Taxation-Federal Commons^™

The Federalization Of Nonprofit And Charity Law, Dana Brakman Reiser

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Choking Out Local Community Service Organizations: Rising Federal Tax Regulation And Its Impact On Small Nonprofit Entities, Nicole S. Dandridge

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Federal Regulation Of Nonprofit Board Independence: Focus On Independent Stakeholders As A "Middle Way", Benjamin Moses Leff

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The "Federalization" Problem And Nonprofit Self- Regulation: Some Initial Thoughts, Mark Sidel

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Federalization Of Nonprofit Regulation And Its Discontents, James J. Fishman

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Income Tax Discrimination: Still Stuck In The Labyrinth Of Impossibility, Michael J. Graetz, Alvin C. Warren Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

In previous articles, we have argued that the European Court of Justice's reliance on nondiscrimination as the basis for its decisions did not (and could not) satisfy commonly accepted tax policy norms, such as fairness, administrability, economic efficiency, production of desired levels of revenues, avoidance of double taxation, fiscal policy goals, inter-nation equity, and so on. In addition, we argued that the court cannot achieve consistent and coherent results by requiring nondiscrimination in both origin and destination countries for transactions involving the tax systems of more than one member state. We demonstrated that – in the absence of harmonized income …

The Stable American Mind: Understanding Attitudes Towards Government And Taxes, 1990-2011, Christopher P. Eldred

CMC Senior Theses

As the federal government seeks ways to stimulate our economy and reduce our national debt, understanding public attitudes on the role and size of government and the taxes that support it is important. This thesis evaluates how US public opinion towards government and taxes has changed from 1990 to the present, and analyzes several potential causes for changes that have occurred. It is intended to be an update of William G. Mayer’s 1992 book entitled The Changing American Mind, which analyzed changing public opinion from 1960-1988. In following his analysis, the causes I have analyzed are generational replacement, fiscal …

Doing Too Much: The Standard Deduction And The Conflict Between Progressivity And Simplification, John R. Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In U.S. federal income tax, the standard deduction, along with the personal exemptions, provides taxpayers with a minimum amount of untaxed income, effectively creating a "zero bracket amount." For historical and political reasons, however, the standard deduction also operates as a simplified substitute for the itemized deductions, such as the deductions for extraordinary medical expenses, charitable contributions, and home mortgage interest. This seemingly reasonable compromise in fact leads to substantial, and surprising, conceptual complexity. In particular, close analysis of each of the two roles shows that their effects, and related criticisms, are often contradictory, which in turn makes it difficult, …

A Standard Home Office Deduction, Karen Connolly

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

Friends, Students, Taxpayers, Lend Me Your Ears! Pay Your Use Tax!, Ankit Mathur

The Contemporary Tax Journal

No abstract provided.

Effectively Representing Your Client Before The Irs, 5th Edition, T. Keith Fogg, Editor-In-Chief, T. Fogg

T. Keith Fogg

"Effectively Representing Your Client Before the IRS is a comprehensive collection of everything a tax professional should know when dealing with the IRS. Written by some of the most experienced tax controversy lawyers in the United States, it not only provides an in-depth discussion of the law, but is replete with realistic examples and hundreds of practice tips to aid tax practitioners during all stages of representation before the IRS in controversy matters, including exam, appeals, Tax Court, refund actions, and collection matters. The two-volume reference also includes a companion CD-ROM. No tax professional should be without Effectively Representing Your …

Tax Collection: Procedure And Strategies, T. Fogg

T. Keith Fogg

No abstract provided.

Relief For Taxpayers From The Federal Tax Lien, T. Fogg

T. Keith Fogg

No abstract provided.

An "Outside Limit" For Refund Suits: The Case Against The Tax Exception To The Six-Year Bar On Claims Against The Government, Adam Gustafson

Adam R.F. Gustafson

Longstanding judicial precedent and the official position of the IRS agree that federal tax refund suits are limited only by the two-year statute of limitations of § 6532(a)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code, which is triggered only when the IRS mails the claimant a notice of disallowance. This Article contends that tax refund litigation is also governed by the six-year limitation of 28 U.S.C. § 2401(a) on “every civil action commenced against the United States,” which is triggered upon the accrual of a claim. The Supreme Court alluded to this dual-limitation scheme in 2008 in United States v. Clintwood Elkhorn …

Notional Generosity, Josh Eagle

Josh Eagle

This article explores a phenomenon that might be called “gift-form generosity”: people earning similar amounts of income are more willing to part with a dollar’s worth of one kind of property than another. Among all income groups, the form of property with which charitable donors are most willing to part is the “conservation easement.” Data show, for example, that the average charitable easement donation is more than 100 times greater in value than the total, annual charitable contribution made by the average American taxpayer. Why are donors so willing to part with conservation easements? The answer may lie in donors’ …

Transparency In Private Collection Of Federal Taxes, T. Keith Fogg

T. Keith Fogg

Most federal taxes are collected from taxpayers by business entities, held in a public trust for the United States, and then paid over to the Internal Revenue Service (the IRS). While the vast majority of business entities pay over the taxes held in trust in a timely and appropriate manner, a sizeable amount, in dollar terms, does not get paid. The amount of unpaid "collected" taxes in 2008 created a $58 billion tax gap item.

Disclosure law governing federal taxes defaults to non-disclosure for most tax returns. This general rule of non-disclosure governs the returns reporting the taxes collected by …

Rationalizing Tax Law By Breaking The Addiction To Economic Substance, Allen Madison

Allen Madison

This article presents a critique of the economic substance doctrine and suggests an alternative. The economic substance doctrine under certain circumstances overrides the technical provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. Congress recently incorporated into the Code a version similar to the court-developed doctrine. Whether authorized by the court or authorized by statute, however, the doctrine makes our tax laws vague, uncertain, and fallacious. Therefore, the doctrine should be abandoned. A more appropriate tool for curbing questionable tax planning is the use of statutory risk requirements. This article provides some suggestions for developing such requirements. The article concludes that statutory risk …

Irs Breaks With Tax Court On Deduction Limits, Kimberly Stanley

Publications

The deduction of home mortgage interest is one of the most valuable and hotly debated benefits provided in the tax code to individuals. Since 1987, the code has restricted the interest deduction based on the amount of home mortgage debt the taxpayer has incurred, and the reasons for the debt. In a recent ruling, however, the Internal Revenue Service announced it would not follow a court ruling that limited the amount of deductible home mortgage interest — noteworthy because this time the IRS ruled in the taxpayer's favor.

Can Tax Expenditure Analysis Be Divorced From A Normative Tax Base?: A Critique Of The 'New Paradigm' And Its Denouement, J. Clifton Fleming Jr., Robert J. Peroni

Faculty Scholarship

Tax expenditure analysis (TEA) requires a baseline for identifying tax provisions that provide subsidies or incentives instead of serving to define the tax base and to implement the tax. With respect to the federal income tax, the baseline historically has been the Schanz-Haig-Simons (SHS) definition of income with a few modifications. Critics have continuously and strongly attacked TEA by characterizing the SHS baseline as unprincipled, imprecise, and insufficiently related to our hybrid income/consumption tax system as it actually exists. Since the baseline is hopelessly defective, so the critics argue, TEA is fatally dysfunctional and the results of its application to …

Recessions And The Social Safety Net: The Alternative Minimum Tax As A Countercyclical Fiscal Stabilizer, Brian Galle, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

As recent events illustrate, state finances are procyclical: during recessions, state revenues crash, worsening the effects of economic downturns. This problem is well known, yet persistent. We argue here that, in light of predictable federalism and political economy dynamics, states will be unable to change this situation on their own. Additionally, we note that many possible federal remedies may result in worse problems, such as by creating moral hazard that would induce states to take on excessively risky policy, both fiscal and otherwise. Thus, we argue that policymakers should consider so-called “automatic” stabilizers, such as are found in the federal …