Taxation-State and Local Commons^™

Defining Residence For Income Tax Purposes: Domicile As Gap-Filler, Citizenship As Proxy And Gap-Filler, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

The states' income tax systems are important repositories of experience which confirm the administrative benefits of citizenship-based taxation. Domicile today plays an important role in state tax systems as a gap-filler when more objective statutory residence laws fail to assign any state of residence to the taxpayer. Citizenship is an administrable proxy for domicile and serves a similar gap-filling role in the federal taxation of individuals whose income and activities straddle across national boundaries.

The states' difficulties enforcing domicile-based taxation highlight the administrative benefits of citizenship-based taxation. As long as residence is understood for tax purposes in terms of domicile, …

Citizenship And Worldwide Taxation: Citizenship As An Administrable Proxy For Domicile, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

The United States' worldwide taxation of its citizens is less different from international, residence-based norms than is widely believed and is sensible as a matter of tax policy. An individual's citizenship is an administrable, if sometimes overly broad, proxy for his domicile, his permanent home. Both citizenship and domicile measure an individual's permanent allegiance rather than his immediate physical presence. Because citizenship and domicile resemble each other, and because other nations often define residence for tax purposes as domicile, the U.S. system of citizenship-based taxation typically reaches the same results as the residence-based systems of these other nations, but reaches …