Tax Law Commons^™

Two New York Tax Cases, Joel S. Newman

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Under What Circumstances Can A Bankruptcy Court Grant Innocent Spouse Relief To A Debtor?, Noreen Gilroy

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

The United States tax system allows married couples to file joint tax returns. For those married couples that jointly file, there is joint and severable liability for the taxes due on those returns. Because spouses who file joint tax returns are held both jointly and severally liable for those joint returns, the drafters of the Tax Code created an exemption from liability for innocent spouses in Section 6015 of the Tax Code. Section 6015(e) of the Tax Code expressly grants subject matter jurisdiction to the Tax Courts to review determinations of innocent spouse relief. However, the language of Section …

Improving Tax Rules By Means-Testing: Bridging Wealth Inequality And “Ability To Pay”, James M. Puckett

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reform Of Section 355, Bret Wells

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Does Enforcement Reduce Voluntary Tax Compliance?, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Governments generally use enforcement methods, such as audits and the imposition of penalties, to deter noncompliance with tax laws. Although this approach is consistent with most economic modeling of tax compliance, some scholars caution that enforcement may backfire, “crowding out” taxpayers’ intrinsic motivations to pay taxes to such an extent that they reduce their tax payments. This article analyzes the existing evidence to determine if this occurs. In fact, field studies suggest that enforcement tools, such as audits, are effective deterrents, generally greatly increasing tax collections. A few recent studies have found that audits have a negative effect on the …

Taxation Of Gamblers: The House Always Wins, Christine Manolakas

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Cambridge Handbook Of Social Enterprise Law, Lloyd Histoshi Mayer

Books

Book Chapters

Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, Creating a Tax Space for Social Enterprise, in The Cambridge Handbook of Social Enterprise Law 157 (Benjamin Means & Joseph W. Yockey eds., 2018)

While still relatively few in number compared to traditional nonprofit and for-profit organizations, the rise of social enterprises represents a possible disruption of not only existing models of doing business but also areas of law that in many respects have seen little fundamental change for decades. One such area is domestic tax law, where social enterprises currently find themselves subject to the rules of for-profit activities and entities. Here, both scholars …

Taking Back Bitcoin, Zachary Segal

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Definitions Of Income, John R. Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What is income? It’s a seemingly simple question that’s surprisingly hard to answer. Income is the basis for assigning tax burdens, for distributing transfers, and for broader normative issues of inequality and justice. Yet we lack a shared conception of income, and a pure, rigorous definition of income is impossible. In this Article I review the intellectual history of the income concept among tax and fiscal theorists to show the difficulty of the problem, and also to show that some important debates about what’s proper under an income tax can be explained instead as arguments over competing income definitions that …

Curing The Cost Disease: Legal Education, Legal Services, And The Role Of Income-Contingent Loans, John R. Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The costs of both legal education and legal services have been rising steadily for decades. This is because they share a common root: the constant above-inflation growth in the cost of labor-intensive goods and services known as the “cost disease.” The cost disease story roots cost growth not in market failure or bureaucratic waste, but in natural, even healthy, economic forces—productivity and wage growth. Because the source of this cost growth is productivity growth, the nature of the cost disease is such that an economy as a whole can afford these rising costs. But in a world of deep income …

User Participation In Value Creation, Itai Grinberg

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article examines HM Treasury’s proposal to account for the active participation of users in value creation in certain digital platforms. The first key question is whether there is any reason to believe, as HM Treasury suggests, that users only meaningfully or actively contribute to value creation in the context of certain digital platforms. The article accordingly explores the factors HM Treasury sets out for the attribution of income to active user participation, including features such as network effects, multisided business models, and a lack of physical presence in the jurisdiction of the user. It concludes that if a user …

The Offshore Tax Enforcement Dragnet, Shu-Yi Oei

Faculty Scholarship

Taxpayers who hide assets abroad to evade taxes present a serious enforcement challenge for the United States. In response, the United States has developed a family of initiatives that punish and rehabilitate non-compliant taxpayers, raise revenues, and require widespread reporting of offshore financial information by financial institutions and taxpayers. Yet, while these initiatives help catch willful tax cheats, they have also adversely affected immigrants, Americans living abroad, and “accidental Americans.”

This Article critiques the United States’ offshore tax enforcement initiatives, such as the Foreign Account Tax Compliant Act and the Internal Revenue Service’s offshore voluntary disclosure programs. It argues that …

Tax Issues In The Sharing Economy: Implications For Workers, Shu-Yi Oei, Diane M. Ring

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Leak-Driven Law, Shu-Yi Oei, Diane Ring

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past decade, a number of well-publicized data leaks have revealed the secret offshore holdings of high-net-worth individuals and multinational taxpayers, leading to a sea change in cross-border tax enforcement. Spurred by leaked data, tax authorities have prosecuted offshore tax cheats, attempted to recoup lost revenues, enacted new laws, and signed international agreements that promote “sunshine” and exchange of financial information between countries.

The conventional wisdom is that data leaks enable tax authorities to detect and punish offshore tax evasion more effectively, and that leaks are therefore socially and economically beneficial. This Article argues, however, that the conventional wisdom …

The Constitutionality Of A National Wealth Tax, Dawn Johnsen, Walter Dellinger

Faculty Scholarship

Economic inequality threatens America’s constitutional democracy. Beyond obvious harms to our nation’s social fabric and people’s lives, soaring economic inequality translates into political inequality and corrodes democratic institutions and values. The coincident, relentless rise of money in politics exacerbates the problem. As elected officials and candidates meet skyrocketing campaign costs by devoting more and more time to political fundraising—and independent expenditures mushroom—Americans lose faith and withdraw from a system widely perceived as beholden to wealthy individuals and corporate interests.

The United States needs innovative approaches to help rebuild foundational, shared understandings of American democracy, the American Dream, and opportunity and …

Determining An Asset's Tax Basis In The Absence Of A Meaningful Transfer Tax Regime, Jay A. Soled, Richard L. Schmalbeck

Faculty Scholarship

Until recently, in those circumstances where there was a valuation range with respect to a particular asset, executors faced a choice: among estates subject to the estate tax, declaring a high value would increase the estate tax liability; however, due to the Internal Revenue Code's "basis equal to fair market value" rule applicable at death, declaring a low value would expose heirs to a greater capital gains tax on subsequent asset disposition. Because the estate tax rates were higher and that tax was immediate (as opposed to deferred until a later sale by the heir), executors typically minimized asset values, …

Defending Place-Based Philanthropy By Defining The Community Foundation, Roger Colinvaux

Scholarly Articles

The article proceeds in three parts. Part I of the article provides a historical overview of the tax-exempt status of community foundations, from inception to the present day. Part II shows how the settled wisdom on the tax status of community foundations has been upset by the rise of the nationally sponsored donoradvised fund, the extent to which community foundations are different from national donor-advised fund sponsors, and whether it would be beneficial to define the community foundation for tax siders the possible content of a definition of the community foundation in the Internal Revenue Code in terms of their …

Questioning Quill, Hayes R. Holderness

Law Faculty Publications

The physical presence rule of Quill Corp. v. North Dakota is under increasing attack from the “Kill Quill” movement — a consortium of state tax administrators, industry leaders, and academics opposed to the decision. The physical presence rule prohibits states from requiring many out-of-state vendors to collect taxes on goods sold into the states. Kill Quill states have grown increasingly aggressive, and litigation is well underway in South Dakota and Alabama over those states’ direct disregard for the rule. As a petition to the Supreme Court for certiorari grows closer, the case for overturning the physical presence rule remains cloudy. …

Who Benefits From Repealing Tampon Taxes? Empirical Evidence From New Jersey, Christopher A. Cotropia

Law Faculty Publications

Many state and local governments exclude some medical products from the sales tax base, including some that are primarily used by men such as hair growth products. However, tampons and other menstrual hygiene products are subject to sales taxes in most states. A recent social movement advocates for the repeal of these “tampon taxes” and several class action lawsuits have been filed against states citing equal protection violations. In this article, we use the 2005 elimination of menstrual hygiene products from the sales tax base in New Jersey as a natural experiment to study who benefits from the repeal of …

Congress Should Sprinkle Some Salt On The Federal Courts, Hayes R. Holderness

Law Faculty Publications

Observers of the state and local tax world regularly note the seemingly irresponsible actions so often taken by state revenue agencies, by state courts, and by state legislatures — a few recent examples of states acting badly are set forth below. In many ways federal law has encouraged these types of actions by placing limited checks on the states. The federal Tax Injunction Act (TIA) and the common law comity doctrine keep federal courts off the states’ backs. Also, the Supreme Court’s South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc. decision and its Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association decision, in which state …

Failed Charity: Taking State Tax Benefits Into Account For Purposes Of The Charitable Deduction, Roger Colinvaux

Scholarly Articles

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) substantially limited the ability of individuals to deduct state and local taxes (SALT) on their federal income tax returns. Some states are advancing schemes to allow taxpayers a state tax credit for contributions to a charity controlled by the state. The issue is whether state tax benefits are deductible as a charitable contribution for purposes of the federal income tax. Under a general rule of prior law—the full deduction rule—state tax benefits were ignored for purposes of the charitable deduction. If the full deduction rule is applied to the state workaround schemes, then …