Tax Law Commons^™

Carving A Path For Legal Scholarship During An Existential Crisis, Adam H. Rosenzweig

Scholarship@WashULaw

The G-7 and G-20 recently announced a “breakthrough” agreement by over 130 countries to adopt and implement a “global minimum tax” proposal. The agreement is reportedly expected to raise over $150 billion in new revenue by closing some of the most notorious tax loopholes in the world; ultimately the deal could reshape global commerce and shore-up beleaguered national finances following the global pandemic. Officials involved in the deal have been quoted as making sweeping statements that the deal was historic, and that it would reshape the global economy, make worldwide taxation fairer, eliminate incentives for corporations to avoid tax, and …

Gamage, Lederman Sign Letter Of Support For Billionaires Income Tax, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

No abstract provided.

With Coronavirus Ravaging The Economy, Congress Shows Highest Tax Priorities: An Exploration Of The Provisions In The Cares Act And Beyond, Paul Nylen, Brian Huels, Shane Wheeler

University of Miami Business Law Review

The virus known as SARS–CoV–21 (Coronavirus) swept over the United States in ways that no other crisis has affected modern society. While the Spanish Flu of 1918 has often been cited for its pandemic similarities to the Coronavirus, from an economic standpoint the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the Great Recession of 2008 are perhaps the Coronavirus’s best analogy for the modern economic carnage that has occurred. In those previous events, Congress responded with sweeping legislation like Dodd–Frank and the Patriot Act. With the Coronavirus, Congress responded with the CARES Act. Within the CARES Act are historical changes to …

The Charitable Continuum, Eric Kades

Faculty Publications

There are powerful fairness and efficiency arguments for making charitable donations to soup kitchens 100% deductible. These arguments have no purchase for donations to fund opulent church organs, yet these too are 100% deductible under the current tax code. This stark dichotomy is only the tip of the iceberg. Looking at a wider sampling of charitable gifts reveals a charitable continuum. Based on sliding scales for efficiency, multiple theories of fairness, pluralism, institutional competence and social welfare dictate that charitable deductions should in most cases be fractions between zero and one. Moreover, the Central Limit Theorem strongly suggests that combining …

Mutual Fund Stewardship And The Empty Voting Problem, Jill E. Fisch

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

When Roberta Karmel wrote the articles that are the subject of this symposium, she was skeptical of the potential value of shareholder voting and the emerging involvement of institutional investors in corporate governance. In the ensuring years, both the increased role and engagement of institutional investors and the heightened importance of shareholder voting offer new reasons to take Professor Karmel’s concerns seriously. Institutional investors have taken on a broader range of issues from diversity and political spending to climate change and human capital management, and their ability to influence corporate policy on these issues has become more significant. The broadened …

A Different Way To Tax Stock Buybacks, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In this article, Avi-Yonah reviews the Build Back Better Act, which would impose a 1 percent excise tax on corporate stock buybacks. He argues that while the measure is an effective way to raise revenue from high-income taxpayers, it will not address the main tax problem with buybacks: the tax exemption for foreign shareholders, which Congress should reconsider.

Preview—Lac Courte Orielles Band Of Lake Superior Chippewa V. Evers: Just How Special Is Indian Law?, Zachary M. Krumm

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments on Monday, November 8, 2021, at 9:30 a.m. at Everett McKinley Dirksen Courthouse in Chicago, Illinois. This case asks whether states may assess property taxes on Indian-owned reservation fee lands that were allotted under treaty, not the General Allotment Act. The lower court held that reservation allotments which had at any time been owned by non-tribal-members could be subject to state property tax. Allotments always held by members remained exempt. While this issue is somewhat narrow, it raises broad questions about applying the well-established Indian canons of construction.

Taxation, Craig D. Bell

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article reviews significant recent developments in the laws affecting Virginia state and local taxation. Its Parts cover legislative activity, judicial decisions, and selected opinions and other pronouncements from the Virginia Department of Taxation (“Tax Department” or “Department of Taxation”) and the Attorney General of Virginia over the past year.

Part I of this Article addresses state taxes. Part II covers local taxes, including real and tangible personal property taxes, license taxes, and discrete local taxes.

The overall purpose of this Article is to provide Virginia tax and general practitioners with a concise overview of the recent developments in Virginia …

Saving The Nonessential With Radical Tax Policy, Rodney P. Mock, Kathryn Kisska-Schulze

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, for-profit entities are distinguishable from tax-exempt entities in that they, among other factors, pursue profits, and enjoy unrestricted commercial activities. The COVID-19 lockdowns prevented commercial activity for numerous for-profit small businesses. For the first time in United States history, a distinction was made between "essential" and "nonessential" businesses. Such distinction is historically absent in both legal scholarship and tax law; instead, it is a product of governmental reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. Via executive order, nonessential businesses were characterized as being trivial to the fabric of society, and thus shuttered, while …

Trust Planning And The Washington State Capital Gains Tax, Jadrian M. Coppieters

Seattle University Law Review Online

On April 25, 2021, the Washington state legislature enacted a new state capital gains tax. Prior to the enactment of the new state capital gains tax, Washington had been one of the few states that did not impose a tax on either income or capital gains. The limitations imposed by the Washington state constitution have forced the legislature to characterize the tax as an excise tax, rather than treat it as an income tax as would the federal government and every other state. Based on the statute’s structure and its presentation as an excise tax, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the …

The New International Tax Regime, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

On October 8, 2021, over 130 countries committed themselves to the most far-reaching changes in the international tax regime since its inception in 1923. Slated to begin on the anniversary year of 2023, this new regime (ITR 2.0) adopts significant changes from the old one (ITR 1.0). Specifically, ITR 2.0 eliminates the physical presence requirement and the arm’s length standard for a significant portion of the profits of large multinationals that have been essential elements of ITR 1.0 since the 1930s, in a way that is more consistent with ITR 1.0’s Benefits Principle (BP). ITR 2.0 also explicitly implements the …

Is The Net Investment Income Tax A Treaty Override? Reflections On Toulouse, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

In this article, AviYonah examines the U.S. Tax Court's judgment in Toulouse that the denial of foreign tax credits against the net investment income tax imposed by the Affordable Care Act was not a violation of U.S. tax treaties with France and Italy and its implications for whether the base erosion and antiabuse tax is a treaty override.

Are Digital Services Taxes Imposed By Other Countries Creditable Under Irc Section 903? Yes. But, What If The Opposite Is True?, Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln Iv

Student Scholarship

This article is divided in the following parts. Part II will discuss and define what Section 903 stands for from a legislative, regulatory, and case perspective. Part III will discuss what digital services taxes are. Part III will define “nexus” and how the concept of “nexus” will relate to Section 903. Part IV concludes by suggesting that digital services taxes do not fall into the traditional statutory paradigm. Ultimately, Section 903 hypothecates that a tax will either be a traditional income tax creditable under Section 901 or tax in the place of that tax. If it does not fall into …

Democracy Avoidance In Tax Lawmaking, Clint G. Wallace

Faculty Publications

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was the most significant tax law in more than three decades, but the strategy for getting it enacted included a variety of maneuvers to avoid public scrutiny. As a result, many taxpayers did not know how they would be affected until they filed their own tax returns more than a year later. This Article identifies this lack of transparency as part of a persistent pathology of avoiding and constraining democratic inputs and responsiveness in U.S. federal tax lawmaking. Indeed, some scholars and policy makers have sought to channel tax lawmaking away from democratically grounded …

Fiscal Decolonization-Indigenous Fiscal Autonomy And Tax Jurisdiction, Riad Kherallah

LLM Theses

This thesis focuses on the relationship between Indigenous fiscal autonomy and self-determination. Indigenous nations’ ability to achieve self-determination is dependent upon their ability to autonomously finance self-government. Unfortunately, Canada’s colonial policies have weakened Indigenous economies and rendered them dependent upon the Crown. Due to Indigenous nations’ lack of fiscal autonomy, Crown policies designed to promote Indigenous self-government have proven inadequate. This thesis argues for using the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a blueprint for developing more equitable economic relations. While there are various elements to Crown-Indigenous economic relations, this thesis focuses on the distribution of …

Estate Planning For Cannabis Business Owners: An Introduction, Bridget J. Crawford, Jonathan G. Blattmachr

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

As more states legalize cannabis sales, estate planners may increasingly be called upon to advise clients with interests in cannabis-related businesses. This essay seeks to assist estate planners in two ways. First, it aims to raise general awareness of cannabis business owners' unique concerns. Second, the essay provides an overview of some of the fundamental issues about which cannabis business owners are likely to seek estate planning advice: business formation matters, wealth transfers, the ability of trusts to own cannabis-related businesses, and gift, estate, and income tax considerations.

In most states that permit legal cannabis sales, there is limited (or …

Taxation Of Long-Term Unemployment In The Digital Economy: Facing The Twenty-First Century Challenges, Limor Riza

Catholic University Law Review

The article examines the policy of taxing long-term unemployment. We claim that tax systems should not tax the unemployed regardless of whether they reenter the labor market. Unemployment is a socioeconomic problem. The fear of expanding unemployment increases due to COVID-19 that shut down large sectors of the economy for a long period and also due to the digital economy. As early as the 1930s, Keynes expressed his fear of the economic challenges his grandchildren's generation would face, coining the term "technological unemployment." Several contemporary economists substantiate this fear by showing that some occupations are bound to disappear. Unemployment insurance …

Partnership Tax Provisions Of The Tcja As Illustrations Of Planning Simplification Versus Compliance Simplification Trade-Offs, Emily Cauble

Pepperdine Law Review

Oftentimes, efforts to simplify the process of reporting the tax consequences of events that have already occurred exacerbate complexity faced by taxpayers at the stage in time when they are deciding how to act. Efforts to simplify reporting include, for instance, provisions that obviate the need to value assets prior to their sale or methods for determining tax consequences that reduce the number of computational steps used when determining tax liability. While such efforts may, to a degree, simplify tax compliance, they can also set traps for unwary taxpayers at the planning stage. Avoiding asset valuation or taking short-cuts when …

Taxing The Ivory Tower: Evaluating The Excise Tax On University Endowments, Jennifer Bird-Pollan

Pepperdine Law Review

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 introduced the first-ever excise tax imposed on the investment income of university endowments. While it is a relatively small tax, this new law is a first step towards the exploration of taxing non-profit entities on the vast sums of wealth they hold in their endowments. In this essay I take the new tax as a starting place for investigating the justification for tax exemption for universities and thinking through the consequences of changing our approach, both in the form of the new excise tax and possible alternatives. There remain reasons to be …

May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor: How The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act Fortified The Great Wealth Divide, Phyllis Taite

Pepperdine Law Review

Have Americans become so desensitized to inequality that we have morphed into a state of dystopia, and vast inequalities have become normalized? Discussions of dystopia typically describe acts of oppression, tyranny, inequality, and an overall undesirable societal state. Dystopia analysis also requires a hard look at societal values to determine ways to avoid adverse outcomes that vast inequalities may produce. By identifying the undesirable outcome, there is an opportunity to avoid or reverse it by enacting laws to combat inequalities. The Hunger Games is a fictional tale of wealthy society members enjoying the rewards of high society while using the …