Taxation-State and Local Commons^™

Reframing The Dei Case, Veronica Root Martinez

Seattle University Law Review

Corporate firms have long expressed their support for the idea that their organizations should become more demographically diverse while creating a culture that is inclusive of all members of the firm. These firms have traditionally, however, not been successful at improving demographic diversity and true inclusion within the upper echelons of their organizations. The status quo seemed unlikely to move, but expectations for corporate firms were upended after the #MeToo Movement of 2017 and 2018, which was followed by corporate support of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement in 2020. These two social movements, while distinct in many ways, forced firms to rethink …

Women In Shareholder Activism, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

Even a cursory review of the history of American environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) shareholder activism reveals the presence of women leaders. This Article sketches some of this history and interrogates the role of women in the shareholder activism movement. That movement typically has involved claims by minority shareholders to corporate power; activists are nearly always on the margins of power, though minority shareholders may, collectively, represent a majority interest. This Article ascribes women’s leadership in shareholder activism to their longstanding position as outsiders to corporate organization. Women’s participation in shaping corporate policy—even from the margins—has provided women with …

#Metoo And The Corporation In Popular Culture, Brenda Cossman

Seattle University Law Review

#MeToo’s initial virtual explosion in the fall of 2017 was very much about Hollywood, with famous actresses speaking out against famous producers, media moguls and celebrities, exposing the ubiquity of sexual harassment and sexual violence in and around the entertainment industry. Since then, #MeToo has made its way into Hollywood representations without much irony. Films and television shows have explicitly taken up the #MeToo themes, exploring issues of sexual harassment and violence and its afterlives. Many television shows, from the relaunched version of Murphy Brown to Brooklyn Nine-Nine to The Good Fight have incorporated #MeToo themes into episodes exploring the …

Woke Capital Revisited, Jennifer S. Fan

Seattle University Law Review

Inclusive corporate leadership is now at the forefront of discussions related to corporate governance. Two corporate theories help to explain the rise in prominence of diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) efforts in corporate leadership. First, an expanded definition of corporate purpose which elevated the idea of the importance of stakeholders, contributed to the momentum from business and legal quarters for broader corporate inclusion. Second, the increasing publicness of corporations—the social expectation of how large, typically public corporations should act given their position of power—also led to corporations becoming more active in the DEI space. It is against this backdrop that …

Army Commander’S Role—The Judge, Jury, & Prosecutor For The Article 15, Anthony Godwin

Seattle University Law Review

Service members in the armed forces are bound by a different set of rules when compared to other U.S. citizens. Some of the normal safeguards and protections that civilians enjoy are much more restrictive for military service members, and this is generally for a good reason. Such restrictions are partly due to the complex demands and needs of the United States military. Congress and the President have entrusted military commanders with special powers that enable them to handle minor violations of law without needing to go through a full judicial proceeding. Non-judicial punishments (NJP), also known as Article 15s, are …

A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, Henry F. Fradella

Seattle University Law Review

The empirical literature on perception and memory consistently demonstrates the pitfalls of eyewitness identifications. Exoneration data lend external validity to these studies. With the goal of informing law enforcement officers, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, and judicial law clerks about what they can do to reduce wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, this Article presents a synthesis of the scientific knowledge relevant to how perception and memory affect the (un)reliability of eyewitness identifications. The Article situates that body of knowledge within the context of leading case law. The Article then summarizes the most current recommendations for how law enforcement personnel should—and …

Providence Place Group V. State, 266 A.3d 1231 (R.I. 2022), Danielle M. Brackett

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

529 Plans And School Choice, Victoria J. Haneman

Scholarly Works

Some politicians believe that market-based approaches to education will meaningfully reshape public education in the United States. Advocates of school choice insist that competition for students will improve academic outcomes, drive innovation and improvement, and reduce political interference in the education system. Critics believe that there is little empirical support for any of these claims and fear that school choice policies worsen the problem of educational inequality. Although consumer choice is appealing, making an informed choice requires parents to navigate complicated application processes and transportation requirements, which may prove insurmountable to low-income families. The net effect of this is that …

America The Divisible: Local Taxes And The Salt Subsidy, Matthew S. Johnson

BYU Law Review

The state and local tax (SALT) deduction subsidizes localities in a way that has not fully been appreciated by policymakers, practitioners, or academics. While the state portion of the SALT deduction captures headlines and receives significant attention from academics, the local portion has been overlooked. Local taxes introduce concerns that are not relevant to state-levied taxes. The local tax deduction provides a greater subsidy, per capita, for wealthy localities than it does for economically heterogeneous or less wealthy localities. This Note is the first to quantify the subsidy received by localities through the SALT deduction. This Note contributes to the …

Sacrificing Sovereignty: How Tribal-State Tax Compacts Impact Economic Development In Indian Country, Pippa Browde

Faculty Law Review Articles

Economic development is a critical component of tribal sovereignty. When a state asserts taxing authority within Indian Country, there is potential for overlapping, or juridical, taxation over the same transaction. Actual or even potential juridical taxation threatens economic development opportunities for tribes. For many years, tribes and states have entered into intergovernmental agreements called tax compacts to reduce or eliminate juridical taxation. Existing literature has done little more than mention tax compacts with cursory cost-benefit analyses of the agreements. This is the first Article to critically examine the role tax compacts serve in promoting tribes’ economic development.

This Article analyzes …

Weathering State And Local Budget Storms: Fiscal Federalism With An Uncooperative Congress, David Gamage, Darien Shanske, Gladriel Shobe, Adam Thimmesch

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Throughout most of 2020, state and local governments faced severe budget crises as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Increased demand for state welfare services and rising state expenses related to controlling the spread of COVID-19 stretched state and local budgets to their breaking points. At the same time, layoffs, business closures, and social distancing measures reduced states’ primary sources of tax revenues. The traditional practice of American fiscal federalism is for the federal government to step in to provide aid during a national emergency of this magnitude, because state and local governments lack the federal government’s monetary and fiscal …

State Digital Services Taxes: A Good And Permissible Idea (Despite What You Might Have Heard), Young Ran (Christine) Kim, Darien Shanske

Articles

Tax systems have been struggling to adapt to the digitalization of the economy. At the center of the struggles is taxing digital platforms, such as Google or Facebook. These immensely profitable firms have a business model that gives away “free” services, such as searching the web. The service is not really free; it is paid for by having the users watch ads and tender data. Traditional tax systems are not designed to tax such barter transactions, leaving a gap in taxation.

One response, pioneered in Europe, has been the creation of a wholly new tax to target digital platforms: the …

Taxation, Craig D. Bell

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article reviews significant recent developments in the laws affecting Virginia state and local taxation. Its Parts cover legislative activity, judicial decisions, and selected opinions and other pronouncements from the Virginia Department of Taxation (the “Tax Department” or “Department of Taxation”) and the Attorney General of Virginia over the past year. Part I of this Article addresses state taxes. Part II covers local taxes, including real and tangible personal property taxes, license taxes, and discrete local taxes. The overall purpose of this Article is to provide Virginia tax and general practitioners with a concise overview of the recent developments in …

Tax Complexity And Technology, David I. Walker

Indiana Law Journal

The Federal Income Tax Code has become increasingly complex over time with the implication that many taxpayers no longer understand the connection between their life decisions and their taxes. Some commentators have suggested that increasing computational complexity may be attributable in part to the proliferation of tax preparation software that renders such complexity manageable at filing time, but otherwise does nothing to mitigate the “black box” nature of the tax system. While such complexity and opacity undercut explicit incentives embedded in the Code, make planning more difficult, and undermine political accountability for taxes, they may also reduce the inefficient distortion …

Tribal Sovereignty And Economic Efficiency Versus The Courts, Robert J. Miller

Washington Law Review

American Indian reservations are the poorest parts of the United States, and a higher percentage of Indian families across the country live below the poverty line than any other ethnic or racial sector. Indian nations and Indian peoples also suffer from the highest unemployment rates in the country and have the highest substandard housing rates. The vast majority of the over three hundred Indian reservations and the Alaska Native villages do not have functioning economies. This lack of economic activity starves tribal governments of the tax revenues that governments need to function. In response, Indian nations create and operate business …

Phased Mark-To-Market For Billionaire Income Tax Reforms, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this installment of Academic Perspectives on SALT, Gamage and Shanske advocate for phased mark-to-market as a mechanism for reforming the taxation of investment gains of billionaires and megamillionaires.

Front Matter (Letter From The Editor, Masthead, Etc.)

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

Don't Ban The Bars: Why The South Carolina General Assembly Should Decline To Adopt A Revenue Requirement For Liquor Licenses, C. William Bootle Ii

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recent Development: Arkansas Insurance Dep't. Final Rule 126: "Insurance Business Transfers", Silas Heffley

Arkansas Law Review

Pursuant to Act 1018 of 2021, “An Act to Establish the Arkansas Business Transfer Act,” the Arkansas Insurance Department has promulgated Final Rule 126 “to provide standards and procedures for the transfer and novation of insurance policies from a transferring insurer to an assuming insurer through a transaction known as an ‘insurance business transfer.’” The Rule requires that the applicant submit an Insurance Business Transfer Plan—along with a nonrefundable $10,000 fee—to the Department detailing the transaction. One critical element of this Plan is the Independent Expert Opinion Report. An independent expert will produce a written report to be included in …

A Framework For Understanding The Taxation Of Digital Tokens, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

As a relatively new area, the taxation of digital tokens can give rise to several dangerous misconceptions. This article lays out five propositions to counter these misconceptions: 1) digital tokens are not a single monolithic asset class attracting uniform tax treatment; 2) the common trichotomous division of digital tokens into payment, utility and security tokens is derived from securities regulation and should not be blindly adopted into tax law; 3) the three classes are not mutually exclusive and hybrid tokens may exist; 4) the fact that an asset is a digital token rarely changes its tax treatment by itself, which …

The Impact Of Social Security Of Dependents And Financing Of Post-Secondary Education Of Dependents On Support Obligations In Particularly California Divorces After The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act Of 2017, John R. Dorocak

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made alimony in divorce decrees and separation agreements entered into after December 31, 2018, neither deductible by the payor nor income to the payee for federal income tax purposes. Likely, that change in the tax law will result in less income to payees in a divorce and higher taxes for payors. In California, support in divorces is basically calculated by the software program Dissomaster. With payors facing higher taxes, such payors may look for possible sources of additional income for paying support. Payors may receive a credit in California against the support obligation …

The Pain Of Paying Taxes, Gary M. Lucas Jr

Faculty Scholarship

With a few caveats, standard economic models assume that, from society’s perspective, the payment of a tax constitutes a costless transfer from the taxpayer to the government. The financial loss to the taxpayer is exactly offset by the financial gain to the government, which can use the resulting tax revenue for the benefit of its citizens. In other words, paying taxes forces taxpayers to forgo private consumption, but the resulting loss in utility can be counterbalanced by an increase in utility from government spending. In fact, if the government spends wisely on beneficial public goods that are undersupplied by private …

Federally Mandated Online Sales Tax: A Logistical Solution For The Future Of E-Commerce, Daniel O'Connor

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Economic Structural Transformation And Litigation: Evidence From Chinese Provinces, To Economic Change And Restructuring, Doug Bujakowski, Joan Schmit

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The "Business Interruption" Insurance Coverage Conundrum: Covid-19 Presents A Challenge, Paul E. Traynor

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Misalighned Incentives In Markets: Envisioning Finance That Benefits All Of Society, Dr. Ryan Clements

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

California Ab 1121, Sales Tax Exemption Emergency Preparation Items, Pooja Karelia Cpa, Sheetal Partani Ea

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter (Letter From The Editor, Masthead, Etc.)

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

Monsanto: Creator Of Cancer Liability

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Corporate Response To Controversial Presidential Statements Or Policies

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.