Tax Law Commons^™

False Idols In The Early History Of International Taxation, Wei Cui

All Faculty Publications

A careful reading of recent scholarship on the early history of international taxation, especially on the League of Nations ’ work on ‘ double taxation ’ , ought to have dislodged many myths about this history. But more often than not, such scholarship is taken to offer mere details without altering our fundamental understanding. This chapter suggests that this reception refl ects a longstanding pattern in discourses about international taxation: participants perpetuate or cling onto narratives that are easily seen to be false. The chapter exposes this pattern by summarising evidence for four rarely-acknowledged conclusions about the League ’ s …

Rethinking The Religious Purpose Test After Catholic Charities Bureau: The Sincerity-Then-Standards Framework, Victoria Litman

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Social Promise Of Hybrid Entities, Frederick M. Spight Jr.

American University Business Law Review

Many Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are struggling to stay afloat. These historic, and historically underfunded, institutions suffer from a chronic shortage of resources, leading to the notable closures of schools, like Concordia College. Some critics question the modern place of the HBCU as a relic of a bygone era. This article argues, however, that HBCUs are worth sustaining and provides the legal tool to do so: the hybrid entity. 

Hybrid entities arose from the social enterprise movement, which sought to harness the power of both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Operating under the philosophy of “doing well, while doing …

Taxing Ai, Assaf Harpaz

Scholarly Works

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to transform the distribution and sources of income, with some experts predicting widespread job displacement. Even under optimistic projections, AI is expected to exacerbate wealth inequality, given that the technology’s ownership and immense value are concentrated within a subset of Big Tech companies and AI startups. These outcomes will have far-reaching impacts on the federal tax system, which heavily relies on taxing individual labor income and payroll, rather than capital or consumption.

This Article argues that AI threatens to disrupt the tax system’s ability to fulfill its fundamental goals of raising revenue, redistributing income, and …

Pesos For Pesos And No One Feels At Home: Gentrification And Displacement In Mexico City, Sophia L. Castellanos

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis investigates how gentrification and displacement have affected Mexico City, providing historical context and reasoning behind current policies for digital nomads and tourists. It examines policies enacted in similar cities such as Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Venice, which face challenges from increased tourism and short-term rentals like Airbnb. The thesis also reviews these regulations, highlighting their successes and limitations, and offers recommendations for integrating some of these strategies into Mexico City’s 2024 Tourism Law. Additionally, it explores public innovation strategies that could promote collaborations between the government and communities rather than complete government control. Finally, the paper discusses the challenges …

Bracing The Wobbly “Three-Legged Stool” By Increasing Homeownership Opportunities For Low- And Middle-Income Workers, Regina T. Jefferson

Scholarly Articles

Traditionally, the primary sources of retirement income were personal savings, the private retirement system, and Social Security. These three sources have been described metaphorically as the “three-legged stool” of retirement security. In this framework, each leg was viewed as a separate and distinct source of income that provided support throughout a worker’s retirement. Each source presented different and varying degrees of risks that were pooled collectively among the individual, the employer, and the government. Each source also functioned independently of the other two. Thus, the traditional framework of retirement income was thought to be ideal because it balanced and diversified …

The Forgotten Income-Attribution Power, Alex Zhang

Faculty Articles

Economic inequality stands at record levels, and constitutional law haunts egalitarian reform. In 2024, the Supreme Court decided the latest contest. Moore v. United States rebuffed an attempt to sharply limit the federal taxing power, as a razor-thin majority upheld Congress’s attribution of foreign corporations’ income to domestic shareholders. But four Justices criticized the reasoning of the majority, faulting its use of a fabricated doctrine.

This Feature provides a systematic account of Congress’s income-attribution power. It excavates overlooked litigation materials and case law from the infancy of the current federal income tax. In the 1920s and 1930s, litigants attacked, on …

Living Constitutionalism, Originalism, And The Sixteenth Amendment, Donald B. Tobin, Alex Tobin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Pillar 2 As A New International Fiscal Law, Jinyan Li

Articles & Book Chapters

This paper argues that Pillar 2 not only creates a global minimum tax on large multinational enterprises, but also manifests a new international fiscal law regime. Through the lens of a new notion of sovereignty –networked fiscal sovereignty, this paper explains Pillar 2’s raison d’être, technical components and future prospect.

Shrinking Tax Sovereignty In Canada? Evidence From The Income Tax Act, Jinyan Li, Angelo Nikolakakis

Articles & Book Chapters

This paper explores the questions of whether Canadian tax sovereignty has changed, and if so, how and why through examining the Income Tax Act in terms of the major legislative changes and their underlying influences. It finds that while maintaining formal, independent sovereignty, Canada has always borrowed foreign ideas, rules and policies when they serve Canadian interests and has recently adopted a more coordinated approach in tackling international tax challenges.

The Kinder, Gentler Irs? Where?, Harvey Gilmore

Touro Law Review

Recently, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act which provided $80 billion of new funding to the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”), allegedly to upgrade and streamline its operations, and hopefully be a little more taxpayer friendly as a result. The truth is that the IRS is well known to this day for its reputation for intimidation and unfriendliness, and I firmly believe that the IRS does not exactly go out of its way to try to dispel that reputation. Unfortunately, some more real-life incidents have recently come to the surface that suggest yet again that this is the same old IRS, …

Are Judges Influenced By Dollar Amounts? Evidence From Tax Law, Jonathan Farrar, Thomas Farrar, Harjot Mehmi

Dalhousie Law Journal

We investigate whether idiosyncratic features of numbers in dollar amounts unconsciously bias judges. If so, appellants’ likelihood of success could depend on the dollar amount under dispute. Specifically, we examine the following: whether the first digit in a dollar amount follows the frequency distribution predicted by Benford’s Law, and, accordingly, whether the likelihood of appellants’ success varies with the first digit of their disputed dollar amount; round number bias, which is the psychological tendency to prefer round numbers (ending in 0) over other numbers; and even-odd number bias, which is the psychological tendency to ascribe different characteristics to even numbers …

Foreword: The Constitution And Public Finance—Why Now And Why Ever?, Conor Clarke, Eric Kubo

Scholarship@WashULaw

This paper introduces the Washington University Law Review’s 2026 symposium issue on “Taxing, Spending, and the Constitution.” We situate the symposium’s ten papers within three interconnected developments in public finance law: the Supreme Court’s recent decision on the Sixteenth Amendment in Moore v. United States; the Trump Administration’s assertions of executive control over appropriated funds; and the use of emergency and trade statutes to justify sweeping tariff authority.

We also step back to ask why constitutional issues in public finance—long treated as a technical backwater—have become such a central site of doctrinal and political conflict. We offer several explanations beyond …

Tariffs And The Taxing Power: Historical Lessons For Major Questions And Nondelegation, Conor Clarke, Ari Glogower

Scholarship@WashULaw

American law is grappling with basic questions about the President’s power to impose tariffs—questions concerning whether Congress can delegate this authority, and the degree to which it has. But the ongoing tariff controversy emerges against a backdrop of conflicting and shifting historical practice. Early Congresses drafted tariff statutes in painstaking detail, while some of the broadest delegations in the early Republic involved internal taxes. In the modern era, by contrast, Congress has delegated more expansive tariff powers to the President, while retaining closer control over internal taxes. How should we understand this seemingly conflicting history of practice, and its relevance …

Tariffs And The Progressive Fiscal Constitution, Lawrence J. Liu, Alex Zhang

Scholarship@WashULaw

For more than a century, progressive taxation has constituted the American fiscal state. A resurgent and expanding tariff regime, however, threatens that commitment to progressive distribution. Given the ongoing popularity of tariffs, this Article examines how they might be designed and administered in a way that mitigates their regressive distributive impact. The Article thus develops and assesses proposals to (1) vary tariff burdens in accordance with the consumption of imported goods, (2) reduce income- or payroll-tax burdens on lower-income households, and (3) earmark tariff revenue for specified spending programs. Although none is perfect, we seek to articulate possibilities and highlight …

The End Of Territoriality?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

The One Big Beautiful Big Act (OBBBA) of 2025 is generally consideredto be a continuation of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017.1Thatis definitely true as far as the individual tax provisions are concerned, be-cause the OBBBA merely made permanent the TCJA provisions with minorchanges, such as increasing the cap on the state and local tax deduction from$10,000 to $40,000. For the corporate tax, the OBBBA continued some of thechanges in the TCJA (such as expensing) while relaxing others (such as amorti-zation of research and experimentation (R&E) expenditures and a stricter limiton interest deductions) without changing the overall …

Apportioned Direct Taxes, Conor Clarke, Ari Glogower

Scholarship@WashULaw

The Constitution requires that Congress apportion any “direct” tax among the states by population. This once-dormant provision is now the most important constitutional limitation on Congress’s taxing power. Last year, in Moore v. United States, the Supreme Court seriously considered, for the first time in decades, whether to invalidate an Act of Congress as an unapportioned direct tax. While the law survived, Moore has opened a new era in which scholars and policymakers must again take apportionment seriously. Yet the apportionment requirement remains poorly understood.

This Article provides a new perspective on apportionment by examining how Congress and Treasury …

Tax As Curator: Tax Incentives And The Mediation Of Acquisition In Uk Museums, Julia Dalton

MA in Art Business Dissertations

Not provided

Weaponization Of Taxation: Sovereign Tax Immunity As A National Security Tool, Vinita R. Singh

BYU Law Review

Amidst calls to reconceptualize taxation as a national security tool, legislators are reexamining how the United States taxes foreign governments. Federal income taxation of foreign governments—what this Article terms “the law of immunity from taxation” or “sovereign tax immunity”—strongly influences whether and how foreign governments pursue investment in the United States. This impact on international business transactions indicates sovereign tax immunity has the potential to be a powerful national security tool. Yet, despite its import, the law of immunity from taxation has been underexplored and undertheorized. This Article steps into this gap in discourse by challenging the way recent legislative …

Greenhat’S Greenlight To The Cftc: The Case For A Jurisdictional Shift Of Financial Transmission Rights From The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission To The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Timothy K. Shaw Ii

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

Regional Transmission Organizations and Independent System Operators are a relatively new platform to buy and sell wholesale electricity and transmission service of that electricity. These groundbreaking organizations have been around since 1996 after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) issued Order 888. FERC regulates the physical electricity wholesale sale and transmission service market managed by a Regional Transmission Organization (“RTO”) or Independent System Operator (“ISO”),through its Federal Power Act mandate. Many RTOs and ISOs offer a product called a Financial Transmission Right (“FTR”). Traditionally, FTRs assist the holder by providing price certainty, or a hedge, in the capacity market. This …