Taxation-Federal Commons^™

Income Tax - Deductions For Facilitating Payments To Foreign Government Officials, Birney Bull

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

(Elephant) Death And Taxes: Proposed Tax Treatment Of Illegal Ivory, Angela Ostrowski

Animal Law Review

African elephants are poached for their ivory at alarming rates. If the cur­rent level of poaching continues, it is projected they will be extinct from the wild in the year 2025. Preserving the African elephant species is important from an animal rights, conservation, ecological, economical, and crime pre­vention perspective. The current penalties and fines for the illegal trade in ivory are not enough of a deterrent. One method of deterrence that has not yet been explored is the imposition of tax consequences on the illegal ivory trade. This Article proposes a number of ways to use the tax system to …

Structuring And Restructuring Deals In 2014 (And Beyond), Stephen L. Owen

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Consistency Is Key: To Preserve Legislative Intent The Irs Must Afford Legal Recognition To Non-Marital Relationships In A Post-Doma World, Shane R. Martins

Marquette Elder's Advisor

Although the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Windsor v. US allows for federal recognition of same-sex marriages, the Internal Revenue Service will only grant spousal recognition to couples residing in states that term same-sex unions as marriages. Consequently, spousal treatment will not be extended to non-marital relationships, even in states that treat their Civil Unions and Domestic Partnerships as “marital equivalents.” Given that spousal recognition for federal tax purposes was intended to ensure geographic uniformity and horizontal equity, the IRS must grant spousal recognition to couples who are in relationships that their respective state identifies as a “marital equivalent”.

Financial Disability For All, T. Keith Fogg, Rachel E. Zuraw

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Understanding The Amt, And Its Unadopted Sibling, The Amxt, James R. Hines Jr., Kyle D. Logue

Articles

Four million Americans with extensive tax preferences are subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). By taxing a broad definition of income, the AMT makes it possible to have a tax system that both encourages certain activities with generous tax preferences and maintains a semblance of distributional equity. The same rationale supports the imposition of an Alternative Maximum Tax (AMxT), which would cap tax liabilities of individuals with very few preference items and thereby afford Congress greater flexibility in designing the income tax. The original 1969 AMT proposal included an AMxT; it is difficult to justify imposing one without the …

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.

Crane And Tufts: Resolved And Unresolved Issues, John Zimmerman

Pepperdine Law Review

Crane v. Commissioner and its famous footnote 37 have inspired much controversy and commentary. This article discusses the issues and unresolved questions surrounding the calculation of gain from relief of nonrecourse indebtedness. It does so through a thorough analysis of the actions of the courts, the Congress, and administrative agencies. The author concludes by suggesting several possible courses of action in resolving remaining ambiguities.

Tax Incentives For Innovation In A Modern Ip Ecosystem, Joshua Chao

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Technological innovation is a long-recognized catalyst for economic growth in the United States, and its promotion is an important feature of national economic policy, as evidenced by the presence of various tax incentives for innovation in the US Internal Revenue Code. Tax incentives are an important means by which governments can deliver subsidies to promote such innovation. To be effective, however, any system of tax incentives must be tailored for current economic conditions and competitive landscapes. In the current ecosystem of innovation in the United States, this means that, at the very least, the incentives for innovation in the US …

The Case For The Retention Of The State Death Tax Credit In The Federal Transfer Tax Scheme: "Just Say No" To A Deduction, John M. Janiga, Louis S. Harrison

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

How Long Can This Go On? The Controversy Over The Application Of The Statute Of Limitations To S Corporations And Their Shareholders, J. Marcus Sommers

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fitness Tax Credits: Costs, Benefits, And Viability, Daniel M. Reach

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

As the number of overweight and obese Americans rises, it becomes increasingly clear that Americans need further incentives to stimulate lasting lifestyle changes. Tax incentives focused on exercise, which have been largely unexplored to this point, are an effective response to the growing obesity problem in the United States that would largely avoid the political opposition that tax policies focused on diet have encountered. In addition, they would also provide a more palatable solution for the taxpayer beneficiaries with a relatively low impact on government revenues. Viable tax incentives to encourage greater fitness include tax credits and sales tax breaks, …

Increased Tax Liability Awards After Eshelman: A Call For Expanded Acceptance Beyond The Realm Of Anti-Discrimination Statutes, Eirik Cheverud

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Narrowing The Tax Gap Through Presumptive Taxation, Kyle D. Logue, Gustavo G. Vettori

Articles

Can the United States government significantly reduce the federal tax gap? This question has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention over the years and has been the focus of numerous government reports. The "tax gap" is the official term for the Treasury Department's estimate of the difference between what American taxpayers should pay to the federal government in a given tax year (that is, the amount of tax they owe, based on a reasonable interpretation of existing tax laws as applied to particular taxpayers' circumstances) and what they actually pay. This estimate is derived from painstaking and detailed audits …

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 …

When Canons Go To War In Indian Country, Guess Who Wins? Barrett V. United States: Tax Canons And Canons Of Construction In The Federal Taxation Of American Indians, John Lentz

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federal Fairness To State Taxpayers: Irrationality, Unfunded Mandates, And The "Salt" Deduction, Brian Galle

Michigan Law Review

By sheer dollars alone, the largest impact of the Alternative Minimum Tax is to deny many taxpayers the deduction for the taxes they paid to their state and local governments under § 164 of the Internal Revenue Code. This Article provides a fine-grained analysis of the overall fairness of the state-andlocal- tax deduction--and, by implication, the fairness of its partial repeal through the Alternative Minimum Tax. I offer for the first time a close examination of how newly understood limits on taxpayer mobility and rationality might affect individuals' choices of bundles of local taxes and localgovernment services, which in turn …

The Proper Tax Treatment Of The Transfer Of A Compensatory Partnership Interest, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

If a person receives property as payment for services, whether for past or future services, the receipt typically constitutes gross income to the recipient. If a person performs services for a partnership or agrees to perform future services, and if the person receives a partnership interest as compensation for the past or future services, one might expect that receipt to cause the new partner to recognize gross income in an amount equal to the fair market value of the partnership interest. After all, if a corporation compensated someone for services rendered or to be rendered by transferring the corporation's own …

Optimal Tax Compliance And Penalties When The Law Is Uncertain, Kyle D. Logue

Articles

This article examines the optimal level of tax compliance and the optimal penalty for noncompliance in circumstances in which the substance of the tax law is uncertain - that is, when the precise application of the Internal Revenue Code to a particular situation is not clear. In such situations, a number of interesting questions arise. This article will consider two of them. First, as a normative matter, how certain should taxpayers be before they rely on a particular interpretation of a substantively uncertain tax rule? If a particular position is not clearly prohibited but neither is it clearly allowed, what …

Prevention Of Double Deductions Of A Single Loss: Solutions In Search Of A Problem, Jeffrey H. Kahn, Douglas A. Kahn

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Prevention Of Double Deductions Of A Single Loss: Solutions In Search Of A Problem, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey H. Kahn

Articles

In the current tax system, a corporation is treated as a separate taxable entity. This tax system is sometimes referred to as an entity tax or a double tax system. Since a corporation is a separate and distinct entity from its owners, the shareholders, the default rule is that transfers between them are treated as realization events. Without a specific Internal Revenue Code (Code) provision providing otherwise, such transactions will also require the parties to recognize the realized gain or loss. Congress has enacted several nonrecognition corporate provisions when forcing the recognition of income could prevent changes to the form …

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 …

Words! Words! Words!: Teaching The Language Of Tax, Stephen B. Cohen

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Guaranteed Payments Made In Kind By A Partnership, Douglas A. Kahn, Faith Cuenin

Articles

If a partnership makes a payment to a partner for services rendered in the latter's capacity as a partner or for the use of capital, to the extent that the payment is determined without regard to partnership income, it is characterized by the Internal Revenue Code as a "guaranteed payment" and is treated differently from other partnership distributions.' In addition, if a partnership makes a payment in liquidation of a retiring or deceased partner's interest in the partnership, part of that payment may be characterized as a guaranteed payment by section 736(a)(2). We will discuss in Part VI of this …

Legislating Morality: The Duty To The Tax System Reconsidered, Watson

Scholarly Works

Four years ago, I presented a paper at a symposium on professionalism jointly sponsored by the University of Kansas Law School and the Kansas Bar Association. That paper espoused the view (contrary to what appears to be the popular view among tax scholars) that tax lawyers owe no special duty to the "tax system" other than to abide by the law and the applicable standards of professional conduct. During the four-year interim since my last visit to Kansas, however, we have witnessed the deleterious effect of the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 (RRA '98) on IRS enforcement and …

Secondary Liability For Federal Trust Fund Taxes, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

When collection of unpaid taxes cannot be effected from the person primarily liable for them, the Internal Revenue Code creates for the IRS a number of mechanisms for collection from secondary parties. To satisfy the requirements of fairness and due process, secondary liability is imposed only when the party has some nexus to the liability, that is, when that person's actions helped create the liability or frustrated its collection from the primary taxpayer.

This article discusses l.R.C. § 6672, one of the most widely used and important of the secondary liability mechanisms in tax. There are numerous § 6672 assessments …

Rendering Unto Caesar Or Electioneering For Caesar--Loss Of Church Tax Exemption For Participation In Electoral Politics, Alan L. Feld

Faculty Scholarship

The restriction on church participation in political campaigns contained in the Internal Revenue Code operates uneasily. It appears to serve the useful purpose of separating the spheres of religion and electoral politics. But the separation often is only apparent, as churches in practice signal support for a particular candidate in a variety of rays that historically have not cost them their exemptions. Although the limited enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service has reflected the sensitive nature of the First Amendment values present, the federal government should provide more formal elaboration by statute or regulation. Focus on the use of funds …

Hester Prynne, Lydia Bennet, And Section 306 Stock: The Concept Of Tainting In The American Novel, The British Novel, And The Internal Revenue Code, Stephen B. Cohen, Stephen B. Cohen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Did Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter, inspire Section 306 of the Internal Revenue Code? This code provision adopts a peculiarly Hawthorne-like solution to a tax avoidance scheme known as the "preferred stock bailout." Section 306 taints the stock used in the scheme as "Section 306 stock." Special rules then govern all subsequent dispositions of the tainted stock. With its concept of a taint that can dog a stock from acquisition to disposition, Section 306 might have been designed by a novelist rather than a tax technician.

Tax Lawyers, Ethical Obligations, And The Duty To The System, Watson

Scholarly Works

Perhaps the most elusive area of law is that of legal ethics. While the term itself is easy to define,' the subject all but defies codification because ethics, or morals (the terms are interchangeable), cannot be encapsulated by or in law. This is because law, in general, contains its own standard of validity on which there is usually clear societal consensus. For example, murder, rape, and theft are morally repugnant universally. Hence, punishment for any of these offenses does not impinge upon religious or individual autonomy because there is no ethical freedom to choose whether or not to engage in …

Tax Consequences Of Assigning Life Insurance - Time For Another Look, Douglas A. Kahn, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 furnishes the courts and the Internal Revenue Service an opportunity to close certain loopholes in the federal tax consequences of assigning life insurance. About twenty years ago, we published an article arguing that the tax consequences of assigning life insurance affords taxpayers unwarranted opportunities for tax avoidance. Since then, developments in the case law and Internal Revenue Service rulings have broadened the loopholes. In the update of our article, we show how the new tax law supports our original position.