Tax Law Commons^™

Capital Gains Tax Law And Policy In The U.S. And China: A Comparative Study, Chen Ye

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation provides a review of tax theories, laws, and policies of the U.S. and China on taxing capital gains. Based on the review, I draw a comparative analysis of the two countries’ laws and policies and prescribe legislative options for taxing capital gains under the individual income tax law in China.

The dissertation contributes to both the Chinese literature and the U.S. literature: For China, this research takes upon an overlooked yet increasingly important issue in China’s individual income tax—the taxation of capital gains. Though the 2018 Individual Income Tax Law brought significant changes to the classification of individual …

Digital Services Tax: A Cross-Border Variation Of The Consumption Tax Debate, Young Ran Kim

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The rise of highly digitalized businesses, such as Google and Amazon, has strained the traditional income tax rules on nexus and profit allocation. Traditionally, profit is allocated to market countries where consumers are located only if the business has a physical presence. However, in the digital economy, profits can be easily generated in market countries without a physical presence, resulting in tax revenue loss for market countries. In response, market countries have started imposing a new tax, called the digital services tax (DST), on certain digital business models, which has ignited heated debate across the globe. Supporters defend the DST, …

Genuine Incorporation Or Tax Avoidance?, Liu Hern Kuan, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In 2018, two articles in The Straits Times described how some professionals were incorporating one or more companies in an attempt to gain tax advantages. The issue was the difference between the highest personal income tax rate of 22 per cent and the corporate tax rate of 17 per cent, which provided an opportunity for tax arbitrage. The Start-Up Tax Exemption Scheme and Partial Tax Exemption and the availability of corporate tax rebates (typically announced during the Budget) also contributed to making incorporating one or more companies more attractive. Since the articles were published, many professionals have attempted to justify …

Twenty Things Real Estate Attorneys Can Do To Not Mess Up A Section 1031 Exchange (Part I: Items 1-10), Bradley T. Borden

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tax Treaties, The Constitution, And The Noncompulsory Payment Rule, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

US Tax treaties have been regarded as self-executing since the first treaty (with France) was ratified in 1932. Rebecca Kysar has argued this raises a doubt on whether the treaties are constitutional, because tax treaties (like other treaties) are negotiated by the executive branch and ratified by the Senate with no involvement by the House, and all tax-raising measures must originate in the House under the Origination Clause (U.S. Const. Art I, section 7, clause 7). Her preferred solution is to make tax treaties non-self executing, but that would reverse the universal practice since 1932, and is therefore unlikely. Moreover, …

Antitrust And The Corporate Tax: Why We Need Progressive Corporate Tax Rates, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Lior Frank

Articles

In this article, Avi-Yonah and Frank explore how progressive corporate tax rates could address the abuse of power by monopolistic big tech companies.

Contractual Tax Reform, Michael Abramowicz, Andrew Blair-Stanek

William & Mary Law Review

One-size-fits-all taxation fails to accommodate diverse taxpayer circumstances. This Article proposes allowing taxpayers to contract into alternative tax regimes administered by private intermediaries. Participating taxpayers would make payments to the intermediaries pursuant to contract, and the intermediaries would be required to pay to the government at least as much as these taxpayers would have paid the government otherwise. That amount is determined based on the actual tax receipts of a control group, taxpayers who wish to contract with an intermediary but instead are chosen at random to continue under the status quo. These alternative tax regimes might better accommodate taxpayers’ …

Covid-19 And Us Tax Policy: What Needs To Change?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

The COVID-19 Pandemic already feels like a historical turning point akin to Word Wars I and II and the Great Depression. It may signal the end of the second period of globalization (1980-2020) and a change in the relative positions of the US and China. It could also lead in the US to significant changes in tax policy designed to bolster the social safety net which was revealed as very porous during the pandemic. In what follows I will first discuss some short-term effects of the pandemic and then some potential longer-term effects on US tax policy.

Tax Weapons In The Covid-19 War: A Preliminary Study Of Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Uk And Us, Jinyan Li, Nathan Jin Bao, Shanghua Hu, Matias Zerbino

Articles & Book Chapters

The COVID-19 pandemic is killing hundreds of thousands of people and crippling businesses worldwide. There is no medical cure or vaccine yet. To prevent COVID-19 from crushing the health care system, non-essential activities have been paused and people are asked to stay home and keep “social distancing” in order to slow down the spread of the virus. Between 37 and 40 percent of jobs in the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and Sweden can plausibly be performed entirely at home, but most workers cannot continue working. Such pause means no income for workers and no revenues for businesses …

Taxation Of Electronic Gaming, Bryan T. Camp

Washington and Lee Law Review

At a doctrinal level, the subject of this Article is timely. During this time of the coronavirus pandemic, casinos have been closed and large populations have been subject to stay-home orders from local and state authorities. One can reasonably expect a large increase in electronic gaming and thus an increased need for proper consideration of its taxation. This Article argues for a cash-out rule of taxation.

At a deeper level, the subject of this Article is timeless. Tax law is wickedly complex for a reason. This Article explores that complexity using the example of electronic gaming. It grapples with the …

Taxation And Business: The Human Rights Dimension Of Corporate Tax Practices, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

If we want to narrow the North-South divide that threatens our world, some limits on tax competition are inevitable. The world faces a crucial choice in the 2020s. We can either continue retreating from globalization in favor of xenophobic nationalism, tariffs, immigration restrictions, and exchange controls. That road leads ultimately to war, as it did in the 1930s. Or we can revive globalization by investing in a robust social safety net, infrastructure, education, and job creation. While more needs to be done, we have made significant progress in curbing tax competition in the last decade. The key move now is …

Income Inequality, Progressive Taxation And Tax Expenditures, James R. Hines Jr.

Book Chapters

There are important and growing concerns about income inequality in the United States and other high-income countries. These concerns reflect rising apprehension about the political and social consequences of inequality and worries that the advance of technology, expanding international trade and investment, and other economic developments may have significantly widened income gaps in recent decades and will continue to do so in the future. In the United States, these concerns have prompted renewed calls for political activism and vigorous searches for policy measures that might improve the relative economic positions of low- and middle-income Americans.

There are many ways in …

The Ordinary Diet Of The Law: How To Interpret Public Law 86-272, Darien Shanske, David Gamage

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Indeed, in today’s world, filled with legal complexity, the true test of federalist principle may lie, not in the occasional constitutional effort to trim Congress’ commerce power at its edges, or to protect a State’s treasury from a private damages action, but rather in those many statutory cases where courts interpret the mass of technical detail that is the ordinary diet of the law.

Public Law 86-272 is an important feature of the landscape of both state corporate income taxation and state tax policy more generally. The Multistate Tax Commission is completing an important project on updating the guidance given …

Murphy V. Ncaa: Why States In Need Of Revenue Should Challenge The Constitutionality Of 15 U.S.C. § 381, Owen Walsh

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Who Carries The Burden Of Proving Causation In An Erisa Section 409(A) Suit For Breach Of Fiduciary Duty?, Edward Rivin

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Should Us Tax Law Be Constitutionalized? Centennial Reflections On Eisner V. Macomber (1920), Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Law & Economics Working Papers

The US Supreme Court last decided a federal tax case on constitutional grounds in 1920, a century ago. The case was Eisner v. Macomber, and the issue was whether Congress had the power under the Sixteenth Amendment (authorizing an income tax, 1913) to include stock dividends in the tax base. The Court answered no because “income” in the Sixteenth Amendment meant “the gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined.” A stock dividend, since it did not increase the wealth of the shareholder, was not “income.” Macomber was never formally overruled, and it is sometime still cited by …

Digital Services Tax: A Cross-Border Variation Of The Consumption Tax Debate, Young Ran Kim

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The rise of highly digitalized businesses, such as Google and Amazon, has strained the traditional income tax rules on nexus and profit allocation. Traditionally, profit is allocated to market countries where consumers are located only if the business has physical presence. However, in the digital economy, profits can be easily generated in market countries without a physical presence, resulting in tax revenue loss for market countries. In response, market countries have started imposing a new tax, called the digital services tax (“DST”), on certain digital business models, which has ignited heated debate across the globe. Supporters defend the DST, designed …

A Constitutional Wealth Tax, Ari Glogower

Michigan Law Review

Policymakers and scholars are giving serious consideration to a federal wealth tax. Wealth taxation could address the harms from rising economic inequality, promote equality of social and economic opportunity, and raise the revenue needed to fund critical government programs. These reasons for taxing wealth may not matter, however, if a federal wealth tax is unconstitutional.

Scholars debate whether a tax on a wealth base (a “traditional wealth tax”) would be a “direct tax” subject to apportionment among the states by population. This Article argues, in contrast, that this possible constitutional restriction on a traditional wealth tax may not matter. If …

Racialized Tax Inequity: Wealth, Racism, And The U.S. System Of Taxation, Palma Joy Strand, Nicholas A. Mirkay

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article describes the connection between wealth inequality and the increasing structural racism in the U.S. tax system since the 1980s. A long-term sociological view (the why) reveals the historical racialization of wealth and a shift in the tax system overall beginning around 1980 to protect and exacerbate wealth inequality, which has been fueled by racial animus and anxiety. A critical tax view (the how) highlights a shift over the same time period at both federal and state levels from taxes on wealth, to taxes on income, and then to taxes on consumption—from greater to less progressivity. Both of these …

Uk & Ksa Vats: A Cutting-Edge Proposal – Mini-Blockchain And Vatcoin, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Musaad Alwohaibi, Mike Cheetham

Faculty Scholarship

This paper develops, extends, and clarifies themes introduced in five prior papers dealing with blockchain, and VATCoin in the context of both (a) the new VATs in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and (b) the mature VATs in the EU. Five additional papers on VAT technology advances in Fiji, with blockchain and VATCoin applications to New Zealand’s approach to online sales platforms (the Netlix Tax) are similarly referenced and extended. The GCC VAT papers were exploratory. For the most part, they were composed before any GCC jurisdiction had implemented a VAT, and in three instances even before the GCC Framework …