Taxation-Federal Commons^™

Charitable Contributions Of Property: A Broken System Reimagined, Roger Colinvaux

Scholarly Articles

On average, nearly $46 billion of property is given to charitable organizations each year, about twenty-five percent of the total charitable deduction. This makes the charitable contribution deduction for property a tax expenditure within a tax expenditure, yet it is rarely analyzed as such. It emerged as part of a noble effort to encourage contributions to worthy organizations. But the deduction for property has never worked well. The general rule allowing a deduction based on the fair market value of the property may have some intuitive appeal, but its implementation has yielded numerous exceptions and immense complexity. The Article argues …

Enforcement As Substance In Tax Compliance, Leandra Lederman, Ted Sichelman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

It is well known that the government's complete failure to enforce a law can nullify that law. But what are the effects of partial enforcement? This Article shows that imperfect enforcement can alter the de facto content of the written law in predictable and beneficial ways. Specifically, in the tax compliance context, even if perfect enforcement were costless, it would not always be socially optimal. When improving the substantive law is infeasible, the enforcement agency can effect beneficial changes in the law by adopting a probabilistic enforcement scheme that varies according to the category of taxpayer and type of transaction. …

The Tax Import Of The Fasb/Iasb Proposal On Lease Accounting, George Mundstock

Articles

No abstract provided.

Taxation, Risk, And Portfolio Choice: The Treatment Of Returns To Risk Under A Normative Income Tax, John R. Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Many articles in the legal and economic literature claim that a pure Haig-Simons income tax cannot effectively tax investment income. This is because an investor can use leverage to gross up her investments in risky assets such that the increased gain (or loss) exactly offsets any income tax (or deduction) on the returns to risk-taking. This article argues, however, that while it is possible for an investor to make such portfolio shifts, she almost certainly will not because of the increased risk of doing so.

Central to any discussion of the effects of taxation on investment risk-taking is the meaning …

Will The Federal Income Tax Have A Bicentennial?, Lawrence A. Zelenak

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Indopco, Inc. V. Commissioner: National Starch Isn't The Only One "Stiffed" By The Supreme Court's Decision, Jeffrey Gates Davis

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Primer On Us. Taxation Of International Transactions (Outline), William B. Sherman

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

A Primer On Us. Taxation Of International Transactions (Slides), William B. Sherman

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Statute Of Limitations For Overstatements Of Basis, Richard T. Rice

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Federal Tax Update: Structuring Deals In 2012 And Beyond (Slides), Stephen L. Owen

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

The Case For The Retention Of The State Death Tax Credit In The Federal Transfer Tax Scheme: "Just Say No" To A Deduction, John M. Janiga, Louis S. Harrison

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

How Long Can This Go On? The Controversy Over The Application Of The Statute Of Limitations To S Corporations And Their Shareholders, J. Marcus Sommers

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Utility Of Personal Service Corporations For Athletes, Bret M. Kanis

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federal Tax Update: The Current Situation And The Prospects For Reform (Slides), Harry L. Gutman

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Preserving Fairness In Tax Administration In The Mayo Era, Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

One of the dominant themes in contemporary federal taxation is bringing tax administration within the fold of general administrative law. In 2011, the United States Supreme Court unambiguously embraced this movement in the landmark case Mayo Foundation for Medical Education & Research v. United States, in which the Court held that challenges to the validity of Treasury regulations generally are governed by the Chevron standard to the same extent as are regulations issued by other administrative agencies.

There was an immediate and strong hostile reaction to Mayo in tax circles. Many fear that Mayo dramatically tips the balance in favor …

It's Not A Tax (Statutorily), But It Is A Tax (Constitutionally), Steve R. Johnson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Not All Defined Value Clauses Are Equal, Wendy G. Gerzog

All Faculty Scholarship

Defined value clauses used to value nonmarketable family limited partnership (FLP) interests create valuation distortions and other public policy issues. This paper describes these abuses and proposes the employment of restrictions similar to those applied to pecuniary formula marital deduction clauses.

The article explains how pecuniary formula marital deduction provisions created valuation distortions by allowing for undervaluation of the marital share that were remedied by the IRS’s Rev. Proc. 64-19 and the enactment of section 2056(b)(10). The article analyzes recent case law expanding the use of defined value clauses into the FLP area and criticizes the courts for not applying …

Tax Exemptions For Charitable Single-Member Limited Liability Companies, Terri Lynn Helge, David M. Rosenberg

Faculty Scholarship

This summer, the IRS issued long-awaited guidance on the deductibility of charitable contributions made to a single-member limited liability company (“SMLLC”) that is wholly-owned by a charitable organization exempt from federal income tax as a organization described in Section 501(c)(3). Previously, in a 2001 private letter ruling, the IRS confirmed that a SMLLC wholly-owned by a U.S. charity did not need to submit a separate application for recognition of federal income tax exemption, but declined to rule on whether contributions made to the SMLLC would be deductible under Section 170 as charitable contributions. An article in the IRS Continuing Professional …

Putting State Courts In The Constitutional Driver's Seat: State Taxpayer Standing After Cuno And Winn, Edward A. Zelinsky

Articles

This article explores the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno and Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn. In Cuno and Winn, the Court held that state taxpayers lacked standing in the federal courts. Because the states have more liberal taxpayer standing rules than do the federal courts, Cuno and Winn will not terminate taxpayers’ constitutional challenges to state taxes and expenditures, but will instead channel such challenges from the federal courts (where taxpayers do not have standing) to the state courts (where they do). Moreover, municipal taxpayer standing in the federal courts, which …

Reforming Executive Compensation: What Do We Know And Where Do We Go?, Priyanka Rajagopalan

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

In this Article, I study a fascinating problem - what are the legal, political and economic implications of regulating executive bonuses? While the Administration's recent consideration of proposals to tax bonuses of AIG executives has sparked a great deal of media speculation and attention, there has been little legal scholarship discussing the various possible consequences of this and other methods of regulating executive compensation. Especially given the growing interest in executive compensation and the possible benefits and costs of regulation in this arena, I believe this paper will make a significant scholarly contribution to the existing literature on corporate governance …