Law Commons^™

Charitable Deductions For Rail-Trail Conversions: Reconciling The Partial Interest Rule And The National Trails System Act, Danaya C. Wright

Danaya C. Wright

Abstract: This article examines an undeveloped legal topic at the intersection of tax law and real property law: charitable deductions from income tax liability for donations of railroad corridors to be converted into recreational trails. The very popular rails-to-trails program assists in the conversion of abandoned railroad corridors into hiking and biking trails. But the legal questions surrounding the property rights of these corridors have been complex and highly litigated. In 1983, Congress amended the National Trails System Act to provide a mechanism for facilitating these conversions, a process called railbanking. In essence, a railroad transfers its real property interests …

The Fortunes & Foibles Of Exchange-Traded Funds, William A. Birdthistle

William Birdthistle

One of the most dynamic and complex new investment vehicles on the market today is the exchange-traded fund, a security that provides the diversification of a mutual fund but trades on an exchange like a stock. In just over a decade, the number of ETFs has proliferated to well over 500, attracting almost half a trillion dollars in investment. Most of that growth has occurred in just the past two years, and ETFs are projected to continue growing at a pace far faster than hedge funds and mutual funds in the coming years. Yet for all this extraordinary growth, legal …

Freakonomics And The Tax Gap: An Applied Perspective, Leslie Book

Leslie Book

Over the past thirty years, a significant amount of research from a variety of social science disciplines has considered tax compliance. Economists, psychologists, and sociologists have contributed to the discussion, offering research and, at times, conflicting explanations regarding whether a person is likely to comply with his obligation to file an accurate tax return. The unifying theme among this research is a search for explanatory reasons which are the factors that lead to non-compliance. In broad terms, the economic models of tax compliance assume rational behavior, and that people will coldly consider compliance from the perspective as to whether the …

Time To Step Up: Modeling The African American Ethnivestor For Self Help Entrepreneurship In Urban America, Roger M. Groves

Roger M. Groves

Almost $6 billion in taxes paid by the American people have been rather ubiquitously placed in the hands of a federal subsidy program for investors in low income communities. The subsidy is in the form of a tax credit. The program is entitled the New Markets Tax Credit (“NMTC”) initiative. Under the program, the tax credit is used to lure investors to provide equity capital into low income areas, urban and/or rural (i.e. a new market for equity funding). According to my companion law review article (Florida Tax Review, Spring, 2007; The Florida Tax Review was ranked 1st among tax …

Time To Step Up: Modeling The African American Ethnivestor For Self Help Entrepreneurship In Urban America, Roger M. Groves

Roger M. Groves

Almost $6 billion in taxes paid by the American people have been rather ubiquitously placed in the hands of a federal subsidy program for investors in low income communities. The subsidy is in the form of a tax credit. The program is entitled the New Markets Tax Credit (“NMTC”) initiative. Under the program, the tax credit is used to lure investors to provide equity capital into low income areas, urban and/or rural (i.e. a new market for equity funding). According to my companion law review article (Florida Tax Review, Spring, 2007; The Florida Tax Review was ranked 1st among tax …

Good Hybrids/Bad Hybrids, Edward J. Mccaffery

Edward J McCaffery

Hybrid income-consumption taxes seek to tax some but not all savings, the treatment of savings being the principal difference between an income and a consumption tax. Some hybrids, however, simply move the tax system towards a prepaid consumption or wage tax; others, by allowing arbitrage, risk making all taxation voluntary. A consistent, progressive postpaid consumption tax, in contrast, gets matters just right, by design: it allows ordinary savings, for times of retirement or medical or educational needs, to lower the burden of taxation, while falling on the yield to savings when it is used to elevate lifestyles. It is, in …

A New Understanding Of Tax, Edward J. Mccaffery

Edward J McCaffery

A great deal and possibly all of the mind-numbing complexity of America’s largest and least popular tax follows from the decision to have a progressive personal income tax. Proponents wanted an individual income tax notwithstanding — indeed, in large part because of — such a tax’s “double taxation” of savings. This double-tax argument is an analytic point generally attributed to Mill’s classic 1848 treatise, Principles of Political Economy. Historically, much of the support for the Sixteenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, came from Southern and Midwestern, progressive, agricultural interests, who wanted, in general, to implement a redistributive tax and, in particular, …

Tax And Terrorism: A New Partnership?, Michelle Gallant

Michelle Gallant

The global chase for terrorist assets has shed light on a link between tax and terrorism. Tax havens have been associated with terrorist finance, identified as potential centres for filtrating terrorist assets and for enabling the cross-border movement of the resources destined for terrorist enterprises. Complex multi-jurisdictional financial transactions have become the venues for the merger of terrorist finance with other mobile capital, its criminally ordained purpose hidden midst the convolutions of international tax and related transactions.

To many the mechanics of tax is an inaccessible subject. It consists of a complex matrix of laws best left to the professional …

Forcing Fairness In State Taxation, Randall Gingiss

Randall Gingiss

No abstract provided.

Time To Step Up: Modeling The African American Ethnivestor For Self Help Entrepreneurship In Urban America, Roger M. Groves

Roger M. Groves

Almost $6 billion in taxes paid by the American people have been rather ubiquitously placed in the hands of a federal subsidy program for investors in low income communities. The subsidy is in the form of a tax credit. The program is entitled the New Markets Tax Credit (“NMTC”) initiative. Under the program, the tax credit is used to lure investors to provide equity capital into low income areas, urban and/or rural (i.e. a new market for equity funding). According to my companion law review article (Florida Tax Review, Spring, 2007; The Florida Tax Review was ranked 1st among tax …

Social Security And Government Deficits: When Should We Worry?, Neil H. Buchanan

Neil H. Buchanan

In this Article, I critically examine the assumption that the Social Security system faces a financing crisis and that the government can avert the crisis only by acting now to cut benefits or to raise taxes. The best conclusion we can draw from the current evidence is that the system is not doomed and that it is not necessary to institute immediate changes. We should, of course, continue to monitor the situation closely to determine whether future changes become necessary. This conclusion is further strengthened by the likelihood that any changes the government makes to the Social Security system today …