Tax Law Commons^™

Tax Neutrality And Tax Amenities, David Hasen

Publications

Efforts to identify and implement an appropriate tax neutrality benchmark have been persistent themes in scholarly and policy debates on international taxation for fifty years. This paper questions whether the concept of tax neutrality has been adequately specified for analyzing the efficiency properties of international tax systems. As distinct from the closed-economy setting, in the open-economy setting, neither tax revenues received nor the burdens that tax revenues pay for may be taken as fixed. Because tax revenues finance infrastructure and other productivity-enhancing goods - so-called "tax amenities" - and because capital burdens infrastructure, the reallocation of tax revenues among jurisdictions …

Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining: The Potential Sales And Use Taxation Of Cloud Computing, Annmarie Dennehy

Student Works

No abstract provided.

Islamic Law Meets Erisa: How America's Private Pension System Unintentionally Discriminates Against Muslims And What To Do About It, Beverly I. Moran

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article asks whether Muslims whose religious beliefs prevent investment in their employers’ private pension plans have a right to religious accommodation. This is a real issue for a growing part of the population whose spiritual lives are governed by rules that prohibit the giving or taking of interest. As one might expect, the investments available through most American pension plans involve some aspect of interest making those investments unsuitable retirement vehicles for devote Muslims. Consequently, in order to secure their retirement income, Muslims are faced with either violating their religious beliefs, losing years of investment opportunity as they wait …

A Buffett Rule For Social Security And Medicare: Phasing Out Benefits For High Income Retirees, Samuel C. Thompson Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reforming Derivative Taxation, Alex Raskolnikov

Faculty Scholarship

This brief essay outlines three benchmarks for evaluating alternative ways of taxing capital income, summarizes anticipatory, retroactive, and accrual-based proposals for reforming the taxation of derivatives, and offers guidelines for evaluating more limited reforms. It is intended as an introduction to key concepts, tensions, and ideas for reforming the taxation of financial instruments.

L'Exit Tax Des Personnes Physiques Aux Usa, Richard C.E. Beck

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Fixing Section 409a: Legislative And Administrative Options, Gregg D. Polsky

Scholarly Works

This symposium contribution to the Villanova Law Review describes the legislative calamity that is section 409A of the Internal Revenue Code. Section 409A manages, all at once, to (i) fail to better neutralize the tax treatment of deferred compensation with that of current compensation, (ii) impose significant compliance costs on sophisticated taxpayers, and (iii) provide a dangerous trap for unsophisticated taxpayers.

Ideally, Congress should repeal section 409A and replace it with a system that taxes deferred compensation more neutrally vis-a-vis current compensation. Failing that, Congress should either replace section 409A with a broad grant of authority to the Treasury and …

Rationally Cutting Tax Expenditures, Gregg D, Polsky

Scholarly Works

This article illustrates the differences between the two types of tax expenditures by examining the child tax credit (a distributional expenditure), the charitable deduction (an allocative expenditure), and taxfree saving accounts and the mortgage deduction (both of which are-usually defended on allocative grounds but probably have mainly distributional impacts). These differences should be well understood by policymakers as they consider tax expenditure reform as part of a deficit reduction plan.

The Anti-Injunction Act And The Individual Mandate, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

The Supreme Court will soon consider challenges to constitutionality of the so-called individual mandate portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA). It is important for the nation that the Court render a decision on the merits. This could be derailed, however, were the Court to dispose of the case by holding that the Anti-Injunction Act (AIA) and the Declaratory Judgment Act (DJA) preclude pre-enforcement review. Disposition on those grounds would subject the federal government, states, businesses, and individuals to years of additional uncertainty, inconvenience, and expense.

Fortunately, that threat to resolution on the merits can …

Dead Hand Investing: The Enforceability Of Trust Investment Directives, Jeffrey A. Cooper

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Presumed Equal: Shares Of Cotenants, John V. Orth

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Estate Tax Deductions For Interest Paid On Loans Taken In Order To Pay Estate Taxes, Daniel Baltuch

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Representing The Fiduciary: To Whom Does The Attorney Owe Duties?, Kennedy Lee

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Proposed 2009 Regulations Dealing With § 356 Nonrecognition Rules Should Be Given The Boot, Terri Guinn

San Diego Law Review

"Fire, Aim, Ready!" Could this be the approach taken by the Internal Revenue Service (the Service) in its attempt to finalize regulations, proposed more than two years ago, that would specify a new method for determining a shareholder's taxable gains and losses in certain reorganization transactions? Has the Service decided to elevate theory over practicality without thinking through all of the ramifications of these regulations? Finalizing these proposed regulations in their current form may have serious unintended consequences. As drafted, they miss their intended mark by inadvertently creating a loophole whereby some shareholders could take immediate losses on some of …

Neither Rules Nor Standards, Steven A. Dean

Faculty Scholarship

Specifying the content of a requirement or a prohibition up front-e.g. replacing a "reasonable speed" requirement with a fifty-five miles per hour speed limit-can make life easier for enforcers and citizens alike. Recent efforts to substitute international tax rules for decades-old standards may do just the opposite, jeopardizing the "miracle" that is today's international tax regime. Enhanced information exchange and formulary apportionment will undermine the legitimacy that is essential to the success of any international legal regime. A better solution would overhaul the century-old benefits principle to weave enforcement deep into the fabric of the international tax regime. Only then …

Flp Loss, But Crummey Win, Wendy G. Gerzog

All Faculty Scholarship

In Turner the Tax Court determined that section 2036 applied to the decedent’s transfers of assets to his family limited partnership but that the insurance premiums he paid indirectly to his insurance trust qualified for the annual exclusion.

German Vat Compliance: One Step Closer To Automated Third-Party Solutions, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

Recent developments in German VAT compliance, notably (a) the imposition of criminal penalties for failing to immediately amend a preliminary return that is known to be in error [Bundesgerichtshof decision of March 17, 2009, No. BGH 1 StR 342/08], when considered in tandem with (b) amendments to the voluntary disclosure rules, Gesetz zur Vebesserung der Bekämpfung von Geldwäsche und Steuerhinterziehung, it is clear that the German VAT compliance landscape has changed dramatically in the past year.

Taken as a whole, the German rules strongly encourage internal audits, self-reviews, and immediate self-disclosures of errors in previously filed returns and taxes paid. …

Accounting Methods, Keith Hennessy

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Uncertain Tax Positions, Nikki Swaney

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.