Law Commons^™

Reasonable Tax Rules: Advancing Process Values With Remedial Restraint, James M. Puckett

Journal Articles

The tax administration is at risk of an overcorrection with respect to its rulemaking process. Tax practitioners increasingly are mining the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) as well as chipping away at barriers to pre-enforcement review of tax rules. Tax rules include regulations, revenue rulings, revenue procedures, and more informal guidance to the public. APA-based challenges to tax rules have gained traction in the courts, typically alleging inadequate explanation or timing irregularities involving notice and comment. Such claims potentially pose major challenges for fair and efficient tax administration.

This Article integrates administrative law scholarship calling for a rule of reason with …

Legitimate Expectations In Canada: Soft Law And Tax Administration, Sas Ansari, Lorne Sossin

Articles & Book Chapters

This chapter examines the relationship between legitimate expectations and soft law. In what circumstances can an agency’s guidelines create law — or at least legally enforceable expectations? At first glance, the answer would appear obvious. The key reason for developing soft law is to provide guidance and transparency as to the process (and sometimes the substance) of administrative action. Soft law by its nature gives rise to expectations. Whether those expectations, in turn, give rise to legal effects is decidedly less clear. In fact, this question has vexed Canadian administrative law. Nowhere are questions of soft law and legitimate expectations …

Fixing The Fmla's Flaws: A Fight For Care, Adult Children, And Tax Incentives, Kelsey A. Jonas

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Death Of Tax Court Exceptionalism, Stephanie Hoffer, Christopher J. Walker

Christopher J. Walker

Tax exceptionalism—the view that tax law does not have to play by the administrative law rules that govern the rest of the regulatory state—has come under attack in recent years. In 2011, the Supreme Court rejected such exceptionalism by holding that judicial review of the Treasury Department’s interpretations of the tax code is subject to the same Chevron deference regime that applies throughout the administrative state. The D.C. Circuit followed suit by rejecting the IRS’s position that its notices are not subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). This Article calls for the demise of another instance …

Big (Gay) Love: Has The Irs Legalized Polygamy?, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

Within days in December, a federal judge in Utah made news by loosening that state’s criminal prohibition against polygamy and the Attorney General of North Dakota made news by opining that a party to a same-sex marriage could enter into a different-sex marriage in that state without first obtaining a divorce or annulment. Both of these opinions raised the specter of legalized plural marriage. What discussions of these opinions missed, however, is the possibility that the IRS might already have legalized plural marriage in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last June in United States v. Windsor, which …

Taxation Without Representation: The Illegal Irs Rule To Expand Tax Credits Under The Ppaca, Jonathan H. Adler, Michael F. Cannon

Faculty Publications

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) provides tax credits and subsidies for the purchase of qualifying health insurance plans on state-run insurance exchanges. Contrary to expectations, many states are refusing or otherwise failing to create such exchanges. An Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rule purports to extend these tax credits and subsidies to the purchase of health insurance in federal exchanges created in states without exchanges of their own. This rule lacks statutory authority. The text, structure, and history of the Act show that tax credits and subsidies are not available in federally run exchanges. The IRS rule is …

Foreign Administrative Law And International Taxation: A Case Study Of Tax Treaty Implementation In China, Wei Cui

All Faculty Publications

U.S. taxpayers and the IRS increasingly have to take into account the interactions between U.S. and foreign laws, but they have paid little attention to the administrative law backgrounds of foreign tax laws. In a growing range of cases, the need for such attention has become urgent. This Article describes a novel class of cases encountered by U.S. taxpayers that emanate from tax treaty implementation in China. In these cases, U.S. (and other foreign) investors face certain rules that conflict with common treaty interpretations, and that, at the same time, are not legally binding under Chinese domestic law. The question …

The Doctrine Of Proportionality, Mubashshir Sarshar

Mubashshir Sarshar

No abstract provided.

Agency-Specific Precedents, Robert L. Glicksman, Richard E. Levy

Robert L. Glicksman

As a field of legal study and practice, administrative law rests on the premise that legal principles concerning agency structure, administrative process, and judicial review cut across multiple agencies. In practice, however, judicial precedents addressing the application of administrative law doctrines to a given agency tend to rely most heavily on other cases involving the same agency, and use verbal formulations or doctrinal approaches reflected in those cases. Over time, the doctrine often begins to develop its own unique characteristics when applied to that particular agency. These “agency-specific precedents” deviate from the conventional understanding of the relevant principles as a …

Natural Justice And Its Applications In Administrative Law, Mubashshir Sarshar

Mubashshir Sarshar

No abstract provided.

Treasury Regulations And Judicial Deference In The Post-Chevron Era, David A. Brennen

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Analysis of several post-Chevron cases indicates that every major Supreme Court case since 1984 involving the validity of a Treasury regulation is consistent with Chevron. Indeed, since 1984 every challenged Treasury regulation interpreting a statute in which Congress failed to address a specific tax issue has been upheld by the Court. In fact, no Supreme Court case since 1984 could be discovered in which the Court invalidated a Treasury regulation on the grounds that it was an unreasonable interpretation of a statute. Several post-Chevron Supreme

Court decisions, however, rejected the Treasury's application of a tax regulation to …

Common Misconceptions: The Function And Framework Of "Trade Or Business Within The United States", Nancy H. Kaufman

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In this Article, Professor Kaufman examines the administrative and jurisdictional functions of the Internal Revenue Code's term "trade or business within the United States" in the taxation of foreign persons' income and the existing framework established for the term's interpretation. The author contends that the courts, by relying on two common misconceptions of the term, have made the term's application unpredictable. The author further believes that defining the term according to its functions would serve United States tax policy and economic interests. This definition would focus primarily on facts indicating an ongoing commitment to participation the United States economy. The …

Case Digest, Journal Staff

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Case Digest

1. ADMINISTRATIVE

NON-VESSEL-OPERATING COMMON CARRIERS HAVE BURDEN OF PROOF TO JUSTIFY THE REASONABLENESS OF PROPOSED RATE INCREASE IN A FEDERAL MARITIME COMMISSION PROCEEDING

2. ADMIRALTY

COMPARATIVE NEGLIGENCE STANDARD APPLICABLE TO THE CANAL ZONE COMPANY DOES NOT SUPERSEDE THE RULE OF DIVIDED DAMAGES BETWEEN VESSELS

FAILURE TO OBEY COMMANDS OF SHIP MASTER BECAUSE OF VOLUNTARY INTOXICATION CONSTITUTES WILLFUL DISOBEDIENCE

PREJUDGMENT INTEREST FROM DATE OF JUDICIAL DEMAND IS PROPER WHEN ORIGINAL ACTION AT LAW Is CHANGED TO ADMIRALTY BY WITHDRAWAL OF JURY DEMAND

THE PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE ALONE HAS STANDING TO BRING A WRONGFUL DEATH ACTION IN GENERAL MARITIME LAW

PERMITTING …

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Administrative Law--Due Process--Expulsion From Public University Requires Notice and Hearing

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Antitrust Law--Investigatory Powers--Federal Trade Commission Has Right To Obtain Private Copies Of Privileged Census Information

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Constitutional Law--Due Process-Escheat By One State of a Fund Claimed By Other States Held To Violate Due Process

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Sales--Warranty--Advertisement That Cigarettes Are Harmless Held An Express Warranty

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Taxation--Income Tax-Deferral Of Prepaid Income Disallowed

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Taxation--Inheritance, Estate and Gift Taxes--Blockage Rule Rejected in Evaluating Stock For Ohio Succession Tax

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Taxation--Use Tax--Commerce and Equal Protection Clauses--Discrimination Against Multi-State Business

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Torts--Negligence--Vendor of Alcoholic Beverages Held Liable for Injuries to Intoxicated Vendee Despite …

Taxpayer's Paradise In The Caribbean, Robert M. Baker, James E. Curry

Vanderbilt Law Review

A new industrial tax exemption statute became law in Puerto Rico on May 12, 1947. This island possession of the United States, located eight hours away from New York's LaGuardia field is already free of all federal income taxation. In the past, this favorable factor in its competition with mainland communities has been offset to a large extent by a very heavy local income tax. But industrialists who operate under the new exemption will be free of both federal and insular income taxes, as well as property and other local taxes.