Taxation-Federal Commons^™

What Impact Did The Tcja Tax Cuts Have On The Manufacturing Sector?, Ryan Parker

Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses

Throughout this paper I will examine positive effects the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 had on the manufacturing sector. To do this I begin by outlining the key provisions in the TCJA that directly benefit the manufacturing sector. This includes the corporate tax rate reduction from 35 percent to 21 percent, the changes to the repatriation tax for foreign funds, and the treatment for capital assets. I then analyze key metrics including pre-tax income, income tax provision, dividends, changes in retained earnings, and spending on property plant and equipment. I will show the interactions between the increase in …

How Did The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act Of 2017 Effect Small Businesses?, Jackson Pittman

Accounting Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 marked a significant overhaul of the United States tax system, promising to stimulate economic growth and enhance the competitiveness of American businesses. Amidst its broad-reaching reforms, the TCJA introduced several provisions directly impacting small businesses, aiming to alleviate their tax burdens and foster entrepreneurial activity. This thesis endeavors to evaluate the multifaceted effects of the TCJA on small businesses, examining its implications for their financial performance, investment behavior, and overall economic contribution.

Preliminary findings suggest that the TCJA has produced a generally positive result for small businesses. On one hand, reduced …

The Missing U.S. Vat: Economic Inequality, American Fiscal Exceptionalism, And The Historical U.S. Resistance To National Consumption Taxes, Ajay K. Mehrotra

Northwestern University Law Review

Since the 1970s, economic inequality has soared dramatically across the globe and particularly in the United States. In that time, one of the obstacles of using fiscal policy to address inequality has been the growing myth of the “overtaxed American”—the misguided notion that U.S. taxpayers pay more in taxes than residents of other advanced, industrialized countries. This myth has persisted, in part, because of the peculiar and distinctive nature of the fractured American fiscal and social welfare state. Even a cursory review of comparative tax data shows that the United States, by most measures, is a low-tax country compared to …

A ‘No Exceptions’ Tax System For The 21st Century, Stephen G. Marks

Faculty Scholarship

With a new administration come new opportunities. Here I present a tax proposal that I believe could garner support on both sides of the aisle. It has elements of the negative income tax, first proposed by conservative economist Milton Friedman; the flat tax (also called the “fair tax”), supported by many conservatives; and a universal basic income, promoted by Democrat Andrew Yang, combined in a way that is of the utmost simplicity. Call it the “No Exceptions Tax” (NExT). NExT is a federal personal income tax that replaces the current one. Here’s how it works

The Economics Of American Higher Education In The New Gilded Age, Paul Campos

Publications

No abstract provided.

Through The Lens Of Complex Systems Theory: Why Regulators Must Understand The Economy And Society As A Complex System, James M. Giudice

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

On The Future Of Tax Salience Scholarship: Operative Mechanisms And Limiting Factors, David Gamage

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Essay — written for Florida State University’s symposium on the 100th anniversary of the U.S. federal income tax — evaluates how the literature on tax salience should be advanced in order for it to better guide tax policy over the coming decades. The literature on tax salience analyzes how taxpayers account for the costs imposed by taxation when the taxpayers make decisions or judgments, both in the taxpayers’ roles as voters and as market participants. This Essay evaluates both possible operative mechanisms that might underlie observed tax salience effects and limiting factors that might prevent tax salience effects from …

Paying To Save: Tax Withholding And Asset Allocation Among Low- And Moderate-Income Taxpayers, Michael S. Barr, Jane Dokko

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

We analyze the phenomenon that low- and moderate-income (LMI) tax filers exhibit a “preference for over-withholding” their taxes, a measure we derive from a unique set of questions administered in a dataset of 1,003 households, which we collected through the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. We argue that the relationship between their withholding preference and portfolio allocation across liquid and illiquid assets is consistent with models with present-biased preferences, and that individuals exhibit self-control problems when making their consumption and saving decisions. Our results support a model in which individuals use commitment devices to constrain their consumption. …

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

ExpressO

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 …

Imagining A Progressive And Comprehensive Consumption Tax, Sean K. Raft

ExpressO

The income tax system has become quite a mess. Unfortunately, the brunt of that mess falls primarily on the backs of the individual taxpayer, who is required to sift through the tens of thousands of pages of instructions and tax rules just to calculate, file, and pay what they owe. The filing burden and costs of compliance are already exorbitant, but they are only increasing.

In response to the complaints over the increasing complication, economists and tax scholars have imagined ways to improve or replace the income tax. Yet, the alternatives are either regressive or fail to generate enough revenue …

The De-Gentrification Of New Markets Tax Credits, Roger M. Groves

ExpressO

This article provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the New Markets Tax Credits program established by Congress. The purpose of the NMTCs is to use tax credits as incentives for investors to provide equity funds into low income areas. The article reveals that over $2 billion of federal tax subsidies that have been allocated to gentrified projects for the wealthy, rather than the intended beneficiaries – low income residents in the urban core – as Congress intended. The article proposes amendments to the statute and regulations to close unintended loopholes.

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Revitalizing Our Urban Core Without Marginalizing Our Core People: Closing Tax Credit Loopholes For The Wealthy While Generating Ethnic Entrepreneurial Self Help Alternatives To Subsidized Gentrification, Roger M. Groves

ExpressO

This article provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the New Markets Tax Credits program established by Congress. The purpose of the NMTCs is to use tax credits as incentives for investors to provide equity funds into low income areas. The article reveals that over $2 billion of federal tax subsidies that have been allocated to gentrified projects for the wealthy, rather than the intended beneficiaries – low income residents in the urban core – as Congress intended. The article proposes amendments to the statute and regulations to close unintended loopholes.

The article also creates a model for a …

Revitalizing Our Urban Core Without Marginalizing Our Core People: Closing Tax Credit Loopholes For The Wealthy While Generating Ethnic Entrepreneurial Self Help Alternatives To Subsidized Gentrification, Roger M. Groves

ExpressO

This article provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the New Markets Tax Credits program established by Congress. The purpose of the NMTCs is to use tax credits as incentives for investors to provide equity funds into low income areas. The article reveals that over $2 billion of federal tax subsidies that have been allocated to gentrified projects for the wealthy, rather than the intended beneficiaries – low income residents in the urban core – as Congress intended. The article proposes amendments to the statute and regulations to close unintended loopholes.

The article also creates a model for a …

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

The Missing Preferred Return, Victor Fleischer

ExpressO

Managers of buyout funds typically offer their investors an 8% preferred return on their investment before they take a share of any additional profits. Venture capitalists, on the other hand, rarely offer a preferred return. Instead, VCs take their cut from the first dollar of nominal profits. This disparity between venture funds and buyout funds is especially striking because the contracts that determine fund organization and compensation are otherwise very similar. The missing preferred return might suggest that agency costs pose a larger problem in venture capital than previously thought. Is the missing preferred return evidence, perhaps, that VCs are …

Taxing Utility, Terrence Chorvat

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

In order to assess the efficiency of a tax, we should examine its effect on the behavior of individuals. In general, the less a tax affects behavior, the more efficient it is thought to be. The standard example of a non-distorting tax is a lump-sum tax, which does not change with the behavior of the taxpayer. However, this article demonstrates that behavioral distortions can and do arise from a change in even a lump-sum tax. The only truly non-distortionary tax would be one based on utility itself. Utility, which has been used as a norm for distributional analysis, is also …

What Is Fiscal Responsibility? Long-Term Deficits, Generational Accounting, And Capital Budgeting, Neil H. Buchanan

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

This article assesses three basic approaches to assessing the future effects of the government’s fiscal policies: traditional measures of the deficit, measures associated with Generational Accounting, and measures derived from applying Capital Budgeting to the federal accounts. I conclude that Capital Budgeting is the best of the three approaches and that Generational Accounting is the least helpful. Acknowledging that there might be some value in learning what we can from a variety of approaches to analyzing fiscal policy, I nevertheless conclude that Generational Accounting is actually a misleading or--at best--empty measure of future fiscal developments. The best approach to providing …

Tax, Corporate Governance, And Norms, Steven Bank

ExpressO

This paper examines the use of federal tax provisions to effect changes in state law corporate governance. There is a growing academic controversy over these provisions, fueled in part by their popularity among legislators as a method of addressing the recent spate of corporate scandals. In order to better understand and distinguish between the possible uses of tax as a tool of corporate governance, this paper takes a historical approach by focusing on two measures enacted during the New Deal – the undistributed profits tax in 1936 and the overhaul of the tax-free reorganization provisions in 1934 – and considers …

The Rational Exuberance Of Structuring Venture Capital Startups, Victor Fleischer

ExpressO

This Article takes the bursting of the dot com bubble as an opportunity to reevaluate the tax structure of venture capital startups. By organizing startups as corporations rather than as partnerships, investors and entrepreneurs seem to leave money on the table by failing to fully use tax losses -- especially since the vast majority of startups fail. Conventional wisdom attributes the lack of attention paid to losses to a "gambler's mentality" or optimism bias. I argue here that the use of the corporate form is, in fact, rational, or at least that there is a method to the madness.

I …

Social Security Reform: An Expository Report, Nathan J. Voss

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Why Tax The Rich? Efficiency, Equity, And Progressive Taxation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Reviews

In Greek mythology, Atlas was a giant who carried the world on his shoulders. In Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, Atlas represents the “ prime movers”—the talented few who bear the weight of the world’s economy.1 In the novel, the prime movers go on strike against the oppressive burden of excessive regulation and taxation, leaving the world in disarray and demonstrating how indispensable they are to the rest of us (the “second handers” ).

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

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Are We A Nation Of Tax Cheaters? New Econometric Evidence On Tax Compliance, Jeffrey A. Dubin, Michael J. Graetz, Louis L. Wilde

Faculty Scholarship

In 1982, then Commissioner of Internal Revenue Roscoe Egger reported to Congress that legal sector noncompliance with the Federal Income Tax statutes generated an "income tax gap" of $81 billion in 1981, up from $29 billion in 1973. He further projected a gap of $120 billion for 1985 (U.S. Congress, 1982). Perceptions of accelerating noncompliance inspired a crisis mentality within the Internal Revenue Service, Congress, and the tax bar.

The IRS responded in part by funding a major independent study of tax noncompliance via the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Bar Foundation initiated an investigation of its own …