Tax Law Commons^™

Cancellation Of Debt And Related Transactions, Jeffrey H. Kahn

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act: The Solution Or The Problem?, Sophie S. Chou

CMC Senior Theses

Tax evasion has been happening for decades, but after the highly publicized cases with two foreign banks, LGT and UBS, the United States (US) is cracking down on tax evaders. The latest addition to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)’s repertoire of enforcement tools is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, otherwise known as FATCA. The Act was enacted to incentivize tax information release by foreign financial institutions (FFIs) who would otherwise face a 30% withholding tax on any US source income. The question was whether or not the design of the Act and its implementation successfully met this goal.

This …

Carrying On The Tradition: Justice Rothstein's Contribution To Canadian Tax Law, William Neil Brooks, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this article, we review a selection of Justice Rothstein’s tax judgments with the object of making two observations about his contribution to Canadian tax law. First, Justice Rothstein, who was appointed to the Supreme Court two years after Justice Iacobucci retired, and in many ways stepped into his shoes as the Court’s tax judge, continued Justice Iacobucci’s formalist tradition. We provide evidence of Justice Rothstein’s formalist approach by examining one case he rendered while serving on the Federal Court Trial Division, Neuman; and two cases that were decided when he sat on the Federal Court of Appeal, Singleton and …

The High Cost Of Transferring The Dream, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper is part of a larger project where I use the facts in tax decisions to reveal something about who we are. It looks through a small window into the lives of the people who find themselves caught between our collective and their individual expenditure aspirations. More specifically, it explores the circumstances in which individuals find that their outstanding tax debts pose a threat to their ability to maintain ownership of their home. In this paper I use the facts of tax cases for two ends. First, I am interested in disrupting legal knowledge hierarchies. We choose cases to …

Implementation Of Arbitration Decisions In Domestic Law, J. Scott Wilkie

Articles & Book Chapters

Arbitration, even if it seems simply providing for the possibility of arbitration, is increasingly attracting attention as a possible means to discipline the resolution of otherwise potentially intractable international tax controversies concerning the allocation of taxing rights under tax treaties.While perceived, though not without reservation, to be a potential welcome addition to a typical mutual agreement procedure (MAP) patterned on article 25 (“the MAP article”) of the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and Capital(“the OECD Model”) in the form of article 25(5), other provisions of article 25, notably its “interpretive” and “application,”and “legislative”,aspects and contemplated recourse to a “joint …

Why Tax Wealth Transfers?: A Philosophical Analysis, Jennifer Bird-Pollan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The one-hundredth anniversary of the estate tax provides an ideal moment to reflect on the role of wealth transfer taxation in the larger scheme of the U.S. tax system. Wealth and income inequality are at historically high levels, and the responses to these issues are often reduced to a simplistic political dichotomy of “right” versus “left.” The multitude of views of the American people cannot be reduced to such simple generalities without losing important nuances. This Article identifies three general categories of political philosophical viewpoints that are commonly endorsed by both politicians and everyday Americans, and then examines the current …

Dear I.R.S., It Is Time To Enforce The Campaigning Prohibition. Even Against Churches, Samuel Brunson

Faculty Publications & Other Works

In 1954, Congress prohibited tax-exempt public charities, including churches, from endorsing or opposing candidates for office. To the extent a tax-exempt public charity violated this prohibition, it would no longer qualify as tax-exempt, and the IRS was to revoke its exemption.

While simple in theory, in practice, the IRS rarely penalizes churches that violate the campaigning prohibition and virtually never revokes a church's tax exemption. And, because no taxpayer has standing to challenge the IRS's inaction, the IRS has no external imperative to revoke the exemptions of churches that do campaign on behalf of or against candidates for office.

This …

Taxing Utopia, Samuel Brunson

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Nineteenth-century American religious movements challenged many aspects of American society. Although their challenges to mainstream America's vision of sex and marriage remain the best-known aspects of many of these groups, their challenges to traditional American economics are just as important. Eschewing individual ownership of property, many of these new Christian movements followed the New Testament model of a body of believers that held all property in common.

In the early twentieth century, these religious communal groups had to contend with something new: an income tax. Communalism did not fit into the individualistic economic system envisioned b-y the drafters of the …

The Hidden Costs Of Cliff Effects In The Internal Revenue Code And Proposals For Change, Manoj Viswanathan

Faculty Scholarship

Cliff effects in the Internal Revenue Code trigger a sudden increase of federal tax liability when some attribute of a taxpayer—most commonly income—exceeds a particular threshold value. As a result, two taxpayers in nearly identical economic situations can face considerably different tax liabilities depending on which side of the triggering criterion they fall. The magnitude of the equity and efficiency costs associated with cliff effects is significant: cliff effects are attached to tax provisions amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars, the majority of which are targeted at low- and moderate-income taxpayers. Cliff effects have received little attention in legal …

Property Or Currency? The Tax Dilemma Behind Bitcoin, Scott A. Wiseman

Utah Law Review

At Bitcoin’s peak in November 2013, there were 93,000 global transactions made in a single day. These users purchased everyday items such as personal services, food, and real estate. This alone suggests that Bitcoin is not primarily used as a long-term investment tool, but rather is used as a currency and a vehicle for global transactions. Congress and the IRS should regulate it accordingly. Representative Stockman’s Virtual Currency Reform Act offered an attempt to negate the IRS decision and officially classify Bitcoin and other virtual currencies as currency instead of property. A tax reclassification would alleviate typical users’ many inconveniences …

Valuation, Values, Norms: Proposals For Estate And Gift Tax Reform, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In their contributions to this Symposium, Professor Joseph Dodge, Professor Wendy Gerzog, and Professor Kerry Ryan offer concrete proposals for improving the existing estate and gift tax system. Professor Dodge and Professor Gerzog are especially interested in accuracy in valuation, and advance specific proposals with respect to split-interest transfers and family limited partnerships. Professor Dodge makes an additional proposal to improve the generation-skipping transfer tax system, an understudied area of the law. Professor Gerzog's Symposium contribution draws particular attention to the legal fiction on which the estate and gift tax marital deductions rely. She would restrict the availability of the …

Foreword: The Supreme Court's Estate Planning Jurisprudence, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Sophisticated trust and estate counsel must keep up with near-daily developments in the substantive state law of wills, trusts and estates, as well as state and federal laws of wealth transfer taxation. Because of the sheer volume of statutory law and administrative regulations that estate planners must master, it is easy to lose sight of the important role that federal courts play in shaping the field of estate planning. Federal tax cases are routinely heard by the United States Tax Court, the Federal District Courts, the Court of Federal Claims and appellate courts in all circuits. Yet very few tax …

Revisiting Miller Brothers, Bellas Hess, And Quill, Richard Pomp

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Legal Consequences Of Noncompliance With Federal Tax Laws, Allen Madison

Faculty Publications

This Article addresses the legal consequences a taxpayer should consider when deciding whether to comply with the basic requirements of the federal income tax laws. A taxpayer considering noncompliance should consider the government's authority to assert criminal liability, impose civil tax penalties, and forcibly collect any unpaid tax. Although there are numerous criminal tax offenses, the potential offenses that may affect a taxpayer's decision whether to comply are the failure to file and failure to pay misdemeanors, tax perjury felony, failure to pay addition to tax, and civil fraud penalty. The remaining penalties (over 100 of them) target various types …

Marital Sharing Of Transfer Tax Exemptions, Kerry A. Ryan

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article analyzes portability and its antecedents in order to distill a positive account of marital sharing oftransfer tax exemption amounts. Prior to 2010, the estate and gift tax exemption equivalent was a nontransferable, separate tax attribute of each spouse. A spouse could only access his or her spouse’s effective exemption by shifting property into the other spouse’s tax base. With the enactment of portability, Congress decoupled tax-free availability of a spouse’s unified credit from the necessity of a prior intra-spousal transfer. All that is required is an election by the decedent spouse, via the executor, to share the decedent’s …

Cooperating Individual Or Entity: Law Enforcement's Friend In A Time Of Escalating Deficits And Tight Budgets, Albert F. Tellechea

Florida A & M University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Capital Assets: A Guide For The Novice -- With Tips For The Experienced, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This article discusses what is usually thought of as a routine issue, but which many people, including at least some tax professionals, get wrong: What is a capital asset for federal income tax purposes? For one thing, the term covers lots of property that almost no one thinks of as a capital asset, like your underwear. On the other hand, despite what many think, the machinery you use in your business and the land on which your factory sits aren’t capital assets. The article considers these characterization issues, and, most important, discusses what difference it can make whether an item …

The Federal Government's Power To Restrict State Taxation, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay evaluates the limits on the U.S. federal government’s powers to restrict the taxing powers of state governments. The essay revisits earlier debates on this question, to consider the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius and also academic research on the problem of tax cannibalization.

A Hitchhiker’S Guide To The Oecd’S International Vat/Gst Guidelines, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

The OECD’s International VAT/GST Guidelines, which were released in their consolidated form at the OECD’s Global Forum on VAT in Paris in late 2015, are the culmination of nearly two decades of efforts to provide internationally accepted standards for consumption taxation of cross-border trade, particularly trade in services and intangibles. This article provides a roadmap to the Guidelines, especially for readers who may be unfamiliar with consumption tax principles, in general, or VATs in particular. Part II of the article provides the background to the Guidelines, describing the basic features of a VAT, the problems with which the Guidelines are …

Fragmented Oversight Of Nonprofits In The United States: Does It Work? Can It Work?, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

Journal Articles

Previously Brendan Wilson and I concluded that oversight of nonprofit governance would be most effective if it remained the responsibility of the states, although it would benefit from both a federal funding mechanism and enhanced coordination with the Internal Revenue Service.' More recently I concluded that oversight of federal tax exemption would be better served if Congress shifted the locus of that oversight to a national, self-regulatory organization working in close cooperation with the IRS given the perennial financial and other limitations faced by the IRS.2 What neither of these earlier articles addressed, however, was whether the current split of …