Tax Law Commons^™

Testimony Of J. Richard (Dick) Harvey, Jr. Before The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee On Investigations May 21, 2013, J. Richard Harvey

Working Paper Series

Apple is an iconic US multinational corporation. In addition to demonstrating excellence in designing, building, and selling consumer products, Apple has been very successful at minimizing its global income tax burden. This expert testimony describes how Apple:

• allocates approximately two-thirds of its global income to Ireland, a country where only 4% of its employees and 1% of its customers are located,
• minimizes Irish tax by creating an Irish entity that is managed and controlled in the US, and
• avoids the US Subpart F rules.

More generally, the testimony illustrates techniques used by US MNCs to shift income …

Cracking The Tax Codes: How State Tax Laws Influence The Number Of Manufacturing Jobs Within Their Borders, Nick Lorenson

Political Science Theses and Capstones

With the recent economic downturn, jobs have been at the forefront of people’s concerns. Policy makers in every state have promised their constituents new jobs. Of particular importance are high paying jobs. Manufacturing jobs tend to be a well-paying and highly sought after form of employment. However, in recent decades, the percentage of manufacturing jobs has been declining in the United States. Also, manufacturing facilities have shown an increased likelihood of relocating to different states. I theorize that manufacturing facilities relocating and expanding in different states is primarily due to state tax policies. This phenomenon has increased within recent years …

Has Government Tax Policy In Greece Led To A Large Shadow Economy?, Nils Thompson

Honors Projects in Economics

This capstone investigates the impact that tax policy has on the shadow economy in Greece. Greece has one of the largest shadow economies in the world and the largest in the European Union, with tax evasion being one of the main drivers. While previous research has provided measures of the shadow economy, none matches the shadow economy estimations with policies, laws, and agencies enacted by the government, specifically over the period in time of 1990-2012. This study contributes to the literature by connecting the policies implemented by the government with the size of the shadow economy in Greece, along with …

U.S. Tax Reform: Full-Inclusion Over Territorial System Compelling, Jeffrey M. Kadet

Articles

The territorial system strongly lobbied for by U.S. multinational corporations that stand to benefit from that system is not what’s best for our country or our society. It is bad tax policy for many reasons, including the strong motivation it provides our multinational corporations to continue moving operations, jobs, risks, and assets outside the United States to achieve double non-taxation. A worldwide full-inclusion system would severely curtail or completely eliminate that strong motivation because double nontaxation would no longer be possible because of a current federal tax on all earnings that cannot be eliminated through any tax schemes or creative …

E-Verify Can Stop Refund Fraud, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Andrew Shact

Faculty Scholarship

Two issues in the current Washington debates need to be linked. E-Verify, the Internet-based database that allows employers to verify an employee’s work eligibility that is at the center of the immigration debate, is the ideal tool for stopping tax refund fraud. All that is needed is a digital signature of the E-Verify result, and the mandatory inscription of this signature on tax documents to make them self-authenticating.

The central features of this proposal have been made before. The technology it requires is tried and proven. The processes and procedure it advocates are in place and effectively deployed in foreign …

Practicalities And Peculiarities: The Heightened Due Process Standard For Notice Under Jones V. Flower, Emily Riley

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Panorama - Jefferson Mok, James Hagy, Arthy Bakthavasalam

Rooftops Project

What is your real estate strategy when you are the first on-the-ground representative of a social service not-for-profit entering a remote market abroad with a new program? Jefferson Mok reflects on four years in Burundi in a conversation with The Rooftops Project’s Arthy Bakthavasalam and Professor James Hagy.

Perspectives - Michael Carlton Of Carlton Architecture, James Hagy, Emily Barile

Rooftops Project

Michael Carlton talks with The Rooftops Project’s Emily Barile and Professor James Hagy about the intersections among architecture, interior design, real estate, and not-for-profit strategic planning.

Taxing Food And Beverage Products: A Public Health Perspective And A New Strategy For Prevention, Jennifer L. Pomeranz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The power to tax and spend is considered a primary government power, and the use thereof is associated with great public health achievements. The greatest public health challenge at present stems from the increase in obesity and chronic diseases due to poor nutrition. Several taxation strategies have emerged in the health and economic literature to raise revenue, deter consumption, and address food prices and obesity directly. These proposals include taxing obese individuals, taxing problematic food products, and instituting a tax based on certain food components. This article weighs each proposal's value and disadvantages and concludes by proposing a new tax …

Panorama - Caring For The Palace Museum, Bejing, China, James Hagy, Cai Bowen

Rooftops Project

Shi Zhimin discusses his work as Director of the Ancient Building Management Office of The Palace Museum in Beijing, still also recognized by many visitors as the former Chinese imperial palace known as The Forbidden City, with Cai Bowen and Professor James Hagy, Director of The Rooftops Project.

Perspectives - Richard Cohn, Motion Picture Gaffer, Magician, Musician, James Hagy, Kristen Porro

Rooftops Project

The Rooftops Project’s Kristen Porro talks with Richard Cohn, Gaffer (Chief Electrician) to the television and movie industry on location in New York City, and performing magician, who shares tricks of his two trades that not-for-profits can use to make the most of often imperfect performance spaces.

Perspectives - Kimse Yok Mu: An Organization’S Effort For The Advancement Of Life, James Hagy, Shaan Lodi

Rooftops Project

The Rooftops Project’s Shaan Lodi talks with Turkish relief organization Kimse Yok Mu about its approach to the real estate needed to support disaster response and other work in often challenging settings in 96 countries.

The Relevance Games: Congress's Choices For Economic Substance Gamemakers, Charlene Luke

UF Law Faculty Publications

Codification of the economic substance doctrine in 2010 ushered in a new phase in the debate regarding the meaning and reach of the doctrine. The main statutory hint as to the intended scope of the codified economic substance doctrine is ambiguous, providing, “The determination of whether the economic substance doctrine is relevant to a transaction shall be made in the same manner as if this subsection had never been enacted.” This Article argues that this language should be read in light of the codification history, which stretches back for over ten years before enactment. This history suggests that the relevance …

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 …

When Sommers Are Winters: Do Blanks Denote Revocability?, Wendy G. Gerzog

All Faculty Scholarship

In Sommers, ruling on both parties’ motions for partial summary judgment, the Tax Court dealt with claims of issue preclusion and collateral estoppel, equitable apportionment, the completion of gifts of limited liability company interests, and retained powers that would cause estate tax inclusion.

Two aspects of Sommers held particular interest for me. The first is that the parties appear to be arguing their opponent’s conventional position. The second is that the court grappled with whether the blanks left in the gift documents were immaterial to gift completion; however, the court did not address whether the decedent’s completed gifts qualified for …

Worldwide Tax Reform: Reversing The Race To The Bottom, Jeffrey M. Kadet

Articles

The OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project is now under way, its mission being to suggest ways that countries can work together and amend their domestic laws to combat the corporate profit shifting that has so affected the tax bases of many countries.

The only way to truly eliminate corporate profit shifting is to eliminate the strong motivation multinational enterprises have to achieve "double nontaxation" by engaging in profit shifting. By being subject to current home-country taxation on its worldwide earnings, a multinational cannot achieve double nontaxation. That will eliminate or significantly reduce its motivation to engage in complicated …

Bargaining In The Shadow Of The Debt Ceiling: When Negotiating Over Spending And Tax Laws, Congress And The President Should Consider The Debt Ceiling A Dead Letter, Neil H. Buchanan, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

If the debt ceiling is inconsistent with existing spending and taxing laws, what must the President do? In earlier work, we argued that when Congress creates a "trilemma"-making it impossible for the President to spend as much as Congress has ordered, to tax only as much as Congress has ordered, and to borrow no more than Congress has permitted-- the Constitution requires the President to choose the least unconstitutional path. In particular, he must honor Congress's decisions and priorities regarding spending and taxing, and he must issue enough debt to do so. Here, we extend the analysis in two ways. …

A Preference For Deference: The Benefits Of The First Circuit's Customized Standard Of Review For Collection Due Process Appeals In Dalton V. Commissioner, Adam M. Cole

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Quantitative Model For Measuring Line-Drawing Inequity, Bradley T. Borden

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Unpacking The Force Of Law, Kristin E. Hickman

Vanderbilt Law Review

In its 2011 decision in Mayo Foundation for Education and Research v. United States,' the Supreme Court rejected tax exceptionalism, holding that the general administrative law standards articulated in United States v. Mead Corp. and Chevron USA Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. govern judicial review of U.S. Department of the Treasury ("Treasury") regulations. In so doing, the Court admonished, "[W]e are not inclined to carve out an approach to administrative review good for tax law only." A few months later, the D.C. Circuit, sitting en banc in Cohen v. United States, reinforced the policy of administrative law uniformity …

Tax Planning For Marijuana Dealers, Benjamin Leff

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In recent years, many states have legalized marijuana while the federal government continues to consider all marijuana sales and use illegal. But marijuana industry insiders consider not federal criminal law but federal tax law to be the biggest impediment to the development of a legitimate marijuana industry. State-sanctioned marijuana sellers are required to pay federal income taxes pursuant to § 280E, a formerly largely symbolic provision that Congress enacted to punish drug dealers, but which now could potentially drive legitimate marijuana sellers underground.

This paper proposes a tax strategy that enables state-sanctioned marijuana sellers to avoid the impact of § …

Benefit Expenses: How The Benefit Corporation's Social Purpose Changes The Ordinary And Necessary, Emily Cohen

William & Mary Business Law Review

The recent spread of Benefit Corporations formally challenges the assumption that for-profit companies are strictly profit maximizing entities. Businesses can now incorporate under charitable business purposes that were once restricted to 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations. While incorporating under a charitable purpose is no longer restricted to only non-profit entities, Benefit Corporations are not able to receive the same income tax exemption under the Internal Revenue Code. While for-profit entities do receive some tax benefits for their charitable behavior, such as the charitable donation deduction, the current tax structure does not provide an equal amount of tax benefits for charitable behavior when …

Fringe Benefits, Proposed Section 84, And Tax Policy , Gregory M. Fowler

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Value-Added Tax - A Proposal For The 80'S, Charles O. Galvin

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

How To Accomplish A Successful Tax-Free Pension Plan Rollover, Steven T. Graham

Pepperdine Law Review

Advising a client how to accomplish a tax-free rollover from one pension plan to another has been an area of confusion for the general practitioner. In order to end this confusion the author examines recent statutory amendments, Internal Revenue Service rulings and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The author then outlines, in conjunction with the recent changes in the law, potential pension plan rollover scenarios that can aid the client. After a thorough discussion of the available rollovers and the benefits and drawbacks of each, the author concludes with a chart designed to provide quick identification of the most …

The New Starker: A Nonsimultaneous Exchange Expands Section 1031/ Collateral Estoppel Clarification, Robert B. Paysinger

Pepperdine Law Review

The new Starker decision addresses the issue whether a nonsimultaneous exchange qualifies for section 1031 nonrecognition treatment. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in addressing this issue, also had to determine the appropriateness of the collateral estoppel "separable facts" doctrine under the facts in the case. The author provides an in-depth examination of the court's clarification of collateral estoppel and expansion of section 1031. The author, in agreeing with-the decision, welcomes the added flexibility the case lends to the real estate finance field.

Recent Legislative Changes As To The Reporting And Payment Of The Gift Tax: A Step Toward Tax Simplification, Harry F. Byrd Jr.

Pepperdine Law Review

The overly complex nature of the nation's tax laws has spurred congressional action to simplify the tax code. United States Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr. has demonstrated his commitment toward this goal by his recent introduction of the Annual Gift Tax Return Act. This measure, enacted as part of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, provides a return to the system of annual gift tax reporting. More significantly, it demonstrates that simplification of the tax laws can be achieved without sacrificing other goals, and without additional costs to the taxpayer.

Commonwealth Edison Co. V. State Of Montana: Constitutional Limitations On State Energy Resource Taxation, Nancy K. Stalcup

Pepperdine Law Review

This note examines the case of Commonwealth Edison Co. v. State of Montana, where the United States Supreme Court analyzed and defined the permissible limitations of state energy resource taxation. While the Court adhered to the test of constitutional taxation established in Complete Auto Transit Inc. v. Brady, which strongly upheld a state's sovereign right to tax a local incident of interstate commerce, the Court failed to realize the practical ramifications of its ruling in the context o the nation's energy problems.

Horse Syndication: A Sure Footed Winner In The Investment Sweepstakes, Thomas R. Catanese

Pepperdine Law Review

Recent changes in the scheme of federal taxation coupled with increasing interest in the equine industry has propelled that industry into the forefront of tax sheltered investments. In this article the author takes an in-depth look at the federal securities and tax law aspects of a typical equine syndication as a tax sheltered investment.

The Professional Corporation—Has The Death Knell Been Sounded?, Forest J. Bowman

Pepperdine Law Review

The favorable tax reasons for incorporating a professional practice have been substantially reduced by the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act. The retirement benefits of the professional corporation have effectively been eliminated by TEFRA. In addition, the new allocation of income powers provided by TEFRA may have eliminated the tax incentive for forming a professional corporation. The professional's decision whether to incorporate his practice will now rest with his desires as to how he wishes to carry out that practice. This article discusses the changes that TEFRA has wrought, and its impact on the professionals' decision to incorporate.