Tax Law Commons^™

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 …

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 …

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 …

The Case For Stronger Scrutiny Of The Deductibility Of Crypto Losses, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Crypto losses have the potential to adversely impact the tax base, particularly if they are deducted against income from other profitable sources. There is a key question of fairness as to whether crypto losses should be cross-subsidised by income from other sources that may have nothing to do with cryptoassets at all. This article argues for stronger scrutiny of the deductibility of crypto losses at the stage of determining whether such losses can be set off against income from other sources or at the stage of the shifting of the losses across time and between companies. It explains why crypto …

The Case For Stronger Scrutiny Of The Deductibility Of Crypto Losses, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

My paper, The Case for Stronger Scrutiny of the Deductibility of Crypto Losses, which was recently published by The Journal of Tax Administration, discusses the issue of crypto losses and risks to the tax base. It submits that tax authorities and national legislatures should step up their scrutiny of the deductibility of crypto losses and proposes some ways in which this can be done in practice.

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 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 …

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

2024–2025 Flyers

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Tax Delegation Post-Loper Bright, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

In its recent decision in Loper Bright, the Supreme Court has fundamentally shifted the contours of judicial deference to administrative interpretations by repealing the Chevron doctrine. However, while the Court has curtailed deference, it simultaneously underscored the legitimacy of statutory delegation to agencies. The Internal Revenue Code (Code) is the most intricate legislative text within the U.S. legal framework, necessitating significant technical expertise for its application. It is, therefore, unsurprising that Congress often delegates authority to the IRS for the execution of the statute. In light of the Court's decision in Loper Bright, it becomes imperative to clarify the parameters …

The Triumph Of Tax Textualism, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In Varian Medical Systems, the Tax Court held in a unanimously reviewed opinion that the taxpayer was entitled to take a section 245A deduction for an amount treated as a dividend under section 78. Section 78 provides that deemed paid foreign taxes are treated as dividends received for foreign tax credit purposes, thus grossing up the amount of the dividend by the foreign taxes attributable to it before granting the FTC. This provision is needed because otherwise the taxpayer would enjoy both a deduction and a credit for the same foreign tax. Section 245A, however, eliminates the tax on the …

Looking Through Trusts, Adam S. Hofri, Mark Bennett

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

As everyone knows, trusts are often used to avoid or subvert different rules of law. To combat such avoidance, jurisdictions enacted anti-avoidance rules; yet many of these rules do not fully prevent trusts-based avoidance, or in some cases reflect some jurisdictions’ acceptance of such avoidance. We review the anti-avoidance rules applied by Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand to try and stymie trusts-based avoidance in three subject areas: distribution of family property on divorce or separation, taxation of income accrued in settlor-controlled trusts, and means-tested eligibility for welfare benefits. We find that anti-avoidance doctrines are often less …

Tax Delegation After Loper Bright, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

This paper examines the scope of the IRS and Treasury’s tax reg-writing authority after the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright.