Taxation-Federal Commons^™

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 …

Extending The Taxation-Of-Risk Model To Timing Options And Marked-To-Market Taxes, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Individual Mandate, Taxation, And The Constitution, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This article examines the Supreme Court's 2012 decision in National Federation of Business v. Sibelius (NFIB). That case held that the individual mandate penalty in the Obamacare legislation will be a tax and not a penalty, and that the penalty will therefore be constitutional under the Taxing Clause of the Constitution, even though a majority of the Court held that the mandate itself-the requirement to acquire insurance or pay the tax/penalty-was not a valid exercise of the commerce power. The result in the case was not necessarily a surprise, but the reliance on the taxing power was. This article discusses …

The Sale Of Tax Credits Revisited: A Cca Consecrates (Most Of) Tempel,, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

In a 2011 decision, Tempel v. Commissioner, the Tax Court had held, among other things, that gain on sales of state income tax credits was capital gain. In a new Chief Counsel Advice, the IRS has accepted the result, and most of the analysis, of Tempel, and it has also provided guidance about the tax consequences to a purchaser of credits. This article analyzes the CCA, discusses the remaining disagreements between t e Service and the Tempel court, stresses that the CCA's conclusions are explicitly limited to nonrefundable credits, and considers the results to a purchaser.

The Individual Mandate And The Taxing Power, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This article, prepared for a symposium at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law, Northern Kentucky University, considers whether the Taxing Clause provides an alternative constitutional basis, as some have recently argued, for the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 21 - the requirement, going into effect in 214, that most individuals acquire satisfactory health insurance or pay a penalty. The article concludes that the Taxing Clause arguments are misguided. At best, the Clause can provide authority for the penalty, not for the mandate as a whole. Furthermore, the article questions whether the penalty will …

Quirky Constitutional Provisions Matter: The Tonnage Clause, Polar Tankers, And State Taxation Of Commerce, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

In Polar Tankers, Inc. v. City of Valdez, the Supreme Court in 29 struck down a City of Valdez levy that was in form a personal-property tax, but that primarily reached oil tankers using Valdez’s ports, on the ground that the levy violated the Tonnage Clause of the Constitution (“No State, shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage”). The Tonnage Clause, part of the constitutional structure intended to ensure federal primacy in regulating commerce, was once a staple of litigation, but Polar Tankers was the first Supreme Court case decided under the Clause since 1935. Polar …

Rationalizing Tax Law By Breaking The Addiction To Economic Substance, Allen Madison

Faculty Publications

This article presents a critique of the economic substance doctrine and suggests an alternative. The economic substance doctrine under certain circumstances overrides the technical provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. Congress recently incorporated into the Code a version similar to the court-developed doctrine. Whether authorized by the court or authorized by statute, however, the doctrine makes our tax laws vague, uncertain, and fallacious. Therefore, the doctrine should be abandoned. A more appropriate tool for curbing questionable tax planning is the use of statutory risk requirements. This article provides some suggestions for developing such requirements. The article concludes that statutory risk …

A Tax Or Not A Tax: That Is The Question, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This piece is part of the author’s probably misguided effort to take seriously the Sixteenth Amendment phrase “taxes on incomes.” The piece (in form a letter to the editor, but complete with footnotes!) responds to a reader who had noted that, because of a cap, the basic Social Security “tax” does not reach higher levels of income. Because the author had earlier argued that a tax “on” incomes should result in higher tax liability for higher-income persons, it might seem that the Social Security levy is unconstitutional (or the author just wrong). This piece makes several points: (1) The Social …

The Post-Tarp Movement To Regulate Banker Pay, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Murphy V. Internal Revenue Service, The Meaning Of 'Income,' And Sky-Is-Falling Tax Commentary, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This article examines the widely noted D.C. Circuit case, Murphy v. Internal Revenue Service, where a panel twice got itself hopelessly entangled in the relationship between the meaning of “income” in the Internal Revenue Code and its meaning in the Sixteenth Amendment. At issue was whether a whistle-blower's recovery for emotional distress could be reached by the income tax. The first time around, the panel concluded that the recovery could not be taxed constitutionally because it was not income. The second time, apparently after having visited another planet, the very same panel concluded that the recovery could be taxed whether …

Executive Compensation And Tax Neutrality: Taxing The Investment Component Of Deferred Compensation, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Quantifying The Tax Advantage Of Deferred Compensation, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Why Pension Funding Matters, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Deferred Compensation Reform: Taxing The Fruit Of The Tree In Its Proper Season, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

Executive pensions (or deferred compensation) grabbed headlines after Enron's collapse and fresh concerns over ever-increasing executive pay. They also grabbed the attention of Congress, which reformed executive pensions legislatively in 2004 with § 409A of the Internal Revenue Code. Section 409A merely tightens and clarifies the doctrines that had already governed executive pensions, leaving the basic economics of executive pensions unchanged. Executives can still defer taxation on current compensation until actual payment is made in the future. Deferral still comes at the same price to the employer, namely the deferral of its deduction for the compensation expense. Thus, the timing …

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 Capital Gains "Sieve" And The "Farce" Of Progressivity 1921-1986, John W. Lee

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Tension Between Textualism And Substance-Over-Form Doctrines In Tax Law, Allen Madison

Faculty Publications

This article discusses the tension that exists between the recent textualist approach taken in the U.S. Supreme Court and the judicially developed substance-over-form doctrines that pervade tax law. It sets forth Justice Antonin Scalia’s textualist approach, provides an overview of the substance-over-form doctrines, and then analyzes whether the current Supreme Court would uphold a case that overrode the literal text of the Internal Revenue Code on the basis of one of the doctrines. The article concludes that the current Supreme Court would reject any of these doctrines if faced with the issue.

An Obituary Of The Federal Estate Tax, M C. Mirow, Bruce A. Mcgovern

Faculty Publications

The authors adopt the genre of the obituary to discuss the development and present condition of the Federal Estate Tax. Using this form of descriptive narrative, the authors present a concise summary of the most important changes in the tax over the past eighty-five years.

An Analysis Of The Irs’S Voluntary Disclosure Policy, Allen Madison

Faculty Publications

When a taxpayer files a fraudulent return but amends it before the IRS begins a criminal investigation, the IRS has a long-standing policy that it will not refer that taxpayer to the Department of Justice for prosecution. This policy is known as the Voluntary Disclosure Policy. Such a policy allows taxpayers who have fallen off the tax rolls to get right with the government, which in turn helps the government by increasing revenues without the expense of investigation and enforcement. Over the Policy's history, the IRS has tinkered with it, at times keeping it in written form and at other …

Corporate Bankruptcy: Treatment Of Filing Year Income Tax -- A Suggested Approach, Jacob L. Todres

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The focus of this article is the proper treatment in a chapter 7 or 11 bankruptcy proceeding of the federal income tax incurred by a corporate debtor for the year in which the bankruptcy petition is filed, the so-called "straddle-year." Bankruptcy law requires that the straddle-year income tax be apportioned between the pre-petition and post petition portions of the year for priority purposes. Yet, neither the relevant statutes nor the reported cases provide a principled method of apportionment. Under relevant tax law there are only two possible methods of apportionment: (1) to apportion ratably over time; or (2) to …

Bad Drafting - A Case Study Of The Design And Implementation Of The Income Tax Subsidies For Education, Glenn E. Coven

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

News Flash: The Income Tax Remains Constitutional, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

International Comity And The Foreign Tax Credit: Crediting Nonconforming Taxes, Glenn E. Coven

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Critique Of Current Congressional Capital Gains Contentions, John W. Lee

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Capital Gains Myths, John W. Lee

Faculty Publications

This article is a summary of parts of Lee's forthcoming article "Critique of Current Congressional Capital Gains Contentions," 15 Va. Tax. L. Rev. 1 (1995). Professor Lee believes that the reasons given by the House Ways and Means Committee Report and capital gains cuts proponents in the recent hearings and the House floor debate in support of the CWATRA 50-percent individual generic capital gains cut are untrue in whole or in part. These stated reasons, reports Lee, are that a capital gains cut will (1) increase the personal savings rate, (2) encourage risk taking by entrepreneurs seeking new technologies and …

Partnership Profits Share For Services: An Aggregate Exegesis Of Revenue Procedure 93-27 (Part 2), John W. Lee

Faculty Publications

In this article, Professor Lee charts two alternative methods for implementing an aggregate solution to the problem of partnership profits share for services. The functional, or judicial, method is to handle (1) the exchange of partner-capacity services for a profit share subject to the risk f the venture with the Culbertson "common law relation of partnership," nonrealization event doctrine, implicitly contemplated by the 1984 legislative history to section 707(a)(2), (2) the classic Diamond transitory partner with a substance-over-form rule or step-transaction rule, and (3) a sale of the partnership interest in circumstances that would result in ordinary income in a …

'Death And Taxes' And Hypocrisy, John W. Lee

Faculty Publications

Professor Lee finds the "death and taxes" poem by Rep. Ewing hypocritical for several reasons. He notes that the poem is derived from a 1920s populist attack on Treasury Secretary Mellon for cutting taxes on the rich in the name of trickle-down economics while relying on regressive excise taxes on the masses -- an attack similar to that waged by then-Governor Clinton during the 1992 presidential campaign. Further, says Lee, the Bush administration displayed more of a preference for regressive excise taxes than the Clinton plan, whose reliance in part on consumption taxes appears a consequence of 25 years of …

President Clinton's Capital Gains Proposals, John W. Lee

Faculty Publications

Professor Lee believes that the generic capital gains rate should not be increased over 28 percent for revenue and political reasons. But to reflect that, on the average, capital gains realized by middle-income families consists entirely of inflation gain, while half of the capital gain realized at the 31- percent bracket and above consists of economic gain, increasing to 80-percent economic at the very top, he argues that a greater exclusion should be provided at the 28- and 15-percent brackets, either by a "progressive schedule" or by a $3,500 annual exclusion. To strengthen the political base for increasing the top …

The Future Of Transfer Taxation: Repeal, Restructuring And Refinement, Or Replacement, John E. Donaldson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Doping Out The Capitalization Rules After Indopco, John W. Lee

Faculty Publications

In this article, Lee provides guidance for Treasury and the IRS (in their promised clarification of application of INDOPCO). He delineates how to avoid what he perceives as the past pitfalls of capitalization of recurring, insubstantial, or relatively short-lived expenditures with Ito, or inadequate, amortization. The article also sets forth models for (a) amortizing as. a freestanding deferred charge long-lived substantial self-created intangibles such as business expansion costs, including employee training costs, and (b) expensing, or perhaps better, amortizing currently less substantial or regularly recurring, steady state self-created intangibles (such as repairs and advertising, respectively).