidential candidates run so quickly from the r-word? McCain’s senior policy advisor equated redistribution with socialism, but redistribution, in the form of the federal income tax system, is a central tenet of American …
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.
Use Of Judicial Doctrines In Federal Tax Cases Decided By Trial Courts, 1993-2006: A Quantitative Assessment, Daniel M. Schneider
Use Of Judicial Doctrines In Federal Tax Cases Decided By Trial Courts, 1993-2006: A Quantitative Assessment, Daniel M. Schneider
Cleveland State Law Review
The hypothesis of this Article is that the accepted wisdom--that judicial doctrines are raised exclusively by the government or the courts for the government's benefit--is wrong. Instead, judicial doctrines are used in a much richer manner by courts and by taxpayers, as well as the government, than the “wisdom” would suggest. It is the first paper to question the accepted thought about judicial doctrines and to do so using social science methodology. Starting at the end and working forward, the evidence assembled for this Article from a group of trial decisions about federal tax controversies establishes that, under the language …
Closing The International Tax Gap Via Cooperations, Not Competition, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Closing The International Tax Gap Via Cooperations, Not Competition, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Book Chapters
All three major goals of the Volcker task force — reducing tax evasion and loopholes, simplifying the code, and reducing corporate welfare — can be advanced by focusing on the international aspects of the tax gap. These aspects include both enforcement of existing U.S. law on U.S. residents earning income overseas (the evasion issue) and reforming deferral for U.S.-based multinational enterprises (the avoidance issue). To best advance the task force’s three goals, I would propose a change in each of these two major international areas.
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 …
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 …