Tax Law Commons^™

Taxing Crypto-Asset Transactions: Foundations For A Globally Coordinated Approach, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

With the total market capitalisation of crypto-assets amounting to trillions of US dollars, it isclear that crypto taxation needs to be taken seriously by both tax administrations and taxpayers.Over the past few years, numerous tax administrations around the world have devoted resourcesto crypto taxation, as evidenced by the substantial amount of guidance that has been madeavailable to taxpayers. International organisations such as the Organisation for EconomicCo-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations have also released publicationson crypto taxation. Despite all these domestic and international efforts to provide guidance oncrypto taxation, there remains considerable uncertainty as to the tax treatment …

Tax As Hybrid Law: Borrowing And Convergences, Henry Ordower

All Faculty Scholarship

[This article argues that tax is a hybrid of civil and common law, public and private law, and is cross-disciplinary. It observes that tax law has become an all-purpose tool for legislators. It seeks to demonstrate how the U.S., a common law jurisdiction, has turned to civil law models for taxation while civil law jurisdictions and the European Union have sought common law models to combat tax avoidance. The ubiquity of tax and its public law influence on private law transactions, its cross disciplinary nature, and its deployment as a legislative tool to manage the economy make it a candidate …

Shaping Preferences With Pigouvian Taxes, Gary M. Lucas Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

A Pigouvian tax is a tax that is imposed to correct an externality, which arises when a person engages in behavior that harms others without their consent. Pigouvian taxes are popular among academics—with prominent economists and legal scholars arguing for their imposition on myriad goods and activities that harm third parties, like carbon emissions and alcohol. Policymakers have recently been receptive to at least some of these arguments as evidenced by taxes imposed on or proposed for a variety of externality-generating goods, including guns, plastic bags, and sugary drinks.

The conventional economic rationale for Pigouvian taxes assumes that they affect …

The Constitutional Limits To The Taxing Power, Ari Glogower

Fordham Law Review

The modern U.S. Supreme Court has elevated the apportionment requirement for direct taxes into the most important constitutional limitation to Congress’s taxing power. The U.S. Constitution requires that any “direct tax” must be apportioned among the states by population, which is impracticable or impossible for a tax today. The modern interpretative approach focuses on the formal categorization of the tax base, as either a “direct tax” or not. This approach could bar Congress from enacting certain taxes—such as a federal wealth tax or possibly even capital income tax reforms—simply through their formal labeling as direct taxes.

This interpretation inflates apportionment’s …

Distribution Through Taxation Versus Legal Rules, And The Epistemic Limits Of Law-And-Economics, Erick J. Sam

Utah Law Review

This Article develops an epistemic critique of the view, widely held in law-and-economics, that legal rules should always be chosen for efficiency and that redistribution to produce a fair distribution should be conducted solely through the tax-and-transfer system. In place of this orthodox view, I develop an alternative distributive theory.

The canonical ‘double distortion’ argument for the orthodox position, formulated by Kaplow and Shavell (1994), claims that opting for efficient legal rules minimizes economic distortions and maximizes aggregate social wealth, some of which can then be redistributed via the tax-and-transfer system to those who would have been better off under …

Outlier On Lgbtq Rights: Japanese Ban On Same-Sex Marriage And Its Contradiction In The Age Of Globalization, Yumi Higashi

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Japan is the only Group of Seven country yet to recognize same-sex marriage. Despite strong public support for marriage equality, the conservative dominance of the Japanese legislature and the Japanese courts’ deferential approach have stalled the change. This Note will analyze the legal issues and implications of Japan’s failure to recognize same-sex marriage and Japan’s worldwide inheritance tax regime, with an emphasis on cross-border succession and estate planning. Specifically, the Note argues that the United States, as the only country with which Japan has a treaty in estate, inheritance, and gift tax, should renegotiate the treaty as it could have …

A New Governance Framework In Cross-Border Tax Policymaking, Tamir Shanan, Doron Narotzki, Noam Zamir

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The first tax treaty can probably be traced to the end of the 19th century: the treaty between the Swiss Federal Council (on behalf of the Canton of Vaud) and Great Britain. However, most tax scholars refer to the period following World War I, including the work of the League of Nations, as the formative period in which the international tax regime was founded. In the 1920s, the League of Nations formed a committee of four renowned economists that was asked to formulate a set of rules that would assist states in allocating taxing rights of cross-border income and gains …

Driving Corporate Environmental Responsibility With Tax Incentives And Carbon Taxation, Riya Dhall

Journal of Law and Policy

In response to the worsening global climate crisis, this Note examines the potential role of tax policy in encouraging corporate environmental responsibility. Focusing on tax incentives and a proposed federal carbon tax, it explores how strategic tax measures could drive corporations to mitigate their environmental impact. Through an analysis of economic and regulatory measures, such as cap-and-trade and excise taxes, alongside recent legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, this Note assesses the potential of tax credits and carbon taxes to reduce corporate emissions. It further discusses the emergence of benefit corporations, specifically B Corp certified companies, such as Patagonia and …

The Equal Pay Game Changer: Using Mandatory Reporting To Encourage Corporations In The Sports Ecosystem To Increase Investment In Women’S Sports, Caroline Strauss

Journal of Law and Policy

In 2016, the United States Women’s National Team began a lengthy fight for equal pay by filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 2019, the fight continued when the team sued the United States Soccer Federation for gender discrimination. When the court granted summary judgment to the U.S. Soccer Federation on their Equal Pay Act claim, it closed the door for the team to achieve equal pay through a public law remedy. The tedious fight came to an end with a settlement which guaranteed that the U.S. Men’s and Women’s National Teams would be paid equally. Although …

Taxation's Limits, Luís C. Calderón Gómez

Northwestern University Law Review

Countless pages have been devoted to the question of why everyone should pay tax, yet its opposite has gone largely unnoticed: why should some people and organizations not pay tax? Our tax system exempts from ordinary income taxation a wide and diverse array of people and organizations engaged in significant economic activity—from parents providing childcare services for their family to consular activities and charities operating animal shelters—seemingly without a convincing explanation. Perhaps because of the dizzying diversity of tax-exempt activities, scholars and policymakers have avoided comprehensively or coherently justifying our exemption regimes.

This Article develops a novel normative theory that …

Stop Carrying The Interest! A Comparison Of U.S. And Chilean Taxation Of Private Equity Fund Managers Under International Human Rights Law, Maggie Carr

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

Why do we tax? How do we tax? Who should we tax? While asked by

almost all of us, these questions are usually answered by a select few.

Economists who work in theoretical realities, lawyers full of jargon, and

legislators with competing interests all have different answers to those

questions. Some might even have different answers depending on who is

asking. Beyond the theory and the jargon, however, lies an underlying base of

equity and fairness that drives all citizens to ask these questions. This Note

will attempt to answer one small piece of these enormous questions by

focusing on …

Can They Take Your Money If You're Not Here?, Tax Law Society

2024–2025 Flyers

No abstract provided.

Can Congress Give Unaffected Taxpayers Standing, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

A recurring problem in tax law arises when the IRS promulgates a regulation or a notice that is too favorable to taxpayers.1 The problem is that nobody has standing to challenge the regulation. The IRS cannot challenge its own regulation, and taxpayers affected by the regulation have no interest in challenging it (and even if they did, they cannot show a concrete injury sufficient to establish standing). Congress may intervene, but that is rare for a taxpayer-favorable regulation (indeed, Congress sometimes intervenes to block IRS attempts to roll back its own regulations). Taxpayers unaffected by the regulation do not have …

Does The U.S. Have To Be A Tax Haven?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The United States is the world’s preeminent tax haven. Tax havens are defined as allowing secrecy and having low or zero tax rates; for nonresident aliens, the United States offers both.

The secrecy results from the fact that, in many U.S. states, it is possible to form a corporate entity without having to disclose information about the identity of the owner. This situation is beginning to change because of the Corporate Transparency Act, but the law has been challenged as unconstitutional. Even this would only apply for U.S. government nontax purposes. A nonresident alien who uses a U.S. limited liability …

The Internal Revenue Code's Section 351 Implied Deferred Tax Liability Problem, Stanley Veliotis

Pace Law Review

Most people take for granted that the fair market value of property exchanged for other property is of equal value. However, in the case of transfers of appreciated property to a corporation in a transaction qualifying for non-recognition under Section 351, the creation of a second unrealized gain in the hands of the transferee corporation—and thus a newly created implied deferred tax liability on such gain when later realized—reduces the value of the stock issued to the shareholder. Despite this, in Section 351 settings academics, textbook and casebook writers, the Treasury, and the courts take a standard approach of equating …

Should Ireland Have Taxed Apple?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Nessa Ní Chasaide

Articles

On September 10 the EU’s Court of Justice issued its long-awaited decision in the Apple state aid case. Surprisingly, it reversed the EU’s General Court decision and held that the European Commission was correct in finding that Ireland had provided prohibited state aid to Apple, and therefore Apple must pay Ireland the €13 billion in taxes that it would have paid but for the illegal subsidy. This state aid case, the largest in the EU’s history, highlights significant issues about the legal governance of corporate tax. This article examines the notable features of the Court ruling, then outlines why we …

Taxation’S Limits, Luís C. Calderón Gómez

Articles

Countless pages have been devoted to the question of why everyone should pay tax, yet its opposite has gone largely unnoticed: why should some people and organizations not pay tax? Our tax system exempts from ordinary income taxation a wide and diverse array of people and organizations engaged in significant economic activity—from parents providing childcare services for their family to consular activities and charities operating animal shelters—seemingly without a convincing explanation. Perhaps because of the dizzying diversity of tax-exempt activities, scholars and policymakers have avoided comprehensively or coherently justifying our exemption regimes.

This Article develops a novel normative theory that …

Can The Economic Substance Doctine Be Revived?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In two recent instances, the IRS has asserted the economic substance doctrine (ESD) to challenge transactions that comply with the literal text of the code. First, in Liberty Global, the IRS successfully asserted the ESD to deny tax benefits claimed by Liberty Global — namely, a section 245A deduction for a dividend out of foreign earnings that would normally be subject to global intangible low-taxed income — by relying on a mistake in effective dates under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. In granting summary judgment, the district court held that the doctrine looks to whether the tax benefits achieved …

Allocating The Gst Exemption Under The Generation-Skipping Transfer Tax, Michael B. Lang

Maine Law Review

One of the most significant aspects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 for estate planners was the retroactive repeal of the original 1976 generation-skipping transfer (GST) tax and the enactment of an entirely new generation-skipping transfer tax. The new generation-skipping transfer tax, unlike the 1976 version, generally applies to transfers that constitute "direct skips," such as outright gifts to grandchildren. Like the earlier tax, the new tax also applies to "taxable terminations,” such as a termination of the life estate of the transferor's child resulting in the grandchild receiving possession of the transferred property in fee simple under the …

Where Is China Now On Pillar 2?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

China has been relatively quiet about pillar 2 of the G20/OECD base erosion and profit-shifting 2.0 project. In a recent Tax Notes article, Xiaoli Ortega wrote:

Will China join the global tax reform club? If so, when? Although the Chinese government has made repeated positive statements about the importance of the global minimum tax reform, it has not clarified when it would modify its domestic tax laws to incorporate the pillar 2 rules. However, this does not mean that China is not preparing itself for the reform. Recall that on August 1, 2022, the State Taxation Administration issued a governmental …