Taxation-Federal Commons^™

It Is Not Too Late For The Health Savings Account, Jessica A. Bejerea

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The Health Savings Account (HSA), a tax-advantaged savings vehicle for paying medical expenses, paired with the high deductible health plan, has become a popular means of controlling health care costs and insurance premiums. Recently Congress attempted to increase the attractiveness of the HSA and the high deductible health plan when it amended HSA law in 2006. This note examines these recent changes and argues that certain provisions of the amendments, along with IRS guidance, have instead complicated the rules for HSAs and have neglected to resolve at least one important issue.

Over 3 Million Low-Income Children In Rural Areas Face Cut In Child Tax Credit If Recovery Act Improvement Expires, Arloc Sherman, Marybeth J. Mattingly

Carsey Publications

According to this new research, at the end of 2010, the Child Tax Credit improvements that were included in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will expire if Congress does not extend them. If this happens, low-income working families across America will be affected.

What Are We - Laborers, Factories, Or Spare Parts? The Tax Treatment Of Transfers Of Human Body Materials, Lisa Milot

Scholarly Works

Transfers of human body materials are ubiquitous. From surrogacy arrangements, to sales of eggs, sperm and plasma to clinics, to black markets for kidneys, to pleas for donations of body materials, these transfers are covered and debated daily in popular and academic discourse. The associated philosophical and legal issues have been explored by a wide range of commentators. The appropriate tax treatment of these transactions, however, is mostly unexamined.

Current law is unclear about what the tax consequences of these transfers are. There are no statutory provisions directly on point, Internal Revenue Service guidance is outdated and conflicting, and the …

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

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Case Against Taxing Citizens, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

The US is the only developed country to tax citizens living permanently overseas on their worldwide income. This rule was created at a time when the income tax applied only to the rich and when some of the rich moved overseas to avoid the draft. We do not have a draft any more, the income tax applies to the middle class, and many more US citizens live permanently overseas for non-tax reasons. In a globalized world, citizenship-based taxation is an anachronism which should be abandoned.

Xilinx Revisited, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

On March 22 the Ninth Circuit released its new opinion in Xilinx v. Commissioner, Doc 2010-6163, 2010 WTD 55-42. 1 As has been expected since the panel withdrew its original opinion, it reversed itself and in a 2-1 opinion held for the taxpayer. The opinion makes it pretty clear why the reversal occurred. It was the result of concentrated pressure by the international tax community and the fact that the government was unwilling to defend the theory on which the panel originally decided the case: that the arm’s-length standard of the section 482 regulations does not apply to cost sharing. …

Restructuring The Tax Treatment For Home Equity Draws: Implementing Consumption Tax Fundamentals To Preserve Home Equity, Allen Holzer

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Check-The-Box Regs And Gift Tax Discounts, Wendy G. Gerzog

All Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the recent Tax Court decision in Pierre and the effect for gift tax purposes of an entity’s classification made under the check-the-box regulations. The court was split on what those regulations mean when they state that an entity is to be disregarded ‘‘for federal tax purposes.’’

Taxation, Pregnancy, And Privacy, Bridget J. Crawford

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

This Article frames a discussion of surrogacy within the context of existing income tax laws. A surrogate receives money for carrying and bearing a child. This payment is income by any definition, even if the surrogacy contract recites that it is a “reimbursement.” Cases and rulings on the income tax consequences of the sale of blood and human breast milk, as well as analogies to situations in which people are paid to wear advertising on their bodies, support the conclusion that a surrogate recognizes taxable income, although the Internal Revenue Service has never stated so. For tax purposes, the reproductive …

E-Vat: An Electronically Collected Progressive Consumption Tax, Daniel S. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

This report proposes replacing the income tax with an electronic, progressive consumption tax that couples a credit-method VAT (modified for wages) with a progressive wage tax. I have called this proposal e-VAT (a convenient contraction for an electronic value added tax), because it is based on a business-level-credit VAT and can be collected automatically and electronically at the point of sale.

The essential advantage of e-VAT over the Hall-Rabushka flat tax is that e-VAT’s use of a credit VAT as its foundation facilitates automatic and electronic collection of the tax. A credit VAT lends itself to electronic monitoring and auditing …

London Calling: Does The U.K.'S Experience With Individual Taxation Clash With The U.S.'S Expectations, Stephanie Mcmahon

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The United States is one of the last countries to tax married couples jointly; most other countries have adopted individual taxation. In 1990, the United Kingdom completed transitioning its tax system from one that treated husbands and wives as a marital unit to one that mandates an individual-based system, and so it has two decades of experience with the new regime. This article provides American policymakers valuable information regarding the consequences of adopting individual taxation by examining the United Kingdom's experience. First, it establishes a matrix of factors that identifies and assesses differences between the two nations that affect the …

California Women: Trying To Use Federal Taxes To Put The 'Community' In Community Property, Stephanie H. Mcmahon

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Community property is thought to be a more equitable marital property regime than the common law because we assume that providing each spouse with an interest in fifty percent of the family’s income also provides a substantial amount of equality between spouses. Historically, however, as the regime operated in the United States, it was not especially favorable to wives. Although the concept implied a partnership between spouses, in practice wives were denied rights a partner would expect to enjoy. This article examines how women lobbied to enlarge the protection California wives enjoyed under the state’s community property regime in the …

Tax Shelters: Up Off The Canvas?, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

Recently, taxpayers prevailed at trial in two federal tax shelter cases: TIFD III-E Inc. v. United States, 2009 WL 3208650 (D. Conn. Oct. 7, 2009) (“Castle Harbour III”) and Consolidated Edison Co. v. United States, 2009 WL 3418533 (Fed. Cl. Oct. 21, 2009) (“Con Ed”). Doing full justice to these cases would require detailed descriptions of their facts, the arguments presented and the rationales in the opinions. I leave this work to the inevitable parsing and spinning in briefs in tax shelter cases to come and to more length commentary. See, e.g., Lee A. Sheppard, Con Ed’s Night of the …

Running From The United States Treasury: The Need To Reform The Taxation Of Multinational Corporations, 43 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1041 (2010), Jennifer Barton

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Avoiding Misuse Of Donor Advised Funds, Michael J. Hussey

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article presents a proposal for further modifying donor advised funds to retain most of their hallmark flexibility and ease of use while drawing them into line with other charitable giving vehicles that put contributed funds to use for active charitable purposes. This Article argues that using individual retirement accounts as an underlying legal model for donor advised funds will address Congress's concerns regarding the appropriateness of the income tax deductions for contributions to donor advised funds while allowing donor advised funds to retain much of their hallmark flexibility and ease of operation.

Taxation, Pregnancy, And Privacy, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article frames a discussion of surrogacy within the context of existing income tax laws. A surrogate receives money for carrying and bearing a child. This payment is income by any definition, even if the surrogacy contract recites that it is a "reimbursement." Cases and rulings on the income tax consequences of the sale of blood and human breast milk, as well as analogies to situations in which people are paid to wear advertising on their bodies, support the conclusion that a surrogate recognizes taxable income, although the Internal Revenue Service has never stated so. For tax purposes, the reproductive …

Taxing Civil Rights Gains, Anthony C. Infanti

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article is divided into four parts. In Part I, the nature of the levy that the DOMAs impose on same-sex couples is explained. In Part II, how this levy can be classified as a "tax" is explained. In Part III, the federal- and state-level ramifications of classifying the levy that the DOMAs impose as a "tax" are discussed. Finally, brief concluding remarks are provided that discuss how this Article might pave the way for making similar arguments with respect to other nontraditional families and, concomitantly, how it demonstrates the transformative potential of same-sex marriage.

Taking The Good With The Bad: Recognizing The Negative Externalities Created By Charities And Their Implications For The Charitable Deduction, Shannon Weeks Mccormack

Articles

The tax code allows taxpayers to deduct amounts donated to an extremely broad variety of organizations deemed to create societal benefits — that is, positive externalities. But many organizations that may receive tax-deductible contributions also cause harms. Both the tax code and subsidy theory, one of the most utilized scholarly theories developed to analyze the deduction from an economic and morally neutral perspective, fail to properly account for these negative externalities. In order to do so, one needs to look beyond the economic models utilized by subsidy theorists. For instance, there should be some limit to the types of harms …

The Times They Are Not A-Changin': Reforming The Charitable Split-Interest Rules (Again), Wendy G. Gerzog

All Faculty Scholarship

The article reviews the history of the tax treatment of charitable split interest gifts, explains the inequities that Congress both cured and generated in its 1969 reforms, and proposes solutions that are consistent with the goals of the 1969 legislation. The article discusses variations in the 1969 definition of a charitable split interest, which, because of the enacted statutory language, applies in instances where there is no abuse potential. The inequity produced by that definition penalizes the donor and flouts the rationale behind the 1969 legislation. By contrast, the creation of some required statutory forms of charitable split interests in …

Complex Tax Legislation In The Turbotax Era, Lawrence A. Zelenak

Faculty Scholarship

When tax returns were prepared with pencil and paper—in an era now gone forever—Congress did not impose income tax provisions of great computational complexity on large numbers of taxpayers, in the belief that it was unreasonable to require average taxpayers (or their paid preparers) to struggle with computationally complex provisions. As return preparation software gradually replaced the pencil in recent decades, the complexity constraint weakened and eventually disappeared. Congress has responded by imposing unprecedented computational complexity on large numbers of taxpayers—primarily through the expanded scope of the alternative minimum tax and the proliferation of phase outs of credits, deductions, and …

Debt-Financed Consumption And A Hybrid Income-Consumption Tax, Lawrence A. Zelenak

Faculty Scholarship

The debate between proponents of income taxation and proponents of consumption taxation has focused almost exclusively on the differing treatment of savings under the two tax bases. This is odd, given that income and consumption tax bases also differ in their treatment of debt-financed consumption. This Essay addresses the largely-ignored question of the taxation of debt-financed consumption. It contends that a strong case can be made in favor of a hybrid income-consumption tax base under which taxation is triggered by the earlier of consumption or income, so that both debt-financed consumption and saved income are included in the tax base. …

Of Punitive Damages, Tax Deductions, And Tax-Aware Juries: A Response To Polsky And Markel, Lawrence A. Zelenak

Faculty Scholarship

In “Taxing Punitive Damages,” Gregg D. Polsky and Dan Markel argue that defendants paying punitive damages are under-punished relative to juries’ intentions, because tax-unaware juries do not take into account the fact that the deductibility of punitive damages significantly reduces defendants’ after-tax costs. They note that the Obama administration has proposed addressing the under-punishment problem by amending the Internal Revenue Code to disallow deductions for punitive damages (and for settlements paid on account of punitive damage claims). They conclude, however, that the proposal would be ineffective because defendants could avoid its impact by disguising nondeductible punitive damage settlements as deductible …

Philosophical Objection To The Optimal Tax Model, A , Linda Sugin

Faculty Scholarship

This article questions the normative power of the optimal tax model by examining assumptions made by the developer of that model, James Mirrlees' . It makes a case for moving beyond utilitarian conceptions of social welfare that are at the foundation of the optimal tax model, and that have become the dominant construct in tax policy analysis. In explaining why the Mirrlees assumptions are problematic, the Article argues for a nuanced, philosophical understanding of fairness that incorporates the role of taxation into a broader conception of a just society. A fair tax must satisfy the full range of demands that …

The Politics And Psychology Of Gasoline Taxes: An Empirical Study, Shi-Ling Hsu

Scholarly Publications

Economists are beginning to form a consensus that a carbon tax is the most effective and cost-effective way to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. The insight of economists and other policy analysts is that, in the greenhouse gas context, the design of cap-and-trade programs creates so many opportunities for rent-seeking that they may not be very cost-effective, and may not reduce greenhouse gas emissions at all. Carbon tax proposals are appealing because they are so simple and sensible that rent-seeking would have to be very audacious to succeed.

Carbon tax proposals, however, have divided economists from almost everybody else. In …

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 …

Excessive Executive Compensation: Prior Federal Attempts To Curb Perceived Abuses, 10 Hous. Bus. & Tax L.J. 196 (2010), Kathryn J. Kennedy

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Human Capital And Transfer Taxation, Kerry A. Ryan

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

For The Love Of The Game: The Justification For Tax Exemption In Intercollegiate Athletics, 44 J. Marshall L. Rev. 179 (2010), Andrew D. Appleby

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments In Federal Income Taxation: The Year 2009, Martin J. Mcmahon Jr., Ira B. Shepard, Daniel L. Simmons

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article discusses, and provides context to understand the significance of, the most important judicial decisions and administrative rulings and regulations promulgated by the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department during 2008 – and sometimes a little farther back in time if the authors find the item particularly humorous or outrageous. Most Treasury Regulations, however, are so complex that they cannot be discussed in detail and, anyway, only a devout masochist would read them all the way through; just the basic topic and fundamental principles are highlighted. Amendments to the Internal Revenue Code generally are discussed to the extent that …

University Endowments: A (Surprisingly) Elusive Concept, Frances R. Hill

Articles

Even as certain policy makers press for mandatory payouts from endowments, the concept of an endowment remains surprisingly elusive. In the absence of either operational concepts of endowments or well-established metrics for identifying and measuring endowments, public policy discussions proceed with an implicit model of an endowment as "money in waiting" that is not currently in use for exempt educational purposes. This Article suggests that endowments, however conceptualized or measured, are better understood as "money in use" even though it is not being distributed. It argues that most endowment money is currently in use for at least two purposes. The …