Tax Law Commons^™

Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks - Emerging Tax Issues For Distressed Real Estate Assets And Partnerships, Michael G. Frankel, David A. Miller

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Using - And Not Losing - Tax Losses, Part 2 (Slides), Steven M. Friedman

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Using - And Not Losing - Tax Losses, Part 1: Protecting Tax Losses From A Section 382 Ownership Change (Slides), Mark C. Van Deusen

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

When Your Body Is Your Business, Morgan Holcomb, Mary Patricia Byrn

Washington Law Review

Surrogacy in the United States is a multi-million dollar industry in which well paid professionals seek out specially qualified women to fill the difficult job of being a surrogate. Surrogates enter lengthy contracts in which they agree, in intricate and intimate detail, to provide a service for significant compensation—as a group, surrogates in the United States are paid well over $22 million per year. This Article argues that surrogates are professionals in this for-profit industry and are required to report surrogacy compensation as income. As a corollary, surrogates may deduct most of their surrogacy-related expenses as business deductions. Being a …

Taxation, Craig D. Bell

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

How To Kill The Scapegoat: Addressing Offshore Tax Evasion With A Special View To Switzerland, Niels Jensen

Vanderbilt Law Review

It began with headlines of nearly $20 billion in hidden assets, 52,000 secret bank accounts, confidential informants, court proceedings, and a $780 million fine.' The Union Bank of Switzerland ("UBS") controversy, with all its dramatic appeal, attracted international attention and brought taxation issues to the forefront of public debate. As the scope of tax evasion activities involving UBS began to unfold, U.S. authorities on numerous fronts mobilized against international tax haven abuse-a problem much broader in scope than the scandal at hand.

In order to attract foreign capital to their respective markets, many countries have enacted favorable tax laws with …

Políticas Públicas Para Enfrentar Los Desafíos Proporcionados Por Las Rentas Económicas: El Caso Del Impuesto Específico A La Minería, Andrew Linville

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

La economía chilena es fuertemente dependiente en la explotación y exportación de productos primarios y en sectores de recursos naturales, como los sectores minero, forestal, pesquero, y frutícola. El modelo de desarrollo emprendido por Chile en los últimos treinta años, uno de apertura unilateral y bilateral a flujos de bienes y capital, ha dado importancia especial a las políticas impositivas y reguladoras entorno a esos sectores. Sin embargo, la explotación de recursos naturales escasos proporciona un rango de desafíos únicos debido a la existencia de rentas económicas y los efectos de competencia, distribución y desarrollo regional que las acompañan. Mi …

Private And Public Construction In Modern China, Gregory M. Stein

San Diego International Law Journal

During the past three decades, real estate development in China has proceeded at an astonishing pace, with much development occurring before China's 2007 adoption of its first modern law of property. Investors thus spent hundreds of billions of dollars in the real estate market of a nation that, during most of this period, had not formal property law. How can a huge nation modernize so rapidly and dramatically when its legal system furnishes such uncertainty? And how can this happen in a nation that still purports to subscribe to socialist ideology? I set out to answer these questions by interviewing …

Planning And Practice - The Rooftops Project: Report Summarizing Results Of A Survey Of Not-For-Profit Organizations, James Hagy

Rooftops Project

The Rooftops Project's first national field study of the attitudes and approaches of not-for-profit organizations with respect to the owned, leased or hosted real estate that supports their core missions and operations.

Encouraging Savings Under The Earned Income Tax Credit: A Nudge In The Right Direction, Vada Waters Lindsey

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

During 2007, 3.6 million or 9.7% of people in the United States age 65 or older were below the poverty level. In light of the number of elderly people living below the poverty level, it is important that everyone, including low-income workers, have the opportunity to save for retirement. Low-income workers face many challenges to saving for retirement. The barriers to saving include the lack of access to retirement plans and lack of investment savvy. For example, only 42 % of workers employed in service occupations in the private industry have access to employer retirement plans. The percentage drops to …

Construing Wills And Trusts During The Estate Tax Hiatus In 2010, S. Alan Medlin, F. Ladson Boyle

Faculty Publications

Many estate planners have drafted wills and revocable trusts with dispositive provisions based on formulas. These formulas often use language based on transfer tax terminology. For clients who die in 2010, the language used in these formulas will be ambiguous, if not apparently meaningless, because Congress failed to re-institute the estate tax for 2010. The resulting 2010 estate tax hiatus will result in will and revocable trust construction problems for the estates of many decedents who die during the hiatus. Courts will have to use statutory and common law construction methods to attempt to determine the decedent's dispositive intentions. This …

Ending Surprise Liens On Real Property, Chad J. Pomeroy

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Pennsylvania's Sales And Use Tax: Has Nearly $1 Billion Been 'Zapped' Away In Fraud?, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

The Sales and Use Tax is an essential part of Pennsylvania’s revenue profile. Not only is it the State’s second largest revenue source, it has historically played a critical role in reducing the volatility of Pennsylvania’s overall tax collections. The sales tax is also critical to the city of Philadelphia, and Allegheny County. During the current economic downturn both the revenue and structural attributes of this levy should be pushing it to the front of the tax policy line.

The two topics that should rest atop Pennsylvania’s tax policy agenda should be: (1) joining the Streamlined Sales Tax initiative and …

The Civil Judicial Subsidy, Brendan S. Maher

Faculty Scholarship

American society does not require civil litigants to bear the actual cost of using the court; those costs are borne almost entirely by the taxpayer (i.e., the “civil judicial subsidy”). In this Article I ask: is that right? Or is there a more desirable way to apportion court usage costs between the state and litigants?

I develop an evaluative framework that facilitates analysis of the purpose, contours, and cost of the current judicial subsidy. We subsidize court use because, in theory, there are certain “social positives” associated with public adjudication. To date the unspoken assumption has been that these social …

Equity And Efficiency In Intellectual Property Taxation, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine

Faculty Publications

This article evaluates the Current US income tax regime governing intellectual property by focusing on the traditional principles of tax policy - tax fairness and efficiency. It highlights the shortcomings of the current tax system in fulfilling both of these tenets.

Pro & Con: Should Congress Adopt A New Tax Credit For Buying A Home? Yes: No Recovery Is Possible If Homeowners Lose Their Homes, Jessica D. Gabel

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

The Case For Dividend Deduction, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Amir C. Chenchinski

Law & Economics Working Papers

There have been various proposals made in the past two decades to integrate the corporate and shareholder tax, including dividend exemption, imputation, and the Comprehensive Business Income Tax (CBIT). In our view, the problem with all of these proposals is that they omit to ask the crucial question of why we should tax business entities in the first place. Taxes, the economists tell us, are always borne by human beings, not by legal entities. Why should legal entities, be they corporations or other forms of business entity, be subject to tax at all? Would it not be easier to just …

Tax Relief In The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act Of 2009, Steven Gassert

Legislation and Policy Brief

On February 17, 2009, less than thirty days after his inauguration, President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). This new law was one of many measures from the new administration designed to quickly stimulate the ailing American economy. The $789 billion package was divided between direct government spending, tax reductions and financial relief to states and individuals. The bill contains $285.6 billion in tax reductions, which is about 36.3% of the legislation. In this article, I will analyze some of the tax provisions that were written into ARRA, and attempt to assess their …

Taxing Punitive Damages, Gregg D. Polsky, Dan Markel

Scholarly Works

There is a curious anomaly in the law of punitive damages. Jurors assess punitive damages in the amount that they believe will best “punish” the defendant. But, in fact, defendants are not always punished to the degree that the jury intends. Under the Internal Revenue Code, punitive damages paid by business defendants are tax deductible and, as a result, these defendants often pay (in real dollars) far less than the jury believes they deserve to pay.

To solve this problem of under-punishment, many scholars and policymakers, including President Obama, have proposed making punitive damages nondeductible in all cases. In our …

Vat Fraud - Technological Solutions, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

Every VAT/GST allows missing trader fraud. The fraud is simple, and can be simply prevented (with technology). The fraud arises when a business makes a purchase without paying VAT, collects VAT on an onward sale, and then “disappears” without remitting the tax. Missing trader fraud is common in high-value/low-volume goods sold across borders – computer chips and cell phones are the classic examples. But the fraud easily migrates when pursued. It operates well with goods as wide ranging as xenon bulbs, automobiles, and earth moving equipment.

The recent appearance of MTIC fraud in tradable CO2 permits and VoIP is a …