Tax Law Commons^™

Essay On The Revitalization Of Local Communities, Hiroshi Saito

Japanese Society and Culture

It is difficult to theorize regional revitalization due to the differences in the characteristics of each local government. However, it may be possible to generalize its basic features: “regional management” and “financial surplus.” The problem of regional revitalization is conventionally discussed from a perspective of public administration. However, this paper reexamines the problem from a management theory perspective. Considering the starting point of regional revitalization is the surplus of public finances, attention is focused on the local tax law, especially on the importance of inhabitant tax, fixed property tax, and resident population policy. The paper also shows that the attraction …

Collection Due Process At Twenty-Five: A Still Important And Needed Check On Irs Collection, Leslie Book

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

What Would Surrey Say? The Long Reach Of Stanley S. Surrey, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Nir Fishbien

Law & Economics Working Papers

This essay examines the extent of Surrey’s influence on developments in tax law after his death. It argues that his ideas clearly impacted the tax reform of 1986, but can even be seen in later enactments like the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and contemporary developments in international taxation. This in turn enables us to get a clearer perspective on what Surrey aimed to achieve and what the goals of these later developments are.

After Pillar One, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

Pillar One is unlikely to succeed for three reasons. First, it requires an MTC to be implemented because Amount A requires overriding Articles 5 (Permanent Establishment, PE), 7 (Business Profits) and 9 (Associated Enterprises) of every tax treaty to abolish the PE and Arm’s Length Principle (ALP) limits enshrined therein. But negotiating an MTC is hard, especially when over 100 countries are involved and there are fundamental disagreements among them.

Second, because Pillar One (despite its October 2021 expansion) is still aimed primarily at taxing the US digital giants (Big Tech), it is hard to envisage it being implemented without …

The Historical Origins Of The Multilateral Tax Convention, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Eran Lempert

Law & Economics Working Papers

This paper will survey the efforts to create a multilateral tax convention (MTC) from the beginnings of the international tax regime to the present day. The paper’s main contribution is to provide a historical analysis of the (failed) efforts to create a MTC from the beginnings of the ITR until the League of Nations (as contained in Part 1 to this paper). Part 2 of the paper serves to provide a brief modern context to the historical analysis from Part 1, covering why the multilateral instrument (MLI) that was included in BEPS 1.0 is not a true MTC, and secondly …

A Response To Professor Choi’S Beyond Purposivism In Tax Law, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

This response to Professor Choi’s excellent article questions whether the proposals made by the article can solve the tax shelter problem, and argues that a better response is to bolster purposivism with a statutory general anti-abuse rule (GAAR).

The Mechanics Of Share Repurchases Or How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love Stock Buybacks, Richard A. Booth

Faculty Publications

Stock repurchases by issuing corporations have always been controversial. They have become even more so recently because of the perception that the excess funds used to finance them have come from tax cuts and other sources (such as government bailouts) that were intended to stimulate reinvestment or enhanced wages and benefits for workers. As a result, critics have proposed amendments to tax law that discourage buybacks (and possibly dividends as well). The theory is that the benefits of such distributions go mostly to executives (who are compensated in large part with equity) and to already wealthy stockholders. The controversy is …

Daca's Tax Benefits Highlight The Need For Broader Immigration Reform, Jacqueline Lainez Flanagan

Journal Articles

America’s aging population and declining birth rates are negatively affecting the nation’s Social Security and Medicare safety nets, reducing tax revenue, and weakening the broader economy.1 Meanwhile, immigration is increasing workforce participation by expanding the number of young adults in the United States.2 Despite political setbacks, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program exemplifies the economic and tax benefits of immigration, providing data and the impetus for a better way forward. Although not all DACA-eligible youth have registered for it, it is estimated that in 2017 alone, more than $2.2 billion in federal taxes were paid by DACA-eligible youth …

Standing On The Shoulders Of Llcs: Tax Entity Status And Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, Samuel D. Brunson

Georgia Law Review

Since the formation of the first decentralized autonomous organization in 2016, their use has exploded. Thousands of DAOs now try to take advantage of smart contracts to solve a problem that plagues business entities: the gulf between ownership and management. Armed with smart contracts and requiring token-holders to vote on any change in strategy, DAOs dispense with the management layer so necessary in traditional business entities.

DAOs owe their existence to technology. Without blockchain, without cryptocurrency, and without smart contracts, there would be no DAOs. But they owe their explosive to something much more unexpected: Treasury regulations.

In the wake …

Stay Schemin’: Tax Court’S Recent Ruling On Credit Card Rewards And The Impact This Ruling Has On Future Rewards Programs, Hunter Davis

Georgia Law Review

Beyond the utility of actual “credit,” the most important perk cardholders seek to capitalize on are the rewards that each cardholder’s particular credit card offers. Cardholders look for the most bang for their buck in terms of rewards and points. Ranging from frequent flyer miles to cash back to everything in between, rewards programs have expanded and diversified rapidly over the past several decades, and consumers cannot get enough. So much so that the question of whether, and when, consumer loyalty rewards should be taxable has arisen and persists today. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Tax Court have …

Shifting The Scope Towards Students: An Analysis Of Tax Code Treatment Of The Higher Education Loan Interest Deduction, Brianna C. Frontuto

West Virginia Law Review

In a nation where education is held in the highest regard but given the lowest priority, the United States continues to enlarge a gaping hole in the education system: student loan debt, a crisis sweeping across the nation and affecting nearly every individual in the United States. Higher education costs have sky-rocketed, and the expanding administrations and complex projects do not provide assurance that this will change any time soon.

Congress has placed tax incentives in the Internal Revenue Code (“the Code”) to encourage the pursuit of higher education while providing a benefit for doing so. Specifically, § 221 of …

Force Majeure & Covid-19: A Clause Changed?, Claudia Petcu

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Kinder, Gentler Irs? Where?, Harvey Gilmore

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

ACTEC Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Death By Deduction: Section 2058 And The Decline Of State Death Taxes, Jeffrey A. Cooper

ACTEC Law Journal

This article illustrates how, and seeks to explain why, the deduction for state estate taxes (Internal Revenue Code Section 2058) seems to have had no meaningful effect on state tax policy.

The Slayer Rule: An Empirical Examination, Fredrick E. Vars

ACTEC Law Journal

This study is the first to empirically test key assumptions underlying the slayer rule. Over a thousand survey respondents answered the question “What’s fair?” or “What would the decedent want?” in twelve different scenarios. Some of the most significant conclusions are that the slayer rule should not apply to assisted suicide, killings in self-defense, or killings due to mental illness. On the other hand, the slayer rule should be expanded beyond murder in some circumstances, such as elder abuse and neglect. And the slayer rule should be converted from a mandatory rule into a default rule, which testators could opt …

Is It Time For Federal Regulation Of The Tax Preparer Industry? New Insights From Legal And Empirical Developments, Jessica A. Magaldi, Matthew Reidenbach, Jonathan S. Sales, John S. Treu

Marquette Law Review

The tax preparer industry is unusual in that it involves the interpretation of an intricate and complicated tax code, but imposes no minimum requirements of competency because the industry is largely unregulated. A study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) indicated that unregulated tax preparers commit significantly higher error rates and, based in part on that study’s findings, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) attempted to regulate the tax preparer industry nationwide under the Registered Tax Return Preparer (RTRP) regime. This RTRP program was invalidated in Loving v. IRS, however, leaving the industry largely unregulated, except in the small minority …

Trust Alteration And The Dead Hand Paradox, Jeffrey N. Pennell, Reid Kress Weisbord

ACTEC Law Journal

Trusts are popular instruments for wealth transmission because they can be crafted to suit almost any imaginable estate planning goal that is not contrary to public policy. With the abrogation of the Rule Against Perpetuities in most states, settlors may impose trust terms that will be legally enforceable for scores of future generations, if not in perpetuity. Long-term and perpetual trusts, however, present a paradox of dead hand control, because the specificity and the durability of settlor-imposed restrictions tend to be inversely related. As donative preferences become increasingly specific and restrictive, trusts become less durable with the passage of time, …

Solving The Valuation Challenge: The Ultra Method For Taxing Extreme Wealth, David Gamage, Brian Galle, Darien Shanske

Faculty Publications

Recent reporting based on leaked tax returns of the ultra-rich confirms what experts have long suspected: for the wealthiest Americans, paying taxes is mostly optional. Some of the country's richest have reported annual incomes that would be modest for a school teacher, even as the share of wealth held by the top .1% is at its highest in nearly a century.

Experts have long understood that one problem sits at the root cause of many of the tax system's failures to reach the very rich: valuation. Because it is difficult to appraise complex or unique assets, modern tax systems instead …

Individual Home-Work Assignments For State Taxes, Hayes R. Holderness

Washington Law Review

The surge in work-from-home arrangements brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic threatens serious disruptions to state tax systems. Billions of dollars are at stake at this pivotal moment as states grapple with where to assign income earned through these remote work arrangements for tax purposes: the worker’s home or the employer’s location? Some states—intent on modernizing their income tax laws—have assigned such income to the employer’s location, but have faced persistent challenges on both constitutional and policy grounds in response.

This Article provides a vigorous defense against such challenges. The Supreme Court has long interpreted the Constitution to be deferential …