Taxation-Federal Commons^™

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

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Broken Safety Net: A Study Of Earned Income Tax Credit Recipients And A Proposal For Repair, Sara Sternberg Greene

Faculty Scholarship

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the largest federal antipoverty program in the United States and garners almost universal bipartisan support from politicians, legal scholars, and other commentators. However, assessments of the EITC missed an imperative perspective: that of EITC recipients themselves. Past work relies on largely unconfirmed assumptions about the behaviors and needs of low-income families. This Article provides a novel assessment of the EITC based on original data obtained directly from 194 EITC recipients through in-depth qualitative interviews. The findings are troubling: They show that while the EITC has important advantages over welfare, which it has largely …

Enforcement As Substance In Tax Compliance, Leandra Lederman, Ted Sichelman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

It is well known that the government's complete failure to enforce a law can nullify that law. But what are the effects of partial enforcement? This Article shows that imperfect enforcement can alter the de facto content of the written law in predictable and beneficial ways. Specifically, in the tax compliance context, even if perfect enforcement were costless, it would not always be socially optimal. When improving the substantive law is infeasible, the enforcement agency can effect beneficial changes in the law by adopting a probabilistic enforcement scheme that varies according to the category of taxpayer and type of transaction. …

Indopco, Inc. V. Commissioner: National Starch Isn't The Only One "Stiffed" By The Supreme Court's Decision, Jeffrey Gates Davis

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Primer On Us. Taxation Of International Transactions (Outline), William B. Sherman

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

A Primer On Us. Taxation Of International Transactions (Slides), William B. Sherman

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Statute Of Limitations For Overstatements Of Basis, Richard T. Rice

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Federal Tax Update: Structuring Deals In 2012 And Beyond (Slides), Stephen L. Owen

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

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.

Utility Of Personal Service Corporations For Athletes, Bret M. Kanis

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federal Tax Update: The Current Situation And The Prospects For Reform (Slides), Harry L. Gutman

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Preserving Fairness In Tax Administration In The Mayo Era, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

One of the dominant themes in contemporary federal taxation is bringing tax administration within the fold of general administrative law. In 2011, the United States Supreme Court unambiguously embraced this movement in the landmark case Mayo Foundation for Medical Education & Research v. United States, in which the Court held that challenges to the validity of Treasury regulations generally are governed by the Chevron standard to the same extent as are regulations issued by other administrative agencies.

There was an immediate and strong hostile reaction to Mayo in tax circles. Many fear that Mayo dramatically tips the balance in favor …

It's Not A Tax (Statutorily), But It Is A Tax (Constitutionally), Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Not All Defined Value Clauses Are Equal, Wendy G. Gerzog

All Faculty Scholarship

Defined value clauses used to value nonmarketable family limited partnership (FLP) interests create valuation distortions and other public policy issues. This paper describes these abuses and proposes the employment of restrictions similar to those applied to pecuniary formula marital deduction clauses.

The article explains how pecuniary formula marital deduction provisions created valuation distortions by allowing for undervaluation of the marital share that were remedied by the IRS’s Rev. Proc. 64-19 and the enactment of section 2056(b)(10). The article analyzes recent case law expanding the use of defined value clauses into the FLP area and criticizes the courts for not applying …

Putting State Courts In The Constitutional Driver's Seat: State Taxpayer Standing After Cuno And Winn, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

This article explores the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno and Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn. In Cuno and Winn, the Court held that state taxpayers lacked standing in the federal courts. Because the states have more liberal taxpayer standing rules than do the federal courts, Cuno and Winn will not terminate taxpayers’ constitutional challenges to state taxes and expenditures, but will instead channel such challenges from the federal courts (where taxpayers do not have standing) to the state courts (where they do). Moreover, municipal taxpayer standing in the federal courts, which …

Tax Exemptions For Charitable Single-Member Limited Liability Companies, Terri Lynn Helge, David M. Rosenberg

Faculty Scholarship

This summer, the IRS issued long-awaited guidance on the deductibility of charitable contributions made to a single-member limited liability company (“SMLLC”) that is wholly-owned by a charitable organization exempt from federal income tax as a organization described in Section 501(c)(3). Previously, in a 2001 private letter ruling, the IRS confirmed that a SMLLC wholly-owned by a U.S. charity did not need to submit a separate application for recognition of federal income tax exemption, but declined to rule on whether contributions made to the SMLLC would be deductible under Section 170 as charitable contributions. An article in the IRS Continuing Professional …

Reforming Executive Compensation: What Do We Know And Where Do We Go?, Priyanka Rajagopalan

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

In this Article, I study a fascinating problem - what are the legal, political and economic implications of regulating executive bonuses? While the Administration's recent consideration of proposals to tax bonuses of AIG executives has sparked a great deal of media speculation and attention, there has been little legal scholarship discussing the various possible consequences of this and other methods of regulating executive compensation. Especially given the growing interest in executive compensation and the possible benefits and costs of regulation in this arena, I believe this paper will make a significant scholarly contribution to the existing literature on corporate governance …

The Physical Consequences Of Emotional Distress: The Need For A New Test To Determine What Amounts Are Excluded From Gross Income Under § 104(A)(2), C. Anthony Wolfe Iv

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tefra: No Fix Possible, Just Get Rid Of It!, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Sales Between A Partnership And Non-Partners, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

The code denies a deduction for a loss recognized on a sale or exchange between certain related parties. Two of the principal code sections that deny a deduction in that circumstance are sections 267(a)(1) and 707(b)(1)(A). Two regulatory provisions promulgated under section 267 apply the denial of a loss deduction rule to partnerships — reg. section 1.267(b)-1(b) and temp. reg. section 1.267(a)-2T(c), Question 2. I conclude that to the extent reg. section 1.267(b)-1(b) applies to section 267(a)(1), it is invalid and has been invalid since 1986. Also, two of the questions and answers in the temporary regulation are invalid.

Contribution Of A Built-In Loss To A Partnership, Douglas A. Kahn

Articles

Before 2004, it was possible to use the partnership tax provisions of the code to shift the benefit ofa loss deduction for a decline in property valuefrom the person who incurred it to another person.One method of accomplishing that goal involvedthe contribution of depreciated property to a partnership.

Medical Devices Excise Tax (Mdet) — A Market-Specific Vat?, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Andrew Shact, Gail Wasylyshyn

Faculty Scholarship

VATs flourish in complex, clearly defined markets. New York discovered this when it converted its single-stage retail sales tax on hotel rooms, the Hotel Room Occupancy Tax (HROT), into a multi-stage European-style VAT. The HROT VAT-conversion demonstrates that (a) in a clearly defined market where (b) a single stage tax is imposed on (c) only part of a complex supply chain that (d) losses attributable to supply-chain-fragmentation can be remedied by moving to a multi-stage VAT.

The Medical Devices Excise Tax (MDET) imposes as 2.3% excise tax on the sale by manufacturers, producers or importers of clearly identified medical devises …

Facade Easement: Inexpert Valuation, Wendy G. Gerzog

All Faculty Scholarship

The article discusses the recent Dunlap decision, which involved facade easement transfers to the National Architectural Trust, a qualified charity that preserves building easements across the country, although most are in New York City. Although allowing a deduction for their cash contributions to NAT to enforce the easement and not finding any penalties applicable, the Tax Court held that despite two valuation reports written by accepted valuation experts, the taxpayers had not established any value for their easement.

Retirees Beware: Don't Worry About The British-- 2013 Is Coming, Douglas A. Kahn, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

Retirees beware. The easy money policy of the Federal Open Market Committee and the 15 percent tax rate on qualified dividends have encouraaged retirees, especially middle-income retired savers, to reorient their nest eggs away from certificates of deposit, treasuries, and money market funds to dividend-paying stocks and mutual funds. According to the IRS, 43 percent of taxpayers age 65 or older reported qualified dividend income amounting to nearly half of the qualified dividend income reported by all taxpayers. By contrast, 46 percent of taxpayers age 65 or older reported net capital gains amounting to 30.5 percent of the net capital …

Home Concrete: After The Cheering, Problems, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Federal Taxation, Robert Beard

Mercer Law Review

In the year 2011, the courts addressed interesting issues in the areas of constructive receipt, taxpayer standing to pursue non-monetary damages, and lender liability for unpaid payroll taxes. This Article surveys these decisions.

Slicing The Shadow: A Proposal For Updating U.S. International Taxation, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In the article Avi-Yonah proposed that the United States tax multinational corporations using a formulary apportionment system based solely on income derived from sales. The background for the article was drawn principally from Robert Reich’s The Work of Nations (1991), and the analysis was inspired by Stanley I. Langbein’s work on transfer pricing, especially his seminal article "The Unitary Method and the Myth of Arm’s Length," Tax Notes, Feb. 17, 1986, p. 625; see also Louis Kauder, "Intercompany Pricing and Section 482: A Proposal to Shift From Uncontrolled Comparables to Formulary Apportionment Now," Tax Notes, Jan. 25, 1993, p. 485.

Court Reform And Breathing Space Under The Establishment Clause, Mark C. Rahdert

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Flast v. Cohen held that federal taxpayers have standing to challenge government spending for religion. While Frothingham v. Mellon generally prohibits taxpayer standing in federal courts, the Court reasoned that the Establishment Clause specifically prohibits taxation in any amount to fund unconstitutional religious spending. For several decades Flast has been settled law that supplied jurisdiction in many leading establishment cases. But Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc. and Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn signal that Flast may soon be overruled. This jurisdictional ferment raises two questions: Why this sudden shift? And what does it signify for the …

Elaine Hightower Gagliardi On The Deceased Spousal Unused Exclusion Amount: Now You See It, Now You Don't, Elaine H. Gagliardi

Faculty Journal Articles & Other Writings

Spousal portability of the applicable exclusion amount promises estate planning simplicity.70 No longer will a married couple need to make lifetime transfers of assets to ensure that each spouse holds sufficient assets to fully use the unified credit of each regardless of the order of death.71 A couple can also avoid the attendant costs of placing property in a credit shelter trust following the first death.72 Portability achieves these purposes and at the same time aligns with testamentary goals of clients when all the children of the couple are from the marriage, neither spouse anticipates remarriage following the first death, …