Tax Law Commons^™

Cuno: The Property Tax Issue, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

The author criticizes the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cuno v. Daimler Chrysler Inc., in which the court ruled that Ohio's investment tax credit violated the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause. Zelinsky says the dormant Commerce Clause concept of nondiscrimination is overbroad and undefinable and should be abandoned. He hopes this decision will give the U.S. Supreme Court an opportunity to reassess the concept.

Assessing Internal Revenue Code Section 132 After Twenty Years, Wayne M. Gazur

Publications

In 1984, Congress enacted Internal Revenue Code section 132 to bring more certainty to the taxation of employee fringe benefits. This article examines the impact of the legislation from the standpoint of administrative pronouncements and taxpayer litigation. The article concludes that section 132 has produced little litigation, but primarily because it has played the role of increasing exclusions. It remains unclear whether section 132 has also contained the growth of new forms of nonstatutory fringe benefits.

Class Warfare 1988-2005 Over Top Individual Income Tax Rates: Teeter-Totter From Soak-The-Rich To Robin-Hood-In-Reverse, John W. Lee

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Digital Vat (D-Vat), Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

The most sustained U.S. tax policy debate of the past 30 years concerns proposals to replace and/ or supplement the Federal Income Tax with a consumption tax. Public finance economists and legal tax policy scholars challenged and defended the current income tax system on grounds of fairness, efficiency, and simplicity.

This debate over revamping the national taxing scheme has not been argued purely in the academic forum. Concrete legislative proposals have been advanced for a national retail sales tax, a European-style Value Added Tax, as well as a whole host of what David Bradford calls "the two-tiered consumption taxes."

From …

Redemptions Of Partnership Interests And Divisions Of Partnerships, Andrea M. Whiteway

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

No Toronto Nups For Irish, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Cuno And Congress: An Analysis Of Proposed Federal Legislation Authorizing State Economic Development Incentives, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

If anything is clear about Cuno and the controversy the opinion has spawned, it is that Congress has the last word on the matter. Whether Congress will speak to the issues Cuno has raised is currently an open question, although in one narrow respect Congress already has. Broader legislation, however, has been introduced into Congress as the "Economic Development Act of 2005," and debate over the efficacy and wisdom of this proposal is as intense as the debate over the defensibility of Cuno itself. My purpose here is not to join that debate, although I am already on record as …

Federal Constitutional Restraints On Tax Competition Among The American States, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

This article examines the judicially developed rules limiting interstate tax competition in the United States and the constitutional framework out of which they arise.

The Tax Code As Nationality Law, Michael S. Kirsch

Journal Articles

This article questions the frequently-asserted axiom that Congress's taxing power knows no bounds. It does so in the context of recently-enacted legislation that creates a special definition of citizenship that applies only for tax purposes. Historically, a person was treated as a citizen for tax purposes (and therefore taxed on her worldwide income and estate) if, and only if, she was a citizen under the nationality law. As a result of the new statute, in certain circumstances a person might be treated as a citizen for tax purposes (and therefore taxed on her worldwide income and estate) for years or …

Giving Intellectual Property, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine

Articles

The interdisciplinarity of intellectual property and taxation poses many challenges to the disparate existing norms in each respective field of law. This Article identifies and critiques the current tax regime governing the giving of intellectual property as a manifestation of the failure to understand the principles and policies underlying intellectual property and the firm. It proposes an economic, incentives-based system that would encourage firms to extricate part of their repository of residual rights by surrendering their monopolistic ownership of intellectual property for the benefit of charitable organizations and, in turn, the development and growth of society.

The Supreme Court Of Canada And The General Anti-Avoidance Rule: Canada Trustco And Mathew, David G. Duff

All Faculty Publications

On October 19, 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada released the first decisions in which it considered the general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR) in Sec. 245 of the federal Income Tax Act (ITA). Effective for transactions entered into on or after September 13, 1988, this rule was enacted as a deliberate response to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Stubart Investments Ltd. v. The Queen and was intended to reduce what the Court had described as "the action and reaction endlessly produced by complex, specific tax measures aimed at sophisticated business practices, and the inevitable, professionally guided and equally specialized …

Separate But Taxed: A Rejection Of The Steamlined Sales Tax Project Through A Commerce Clause And Federalist Analysis, Gregory R. Evans

American University Law Review

Sales and use taxes, which are levied by forty-five states, have long been an important source of revenue for state and local governments. The rigid structure of these long-standing taxes, however, has been strained by the rapid evolution of the online economy. As a result, the Multistate Tax Commission (“MTC”) devised a plan, the Streamlined State Sales Tax Project (“STP”), to recapture some of the revenue that state and local governments might otherwise lose as consumer purchases migrate from local retailers to online sellers. This plan, approved reciprocally by the states, but not by Congress, was designed by state legislators …

Comparative Law Observations On Taxation Of Same-Sex Couples, Henry Ordower

All Faculty Scholarship

Identifies the various models for addressing the interplay between same sex relationship protections and taxation outside the United States.

Enlisting The Tax Bar, David M. Schizer

Faculty Scholarship

Tax shelters have proliferates in the United States not only because of financial innovation, the globalization of capital markets, the increasing complexity of our tax system, the inadequacy of tax penalties, the lack of political support for tax reform, and the growing popularity of textualist interpretation – all factors that have attracted considerable attention in the literature. Shelters also derive from a structural imbalance in our tax system that has not been adequately explored: In important respects, the private tax bar outmatches its counterpart in government. This imbalance is one of sheer numbers, of access to information, and, at least …

Income Tax Discrimination And The Political And Economic Integration Of Europe, Michael J. Graetz, Alvin C. Warren Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has invalidated many income tax law provisions of European Union (EU) member states as violating European constitutional treaty guarantees of freedom of movement for goods, services, persons, and capital. These decisions have not, however, been matched by significant EU income tax legislation, because no EU political institution has the power to enact such legislation without unanimous consent from the member states. In this Article, we describe how the developing ECJ jurisprudence threatens the ability of member states to use tax incentives to stimulate their domestic economies and to resolve problems of …

Deductibility Of Treble Damages Paid For Breach Of National Health Service Corps Scholarship Contracts: The Misuse Of I.R.C. 265(A)(1) In Stroud V. United States And Of The Origin Of The Claim Test In Keane V. Commissioner, Richard C.E. Beck

Articles & Chapters

A deduction for treble damages paid for breach of the taxpayer's National Health Service Corps medical service obligation was erroneously denied under IRC 265(a)(1) in 'Stroud v. US', 906 F. Supp. 990 (1995). The provision does not apply because taxpayer's damages were not a cost of earning a tax-exempt scholarship which had been received many years earlier, but rather a deductible cost of buying out one employment obligation in order to earn taxable income in another. The history of IRC 265(a)(1) is analyzed and criticized. In 'Keane v. CIR', 75 TCM 2046 (1998), the taxpayer's deduction for current interest on …

Do Attorneys Do Their Clients Justice? An Empirical Study Of Lawyers' Effects On Tax Court Litigation Outcomes, Leandra Lederman, Warren B. Hrung

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Do attorneys really add value or can unrepresented parties achieve equivalent results? This fundamental question ordinarily is difficult to answer empirically. An equally important question both for attorneys and the justice system is whether attorneys prolong disputes or instead facilitate expeditious resolution of cases.

Fortunately, there is a federal court that provides an excellent laboratory in which to test and answer these questions. In the United States Tax Court (Tax Court), where most federal tax cases are litigated, the government always is represented by Internal Revenue Service attorneys but a large portion of the taxpayer litigants proceed pro se. In …

The Future Of The Dormant Commerce Clause: Abolishing The Prohibition On Discriminatory Taxation, Edward A. Zelinsky, Brannon P. Denning

Articles

Professor Edward A. Zelinsky, of the Cardozo School of Law, argues that "[i] t is time to abolish the dormant Commence Clause prohibition on discriminatory taxation." This is so, he writes, because "the prohibition is today doctrinally incoherent and politically unnecessary." The incoherence, Zelinsky maintains, stems from the disparate treatment by the United States Supreme Court of economically identical activities: "discriminatory taxation favoring local industries," which the doctrine prohibits, and "direct expenditures subsidizing those same industries," which it permits. It is unnecessary, Zelinsky argues, because Congress is able, and better suited, to police any state abuses. In short, "[l]ike a …

The Sun Also Rises: The Political Economy Of Sunset Provisions In The Tax Code, Rebecca M. Kysar

Georgia Law Review

This Article provides an overview and critical analysis of sunset provisions in the tax code and, through examination of the political pressures that led to their striking transformation, also reveals disturbing points of vulnerability in the legislative process. It concludes that, contrary to one of the primary justifications for the enactment of sunset provisions-that these provisions reduce the influence exerted on lawmakers by interest groups-sunsets may instead further politicize the legislative process and, due to their mechanics, increase the likelihood of inefficient social outcomes. The history of sunset provisions in tax legislation also illuminates the complex, multidirectional,and often dramatic interaction …

Regulation Of Political Organizations And The Red Herring Of Tax-Exempt Status, Roger Colinvaux

Scholarly Articles

Congressional codification of section 527 in 1975 largely reflected the IRS’s treatment of political organizations at the time, including that contribution income was not taxable income, and did not provide a significant tax subsidy. In 2000, Congress amended section 527 to impose reporting obligations and, simultaneously, made section 527 voluntary, thus reviving pre–1975 law. The lack of a significant subsidy undermines the effectiveness of imposing burdens on section 527 organizations where there is a choice of tax treatment. The lack of a significant subsidy also raises the constitutional bar to imposing any burdens on section 527 organizations.

Meet The New Test, Same As The Old Test: In Re Spearing Tool’S Rejection Of The Revised Article 9 Rules Means Secured Creditors Will Get Fooled Again, Joshua L. Edwards

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tax Strategies Are Not Patentable Inventions, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

No abstract provided.