Taxation-State and Local Commons^™

Incorporating Ny Land Banks Into The Delinquent Property Tax Enforcement Processes, J. Justin Woods

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Student Publications

This article argues that New York municipalities should integrate land banks into the tax enforcement process to break the unhealthy cycle perpetuated by real estate and lien speculators. By transferring all tax liens and foreclosed properties to local land banks, municipalities can generate an important funding source that will help cover land banks' operations while simultaneously maximizing land banks' ability to reinvest lien proceeds and equity into redeveloping or demolishing properties with little or no value. If New York municipalities use their Land Bank Act powers fully, local and regional land bank efforts can become a vital tools for planning …

Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures: States Lead Misguided Offensive To Enforce Sales Tax Against Online Retailers, Ricky Hutchens

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is a near universal experience. An individual wants to purchase an item. He shops around to find the best price. After a diligent search, he realizes that if he makes the purchase online, he can avoid being charged sales tax on the item. Depending on the price of the item and the tax rate, the savings can be substantial- sometimes enough to justify paying for shipping. But many consumers fail to consider another consequence: choosing an online retailer effectively denies tax revenue to a buyer's home state. In the United States, state governments have three basic options for generating …

Super-Liens To The Rescue? A Case Against Special Districts In Real Estate Finance, Christopher K. Odinet

Faculty Scholarship

In a time of limited resources and sluggish economic growth, competition between cities has become palpable, and the race for new investment often dictates the public agenda. To that end, the explosive growth of public-private partnerships between local governments and private investors has resulted in the creation of a myriad of special taxing districts, the purposes of which are limited only by the imagination. Of particular concern has been the growth of certain real estate development-related districts. Although first conceived to fund critical improvements where conventional credit was not available, in more recently years these special districts have been used …

Taxing Honesty, Adam Thimmesch

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

It is commonly accepted that state use taxes, most notably those that are due on Internet purchases, are largely unenforceable against individual consumers. Consistent with that view, states have focused their enforcement efforts on forcing retailers to collect those taxes at the point of sale, and taxpayers have maintained nearly complete indifference toward remitting the tax of their own accord. This combination of factors has transformed the state use tax into a de facto tax on honesty—a tax with which only our most principled, risk-averse, or perhaps foolish even attempt to comply. The current structure of these taxes is further …

"Was The Deal Worth It?": The Dilemma Of States With Ineffective Economic Incentives Programs, Randle B. Pollard

Scholarly Articles

Federal subsidies to state and local governments have been substantially reduced due to public opinion prioritizing the reduction of the federal deficit, the recent "fiscal cliff" legislation, and the federal budget "sequester cuts." In addition, in many states, revenue collection from individual and corporate income tax is below prerecession levels. To address the reduction in federal funding and reduced revenue collections, state and local governments will increasingly rely on economic incentive programs to grow their economies through increased job creation and private capital investment within their jurisdictions. These economic incentive programs are no longer comprised of simple tax reductions for …

The Battle Of The Bulge: The Surprising Last Stand Against State Marijuana Legalization, Sam Kamin

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Although marijuana possession remains a federal crime, twenty-three states now allow use of marijuana for medical purposes and four states have adopted tax-and-regulate policies permitting use and possession by those twenty-one and over. In this article, I examine recent developments regarding marijuana regulation. I show that the Obama administration, after initially sending mixed signals, has taken several steps indicating an increasingly accepting position toward marijuana law reform in states; however the current situation regarding the dual legal status of marijuana is at best an unstable equilibrium. I also focus on what might be deemed the last stand of marijuana-legalization opponents, …

Transforming Federal And State Retirement Tax Deductions To Refundable Tax Credits, Teresa Ghilarducci, Ismael Cid-Martinez

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

The purpose of this Study is to calculate retirement account tax expenditures by states. States with income taxes that allow tax deferral of retirement account contributions and investment earnings lose nearly $20 billion in revenue. This Study uses a variety of data sources, including state reports from their executive agencies and known estimation techniques to calculate the amount of tax credits that a worker in each state would receive if the deferrals were converted to a refundable tax credit. The average credit under these estimation techniques and calculations would be $172.

Clean Energy Federalism, Felix Mormann

Articles

Legal scholarship tends to approach the law and policy of clean energy from an environmental law perspective. As hydraulic fracturing, renewable energy integration, nuclear reactor (re)licensing, transport biofuel mandates, and other energy issues have pushed to the forefront of the environmental law debate, clean energy law has begun to emancipate itself. The emerging literature on clean energy federalism is a symptom of this emancipation. This Article adds to that literature by offering two case studies, a novel model for policy integration, and theoretical insights to elucidate the relationship between environmental federalism and clean energy federalism.

Renewable portfolio standards and feed-in …

The Implications Of Csx And Dma, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This essay analyzes the implications of two recent Supreme Court cases on state and local taxation: Alabama Department of Revenue v. CSX Transportation Inc. and Direct Marketing Association v. Brohl. We argue that both of these decisions not only fail to resolve major issues in state and local taxation, but actually unsettle these issues.

Changing Residency For Illinois Tax Purposes, 40 S. Ill. U. L.J. 11 (2015), Ronald Z. Domsky

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

Currently, Illinois is in a financial crisis. Amidst this crisis, the First District Appellate Court of Illinois, in 2012, decided Cain v Hamer. In Cain, the issue was whether a pair of snowbirds (retirees spending the winter months in a warmer climate and returning to Illinois each year) were residents of Illinois for income tax purposes when they spent roughly an equal amount of time in Illinois as in Florida. The court narrowed the issue of residency down to two important issues; namely, whether the taxpayers (the “Cains”) changed domicile, and if so, whether their visits to Illinois were temporary …

Grand Chapter, Order Of The Eastern Star Of The State Of Illinois V. Topinka: Court Upholds, But Suggests Change In, Bed Tax Law, Anton Dirnberger Ii, John Harig

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Change And Continuity In Fringe Benefit Taxation: Seeking Sense And Sensibility, Richard L. Kaplan, Dawson J. Price

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Preventing Government Shutdowns: Designing Default Rules For Budgets, David Gamage, David Scott Louk

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In nearly every area of law and governance, default policies exist when lawmakers cannot pass new legislation — typically, the status quo simply remains in effect. To its detriment, U.S. budget making at both the state and federal levels lacks effective defaults. If a new budget isn’t passed by year end, there is no budget, and the government shuts down. This lack of defaults, coupled with a dysfunctional era of budgetary politics, has led to a number of recent high-profile and costly state and federal government shutdowns at the state and federal levels.

To date, legal scholarship has failed to …

Using Taxes To Improve Cap And Trade, Part I: Distribution, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this article, the first of a series, we analyze the distributional issues involved in implementing U.S. state level cap-and-trade regimes. Specifically, we will argue that the structure of California’s AB 32 regime will unnecessarily disadvantage lower-income Californians under the announced plan to give away approximately half of the permits to businesses and pollution-emitting entities.

Modernizing The State Corporate Income Tax: Market-Based Apportionment For Content Providers, Richard Pomp

Faculty Articles and Papers

This Issue Paper discusses how technology has overtaken the traditional ways the states tax the income of “content providers” that operate broadcast and cable networks, sell advertising, and produce content such as movies and television programs. This content is licensed at wholesale to distributors and along with the advertising, is watched by customers of these distributors on their televisions, smart phones, tablets, gaming consoles, and computers— either in their homes or on the move.

The so-called “model” for taxing multistate businesses like content providers--the Uniform Division of Income for Tax Purposes Act (UDITPA)--was developed in 1957 and has been adopted …

Who Wins Residential Property Tax Appeals?, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

This article explains who wins residential property tax appeals in Cook County, Illinois. It does so by collecting and combining public sector data, which has been recently released by the Cook County Assessor. The article then uses this data to compute three statistics. Lastly, it contextualizes each statistic in order to determine if some townships, or groups of townships, win more appeals than expected.

Taxing State-Owned Enterprises: Understanding A Basic Institution Of State Capitalism, Wei Cui

All Faculty Publications

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) have become active investors in global markets in the last decade, challenging policymakers in Canada and other OECD countries to confront the logic of “state capitalism.” This article develops a novel theory of the income taxation of SOEs. Many countries subject their SOEs to the income tax, but economists tend to dismiss SOE taxation as superfluous. A contrary, popular belief holds that SOE taxation is necessary to ensure fair competition. This article shows that both views are mistaken and explains SOE taxation in terms of the agency problem for dividend policy. Because typical devices to give private …

Pro And Con (Law): Considering The Irrevocable Nongrantor Trust Technique, Alyssa A. Dirusso

Vanderbilt Law Review

Commentary on Jeffrey Schoenblum, Strange Bedfellows: The Federal Constitution, Out-of-State Nongrantor Accumulation Trusts, and the Complete Avoidance of State Income Taxation'

Strange Bedfellows: The Federal Constitution, Out-Of-State Nongrantor Accumulation Trusts, And The Complete Avoidance Of State Income Taxation, Jeffrey Schoenblum

Vanderbilt Law Review

With the maximum rate of federal income tax at 39.6 percent, the Medicare surtax on investment income of 3.8 percent, and some state income tax rates exceeding 9 percent, taxpayers in the highest brackets have been seeking to develop strategies to lessen the tax burden. One strategy that has been receiving increased attention is the use of a highly specialized trust known as the NING, a Nevada incomplete gift nongrantor trust, which eliminates state income taxation of investment income altogether without generating additional federal income or transfer taxes. A major obstacle standing in the way of accomplishing this objective, however, …

Advising Venture & Early-Stage Clients: Current Ear-To-The-Ground Assessment, Gary D. Leclair

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.