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Full-Text Articles in Law

Whistleblowers And Rogues: An Urgent Call For An Affirmative Defense To Corporate Criminal Liability, Marcia Narine Jan 2012

Whistleblowers And Rogues: An Urgent Call For An Affirmative Defense To Corporate Criminal Liability, Marcia Narine

Articles

No abstract provided.


L3cs: An Innovative Choice For Urban Entrepreneurs And Urban Revitalization, Dana Thompson Jan 2012

L3cs: An Innovative Choice For Urban Entrepreneurs And Urban Revitalization, Dana Thompson

Articles

Social enterprises offer fresh ways of addressing seemingly intractable social problems, such as high levels of unemployment and poverty in economically distressed urban areas in the United States. Indeed, although social enterprises have deep and longstanding roots, the recent iteration of the social enterprise movement is gaining momentum in the United States and globally. Though there is not a singularly accepted legal definition of social enterprises, they are popularly known as businesses that use forprofit business practices, principles, and discipline to accomplish socially beneficial goals. Social entrepreneurs, those who operate social enterprises, eschew a traditional notion of charity, which primarily …


Money On The Table: Why The U.S. Should Tax Inbound Capital Gains, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jul 2011

Money On The Table: Why The U.S. Should Tax Inbound Capital Gains, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

On March 21, 2011, AT&T announced that it will buy T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion. This transaction will be tax free to Deutsche Telekom (DT) not because it qualifies as a reorganization, but because DT is a foreign corporation and capital gains of nonresidents are generally not subject to U.S. taxation because they are deemed to be foreign source. Also, DT is protected from taxation by article 13(5) of the Germany-U.S. tax treaty, which provides that capital gains are generally taxable only by the country of residence.


Citizens United And The Corporate Form, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2011

Citizens United And The Corporate Form, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In Citizens United vs. FEC, the Supreme Court struck down a Federal statute banning direct corporate expenditures on political campaigns. The decision has been widely criticized and praised as a matter of First Amendment law. But it is also interesting as another step in the evolution of our legal views of the corporation. This article argues that by viewing Citizens United through the prism of theories about the corporate form, it is possible to see that the majority and the dissent departed from previous Supreme Court jurisprudence on the First Amendment rights of corporations. It is also possible to then …


Formulary Apportionment: Myths And Prospects - Promoting Better International Policy And Utilizing The Misunderstood And Under-Theorized Formulary Alternative, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Ilan Benshalom Jan 2011

Formulary Apportionment: Myths And Prospects - Promoting Better International Policy And Utilizing The Misunderstood And Under-Theorized Formulary Alternative, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Ilan Benshalom

Articles

This article seeks to re-examine the formulary alternative to transfer pricing by inquiring whether partial integration of formulary concepts into current practices would offer a reasonable alternative to transfer pricing rules. We believe that the key to achieving an equitable and efficient allocation of MNE income is to solve the problem of the residual, i.e., how to allocate income generated from mobile assets and activities whose risks are borne collectively by the entire MNE group. These assets and activities generate most of the current transfer pricing compliance and administrative costs, as well as tax avoidance opportunities. A limited formulary tax …


Between Formulary Apportionment And The Oecd Guidelines: A Proposal For Reconciliation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2010

Between Formulary Apportionment And The Oecd Guidelines: A Proposal For Reconciliation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In the last 30 years, a debate has been raging in international tax circles between advocates of the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines and the arm’s length standard (ALS) they embody, on the one hand, and advocates of formulary apportionment (FA) on the other. After the adoption of the 1995 regulations and the new OECD Guidelines, the debate became quieter for a while, because everyone was waiting to see whether the issue had been resolved. However, while there have been few decided cases, it is clear by now that the transfer pricing problem is as bad as it ever was. That …


The Attack On Nonprofit Status: A Charitable Assessment, James R. Hines Jr., Jill R. Horwitz, Austin Nichols Jan 2010

The Attack On Nonprofit Status: A Charitable Assessment, James R. Hines Jr., Jill R. Horwitz, Austin Nichols

Articles

American nonprofit organizations receive favorable tax treatment, including tax exemptions and tax-deductibility of contributions, in return for their devotion to charitable purposes and restrictions not to distribute profits. Recent efforts to extend some or all of these tax benefits to for-profit companies making social investments, including the creation of the new hybrid nonprofit/for-profit company form known as the Low-Profit Limited Liability Company, threaten to undermine the vitality of the nonprofit sector and the integrity of the tax system. Reform advocates maintain that the ability to compensate executives based on performance and to distribute profits when attractive investment opportunities are scarce …


Obama's International Tax Plan: A Major Step Forward, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah May 2009

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 …


Allocating Business Profits For Tax Purposes: A Proposal To Adopt A Formulary Profit Split, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Kimberly A. Clausing, Michael C. Durst Jan 2009

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 …


Environmental Crime Comes Of Age: The Evolution Of Criminal Enforcement In The Environmental Regulatory Scheme, David M. Uhlmann Jan 2009

Environmental Crime Comes Of Age: The Evolution Of Criminal Enforcement In The Environmental Regulatory Scheme, David M. Uhlmann

Articles

The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 often is considered the first environmental criminal statute because it contains strict liability provisions that make it a misdemeanor to discharge refuse into navigable waters of the United States without a permit. When Congress passed the Rivers and Harbors Act, however, it was far more concerned with preventing interference with interstate commerce than environmental protection. For practical purposes, the environmental crimes program in the United States dates to the development of the modem environmental regulatory system during the 1970s, and amendments to the environmental laws during the 1980s, which upgraded criminal violations of …


Domestic Effects Of The Foreign Activities Of U.S. Multinationals, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr. Jan 2009

Domestic Effects Of The Foreign Activities Of U.S. Multinationals, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

Do firms investing abroad simultaneously reduce their domestic activity? This paper analyzes the relationship between the domestic and foreign operations of US manufacturing firms between 1982 and 2004 by instrumenting for changes in foreign operations with GDP growth rates of the foreign countries in which they invest. Estimates produced using this instrument indicate that 10 percent greater foreign investment is associated with 2.6 percent greater domestic investment, and 10 percent greater foreign employee compensation is associated with 3.7 percent greater domestic employee compensation. These results do not support the popular notion that expansions abroad reduce a firm’s domestic activity, instead …


London As Delaware?, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2009

London As Delaware?, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

Jurisdictional competition in corporate law has long been a staple of academic-and sometimes, political-debate in the United States. State corporate law, by long-standing tradition in the United States, determines most questions of internal corporate governance-the role of boards of directors, the allocation of authority between directors, managers and shareholders, etc.-while federal law governs questions of disclosure to shareholders-annual reports, proxy statements, and periodic filings. Despite substantial incursions by Congress, most recently in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, this dividing line between state and federal law persists, so state law arguably has the most immediate impact on corporate governance outcomes.


London As Delaware?, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2009

London As Delaware?, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

In the United States, state corporate law determines most questions of internal corporate governance - the role of directors; the allocation of authority between directors, managers, and shareholders; etc. - while federal law governs questions of disclosure to shareholders - annual reports, proxy statements, and periodic filings. Despite substantial incursions by Congress, most recently with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, this dividing line between state and federal law persists, so state law arguably has the most immediate effect on corporate governance outcomes.


Do Investors In Controlled Firms Value Insider Trading Laws? International Evidence, Laura Nyantung Beny Jan 2008

Do Investors In Controlled Firms Value Insider Trading Laws? International Evidence, Laura Nyantung Beny

Articles

This article characterizes insider trading as an agency problem in firms that have a controlling shareholder. Using a standard agency model of corporate value diversion through insider trading by the controlling shareholder, I derive testable hypotheses about the relationship between corporate value and insider trading laws among such firms. The article tests these hypotheses using firm-level cross-sectional data from twenty-seven developed countries. The results show that stringent insider trading laws and enforcement are associated with greater corporate valuation among the sample firms in common law countries, a result that is consistent with the claim that insider trading laws mitigate agency …


Back To The Future? The Potential Revival Of Territoriality, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2008

Back To The Future? The Potential Revival Of Territoriality, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

Since 1994, the trend in the United States and other developed countries appears to be to reduce the scope of residence jurisdiction and increase the emphasis on source jurisdiction. If this trend continues, these countries are likely to move toward territoriality and decrease the emphasis on their CFC rules. In the author’s opinion, the reason for this trend is political and economic, not legal. It is part of tax competition, specifically the competition to be the headquarters jurisdiction for multinationals. The author also thinks, however, that it is not necessary to go down this road because the solution to the …


Stoneridge Investment Partners V. Scientific-Atlanta: The Political Economy Of Securities Class Action Reform, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2008

Stoneridge Investment Partners V. Scientific-Atlanta: The Political Economy Of Securities Class Action Reform, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

I begin in Part II by explaining the wrong turn that the Court took in Basic. The Basic Court misunderstood the function of the reliance element and its relation to the question of damages. As a result, the securities class action regime established in Basic threatens draconian sanctions with limited deterrent benefit. Part III then summarizes the cases leading up to Stoneridge and analyzes the Court's reasoning in that case. In Stoneridge, like the decisions interpreting the reliance requirement of Rule 10b-5 that came before it, the Court emphasized policy implications. Sometimes policy implications are invoked to broaden the reach …


All In The Family As A Single Shareholder Of An S Corporation, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn, Terrence G. Perris Aug 2007

All In The Family As A Single Shareholder Of An S Corporation, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn, Terrence G. Perris

Articles

Subject to a few exceptions, a corporation that has elected to be taxed under subchapter S of chapter 1 of subtitle A of title 26 of the United States tax code is not taxed on its net income. Instead, the income, deductions, credits, and other tax items of an S corporation pass through to its shareholders on a pro rata basis. To qualify for subchapter S treatment, an electing corporation must satisfy the requirements that are set forth in section 1361, one of which is that the corporation can have no more than 100 shareholders. One aspect of that requirement …


Insider Trading Laws And Stock Markets Around The World: An Empirical Contribution To The Theoretical Law And Economics Debate, Laura Nyantung Beny Jan 2007

Insider Trading Laws And Stock Markets Around The World: An Empirical Contribution To The Theoretical Law And Economics Debate, Laura Nyantung Beny

Articles

The primary goal of this Article is to bring empirical evidence to bear on the heretofore largely theoretical law and economics debate about insider trading. The Article first summarizes various agency, market, and contractual (or "Coasian") theories of insider trading propounded over the course of this longstanding debate. The Article then proposes three testable hypotheses regarding the relationship between insider trading laws and several measures of stock market performance. Exploiting the natural variation of international data, the Article finds that more stringent insider trading laws are generally associated with more dispersed equity ownership, greater stock price accuracy and greater stock …


Dividend Policy Inside The Multinational Firm, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr. Jan 2007

Dividend Policy Inside The Multinational Firm, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

This paper examines the determinants of profit repatriation policies for US multinational firms. Dividend repatriations are surprisingly persistent and resemble dividend payments to external shareholders. Tax considerations influence dividend repatriations, but not decisively, as differentially-taxed entities feature similar policies and some firms incur avoidable tax penalties. Parent companies requiring cash to fund domestic investments, or to pay dividends to common shareholders, draw on the resources of their foreign affiliates through repatriations. Incompletely controlled affiliates are more likely than others to make regular dividend payments and to trigger avoidable tax costs through repatriations. The results indicate that traditional corporate finance concerns …


The Internal Markets Of Multinational Firms, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr. Jan 2007

The Internal Markets Of Multinational Firms, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

The rising economic importance of multinational firms has been accompanied by significant changes in their structure and functioning. Multinational firms, historically characterized as webs of autonomous subsidiaries spread across countries, now represent globally integrated production systems serving worldwide customers. These changes are manifest in the rising significance of intrafirm trade and financial flows for these firms. While there is extensive analysis of aggregate patterns in intrafirm flows of goods and capital, few firm-based studies examine the workings of the internal markets of multinational firms, largely because of the difficulty in accessing the necessary data. A number of our recent projects …


Taxation In Developing Countries: Some Recent Support And Challenges To The Conventional View, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Yoram Margolioth Jan 2007

Taxation In Developing Countries: Some Recent Support And Challenges To The Conventional View, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Yoram Margolioth

Articles

The general advice given by international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to developing countries over the past few decades has been to replace trade taxes with domestic consumption taxes, particularly value-added taxes (VAT), and to maintain relatively high corporate income tax rates. This article reviews recent literature that supports and challenges this conventional view.


Taxation And Multinational Activity: New Evidence, New Interpretations, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr. Jan 2006

Taxation And Multinational Activity: New Evidence, New Interpretations, Mihir A. Desai, C. Fritz Foley, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

In the midst of rapid integration and globalization, multinational firms still face tax systems that differ among countries, and these differences have the potential to affect major investment and financing decisions. This research covers a wide range of topics, including the impact of indirect taxes as well as of corporate income taxes, the sensitivity of financing decisions to tax rates, the effects of taxes on repatriation policies, the demand for, and impact of, tax havens, and the use of indirect ownership as a means of avoiding taxes. The behavior of US multinational firms as revealed by the evidence collected by …


Prevention Of Double Deductions Of A Single Loss: Solutions In Search Of A Problem, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn Jan 2006

Prevention Of Double Deductions Of A Single Loss: Solutions In Search Of A Problem, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn

Articles

In the current tax system, a corporation is treated as a separate taxable entity. This tax system is sometimes referred to as an entity tax or a double tax system. Since a corporation is a separate and distinct entity from its owners, the shareholders, the default rule is that transfers between them are treated as realization events. Without a specific Internal Revenue Code (Code) provision providing otherwise, such transactions will also require the parties to recognize the realized gain or loss. Congress has enacted several nonrecognition corporate provisions when forcing the recognition of income could prevent changes to the form …


The Irrational Auditor And Irrational Liability, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2006

The Irrational Auditor And Irrational Liability, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

This Article argues that less liability for auditors in certain areas might encourage more accurate and useful financial statements, or at least equally accurate statements at a lower cost. Audit quality is promoted by three incentives: reputation, regulation, and litigation. When we take reputation and regulation into account, exposing auditors to potentially massive liability may undermine the effectiveness of reputation and regulation, thereby diminishing integrity of audited financial statements. The relation of litigation to the other incentives that promote audit quality has become more important in light of the sea change that occurred in the regulation of the auditing profession …


China's Acquisitions Abroad - Global Ambitions, Domestic Effects, Nicholas C. Howson Jan 2006

China's Acquisitions Abroad - Global Ambitions, Domestic Effects, Nicholas C. Howson

Articles

In the past year or so, the world has observed with seeming trepidation what appears to be a new phenomenon-China's "stepping out" into the world economy. The move, labeled the "Going Out Strategy" by Chinese policy makers, sees China acting in the world not just as a trader of commodities and raw materials, or the provider of inexpensively-produced consumer goods for every corner of the globe, but as a driven and sophisticated acquirer of foreign assets and the equity interests in the legal entities that control such assets. The New Yorker magazine, ever topical and appropriately humorous, highlighted this attention …


The Common Law Power Of The Legislature: Insurer Conversions And Charitable Funds, Jill R. Horwitz, Marion R. Fremont-Smith Jan 2005

The Common Law Power Of The Legislature: Insurer Conversions And Charitable Funds, Jill R. Horwitz, Marion R. Fremont-Smith

Articles

New York's Empire Blue Ccoss and Blue Shield conversion from nonprofic cofor­ profic form has considerable legal significance. Three aspects of the conversion ma.ke checase unique: the role of the scace legislature in directing the disposicion of the conversion assets, che face chac it made itself che primary beneficiary of chose assets, and the actions of che scace attorney general defending the state rather than che public inceresc in che charitable assets. Drawing on several cenruries of common Law rejecting the Legislacive power to direct the disposition of charitable funds, chis article argues chat the legislature lacked power cocontrol che …


The Silver Lining: The International Tax Provisions Of The American Jobs Creation Act - A Reconsideration, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah Jan 2005

The Silver Lining: The International Tax Provisions Of The American Jobs Creation Act - A Reconsideration, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, passed by the US Congress on 12 October and signed into law by President Bush on 22 October 2004, has been greeted by general dismay by various critics. The Act has been described as overloaded with “pork” and giveaways to special interest groups like tobacco farmers. The critics contend that the only achievement of the Act, the repeal of the “extraterritorial income” (ETI) regime that was ruled by the WTO to be a prohibited export subsidy, is dwarfed by 633 pages of special interest legislation. Even the Bush Administration distanced itself from the …


Exchanges Of Multiple Stocks And Securities In Corporate Divisions Or Acquisitive Reorganizations, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey S. Lehman Jan 2004

Exchanges Of Multiple Stocks And Securities In Corporate Divisions Or Acquisitive Reorganizations, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Articles

If specified conditions are satisfied, the Internal Revenue Code provides nonrecognition for gain or loss realized when stocks and securities of one corporation are exchanged for stocks and securities of another corporation. When the exchange is made as part of a corporate division (a split-off or a split-up), the principal nonrecognition provision is section 355; and when the exchange is made as part of an acquisitive reorganization, the principal nonrecognition provision is section 354. Complete nonrecognition is provided only when stock is exchanged solely for stock and securities are exchanged solely for securities of no greater principal amount. If, in …


Seeking Truth For Power: Informational Strategy And Regulatory Policymaking, Cary Coglianese, Richard Zeckhauser, Edward A. Parson Jan 2004

Seeking Truth For Power: Informational Strategy And Regulatory Policymaking, Cary Coglianese, Richard Zeckhauser, Edward A. Parson

Articles

Information is the lifeblood of regulatory policy. The effective use of governmental power depends on information about conditions in the world, strategies for improving those conditions, and the consequences associated with deploying different strategies. Indeed, this need for information has led legislatures to create specialized committee structures, delegate policy authority to expert agencies, and develop administrative procedures that encourage analysis. Although legal scholars have extensively debated procedures and reforms designed to improve the analytic and scientific basis of regulatory policymaking, they have paid relatively little attention to how regulators gain the information they need for making and implementing regulatory policy. …


Tender Offers By Controlling Shareholders: The Specter Of Coercion And Fair Price, Adam C. Pritchard Jan 2004

Tender Offers By Controlling Shareholders: The Specter Of Coercion And Fair Price, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

Taking your company private has never been so appealing. The collapse of the tech bubble has left many companies whose stock prices bordered on the stratospheric now trading at small fractions of their historical highs. The spate of accounting scandals that followed the bursting of the bubble has taken some of the shine off the aura of being a public company-the glare of the spotlight from stock analysts and the business press looks much less inviting, notwithstanding the monitoring benefits that the spotlight purports to confer. Moreover, the regulatory backlash against those accounting scandals has made the costs of being …