Category Archives: Tax Law
Oct 29, 2020 Kristin HickmanTax Law
Mention the IRS, and for most, the first thought to come to mind is not alleviating poverty. Most people think of the IRS as the nation’s tax collector, processing tax returns and enforcing the tax laws to finance the government. Yet, for many years now, the IRS also has served as one of the federal government’s most significant antipoverty agencies. The IRS administers the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC), providing billions of dollars of social welfare benefits each year to millions of families and individuals. The EITC and CTC are very popular, at least in part because they are perceived by Congress as especially efficient relative to other antipoverty programs. Consistent with that popularity, both programs have grown a lot since their inception. But their administration by the IRS, while efficient, presents its own set of difficulties—including for the very beneficiaries these programs are intended to help. In her book, Tax Credits for the Working Poor: A Call for Reform, Michelle Drumbl takes a deep dive into the challenges as well as the benefits of giving the IRS responsibility for administering these important social welfare programs.
The comprehensiveness of Drumbl’s treatment alone makes this book a valuable addition to the tax policy literature. She offers plenty of statistics; a thorough survey of pros, cons, and policy alternatives; and a wonderful synthesis of existing scholarship. But the book’s true strength is the human story that it tells. Too often, discussions of the EITC and CTC focus wonkishly on economic efficiency, comparisons of bureaucratic expertise, and statistics alone. Drumbl’s account does not neglect that side of the equation. But she also draws upon her experience running a low-income taxpayer clinic to tell the stories of EITC and CTC beneficiaries, who often suffer the downside consequences of relying on tax officials to administer social welfare programs on the cheap. Continue reading "Pursuing Good Rather than Harm with the EITC and CTC"
Sep 29, 2020 Charlotte CraneTax Law
Level-headed approaches are rare in discussions of how the administration of tax law should fit into the larger body of administrative law. Alice Abreu and Richard Greenstein’s Tax: Different, Not Exceptional is one of those rare exceptions. All too often, advocates have portrayed the question as having an all or nothing answer, coded as whether tax is “exceptional.” If yes, then the norms of administrative law don’t apply; if no, then they all apply. (And, for many, if these norms all apply, the vast bulk of the work product of the Treasury and the IRS is tainted and should be questioned by the courts.) Abreu and Greenstein persuasively point out that this approach is simply useless.
Careful observers should always have appreciated that neither position is supported by the existing statutory framework. For some aspects of tax administration, there are exceptions in the Administrative Procedure Act itself, and additional exceptions are provided in other titles of the United States Code. But as Abreu and Greenstein point out with reference to Sorites Paradox, a heap of exceptions is often only just that, a heap of discrete exceptions. Even if each of those exceptions is well-founded, they do not necessarily mean anything about the other items that could be removed from the pile, or even about the nature of the pile itself. The questions that remain, given this reality, relate to how these discrete exceptions should be interpreted, and whether these exceptions have any implications for items not covered by their specifics. Tax: Different should go a long way toward establishing this approach to answering these administrative law questions. Continue reading "Situating the Tax Law: Exceptions, Not Exceptionalism"
Sep 1, 2020 Daniel ShaviroTax Law
Recession-Ready: Fiscal Policies to Stabilize the American Economy (Heather Boushey, Ryan Nunn & Jay Shambaugh eds., 2019), available at
The Hamilton Project.
Legal scholars, in tax and elsewhere, have increasingly recognized the need for countercyclical policy instruments. (An important example is Yair Listokin’s Law and Macroeconomics: Legal Remedies to Recessions.) Much of the tax system, of course, automatically responds to economic slowdowns, such as by generating less revenue when economic activity declines. In severe recessions, however, non-tax instruments become indispensable to delivering adequate stimulus and individual support.
In this regard, the Great Recession of 2007-2009 taught us several important things the hard way. One was that down business cycles are likely to be a recurrent feature of modern economic life. A second was that austerity makes absolutely no sense as a response to economic slowdowns. A third was that the political system cannot be trusted to respond adequately through discretionary policy changes.
The political economy concern used to be that Congress would simply act too slowly – as in the metaphor of a home heating system that has a six-month time lag, and hence that responds to a January deep freeze by turning on the boiler in July. But now there is also the threat of deliberate obstruction by Republicans whenever there is a Democratic president, alongside a rigid, non-reality-based ideology that tamps down responsiveness even when Republicans control both Congress and the White House. This creates an urgent need for the Democrats, if they win in 2020, to design automatic countercyclical fiscal policy changes that do not require any further discretionary enactment of legislative changes.
Luckily, an important recent book – Recession-Ready: Fiscal Policies to Stabilize the American Economy, edited by Heather Boushey, Ryan Nunn, and Jay Shambaugh and published by the Hamilton Project – offers a wide-ranging set of suggestions. These suggestions would merit serious consideration as cornerstones of a Biden Administration legislative agenda in January 2021. Continue reading "Planning For The Next Recession (Oh, Wait A Second …)"
Jul 15, 2020 Susan MorseTax Law
Mark Gergen,
A Securities Tax and the Problems of Taxing Global Capital (June 2, 2020), available at
SSRN.
The federal government’s spending to try to contain the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic already approaches $3 trillion. It will cause U.S. national debt to exceed GDP for the first time since World War II. The current crisis has emphasized deep distributive justice concerns and raised calls for more public spending to help address them. Such public spending is important and necessary, but there is a question of how to pay for it. Taxing wealth and capital income can be part of the solution. These are systematically undertaxed, even though careful analysis demonstrates that wealth taxation would not create an unacceptable drag on the economy.
Within the broad wealth and capital income tax literature, Mark Gergen’s work offers a particularly clever and tidy approach to taxing capital. He proposes a securities tax to reach capital touched by the public market. This tax would be collected and remitted by market participants like public corporations. A complementary tax on imputed normal returns would reach private capital. Gergen recently posted A Securities Tax and the Problems of Taxing Global Capital, which describes international issues raised by his proposal. This paper follows on a 2016 article, How to Tax Capital, which covers the fundamentals of his idea. Continue reading "Raising Revenue by Taxing Capital"
Jun 15, 2020 Neil H. BuchananTax Law
Victoria J. Haneman,
Tax Incentives for Green Burial, __
Nev. L.J. __ (forthcoming, 2020), available at
SSRN.
Dealing with the death of a loved one is one of the most stressful and debilitating experiences in most people’s lives. As Victoria J. Haneman summarizes some key empirical insights:
“After a major loss, such as the death of a spouse or child, a third of survivors will suffer detrimental physical or mental health issues. One-quarter of surviving spouses will suffer clinical depression or anxiety within the first year of loss. Grief is frequently accompanied by weight loss, anxiety, despair, hypnagogic hallucinations, temporarily impaired immune response, disorganization, and/or disorientation.” (P. 41.)
Setting aside the emotional turmoil, how do Americans deal with the practical side of these inevitable events? Not well at all. Vulnerable people are always the target of unscrupulous grifters – such as Ryan O’Neal’s character in the classic film “Paper Moon,” who exploits grieving widows in the Depression-era Midwest – but the bigger problem is that the nominally legitimate “death industry” (in Haneman’s preferred turn of phrase) has at best a mixed record, often overcharging and upselling stunned family members who have much more important matters on their minds. Continue reading "The Bereaved Should Not Be Preyed Upon: Can the Tax System Help?"
May 22, 2020 Shu-Yi OeiTax Law
Ruth Mason,
The Transformation of International Tax, 114
Am. J. Int’l L. __ (forthcoming, 2020), available at
SSRN.
International tax law has been in the news a good deal lately, and one of the key developments widely discussed among international tax experts is the “OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS,” which aims to take on base erosion and profit shifting (i.e., “BEPS”) behaviors of multinational enterprises (“MNEs”). Ruth Mason offers a broad new view of these developments in her article, The Transformation of International Tax.
Here’s the backstory: Before the 2008 financial crisis, world leaders largely tolerated cross-border corporate tax avoidance and minimization by MNEs. The 2008 crisis, together with data leaks, hacks, and resulting parliamentary and congressional hearings, brought heightened public attention to these tax avoidance strategies. This jolted world leaders out of their longstanding inaction. In 2013, leaders of the G20 countries tasked the OECD—an international organization that in recent years has played a key role in international tax policy—with coordinating multilateral efforts to ensure that MNEs paid their fair share of taxes. The OECD accordingly created its now-famous “BEPS Action Plan” in 2013 and delivered final action recommendations in October 2015. These recommendations consisted of 15 action items that countries should undertake to confront MNE base erosion and profit shifting behaviors. In 2016, recognizing that the success of the BEPS project required the engagement of developing countries, the OECD established the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework. Through this new structure, the OECD and G20 invited developing countries to participate on an equal footing in the creation of standards to combat base erosion and profit-shifting behaviors and in the review and monitoring of OECD BEPS implementation. Continue reading "The New World of International Tax"
Apr 29, 2020 Theodore P. SetoTax Law
In Leveling the Playing Field between Inherited Income and Income from Work through an Inheritance Tax, Lily Batchelder proposes that our current estate and gift transfer taxes be abolished and that gifts, inheritances, and bequests in excess of a lifetime exemption and various annual exclusions instead be includible for both income and payroll tax purposes. She would require constructive realization of large accrued gains on gifts and bequests and repeal of carryover basis and stepped-up basis for such gains as well. To avoid forcing the sale of family farms and businesses, she would allow heirs to defer indefinitely the resulting taxes to the extent they exceed the heirs’ liquid assets, minus a cushion of $500,000. She would also permit taxable inheritances to be spread over five years to minimize bracket shift problems. Finally, to address the avoidance problems that currently plague our transfer tax system, she proposes a series of reforms to rules governing the timing and valuation of transfers through trusts and similar devices. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates that if the lifetime exemption were $2.5 million, Batchelder’s proposal would raise $34 billion per year; if the lifetime exemption were $1 million, $92 billion per year; and if the lifetime exemption were $500,000, $140 billion per year. By comparison, our current transfer tax system raises about $16 billion per year.
Batchelder’s thorough exploration of the problem includes: extensive empirical background; critical examination of the technical, economic, and ethical issues raised; and comprehensive proposed transition and reporting rules. It is essential reading for both tax specialists interested in the relationship between income and wealth taxation and lay readers concerned about addressing increasing wealth, income, and political disparities in the United States in a manner consistent with American political values. Continue reading "Taxing “Takers”"
Mar 26, 2020 Kim BrooksTax Law
Meredith Conway’s article draws titular inspiration from the 1980s Talking Heads song, “Once in a Lifetime.” It’s hard to have been alive in the 1980s and not hear the song echoing in your head while you read her article. The song opens with the lyrics, “And you might find yourself/Living in a shotgun shack.”
What is a shotgun shack?
Shotgun cottages are characteristic New Orleans structures, although the architectural design crops up in other cities (and countries, too). There is some debate about how the houses got the name “shotgun cottages.” Conway isn’t seeking to resolve that debate, so she recounts what is probably the most common narrative. The houses are narrow, usually only one room wide, and when the doors through all the rooms are opened, you can shoot a shot gun and the bullet will travel through the front door, the interior of the house, and straight out the back door.
But why do they exist at all? Here, Conway diverges from the dominant narrative (that they were designed to accommodate narrow urban lots) and offers a tax story instead: perhaps the houses were designed this way as a tax avoidance strategy. According to Conway, many jurisdictions, including the Netherlands, Charleston, Japan, and Vietnam (alongside New Orleans) imposed taxes on elements of house design that inspired architects to build “skinny houses.” She reviews these skinny house-inspiring tax policies in Part IV of the article.
But let’s back up. What’s Conway’s aim in this relatively short (for an American law review) and approachable piece? Her claim is that at least some of the architectural features we see around us are explained by tax policy. Continue reading "Why New Orleans Has Shotgun Houses and Other Mysteries Solved"
Feb 10, 2020 Kathleen DeLaney ThomasTax Law
A recently published empirical study by Diana Onu, Lynne Oats, Erich Kirchler, and Andre Julian Hartmann compares taxpayer attitudes towards acceptable tax planning, aggressive (yet legal) tax avoidance, and illegal tax evasion. While the study itself examines small business owners subject to income tax in the U.K., its implications should be of great interest to policymakers concerned about legal avoidance strategies with respect to any tax base. For example, aggressive but legal tax avoidance might be an important concern under recent wealth tax proposals in the United States.
As noted by the study’s authors, tax compliance literature has traditionally focused on the binary choice between compliance and evasion. That literature explores the various underpinnings of the decision to evade, from deterrence theory, to social norms, to attitudes that evasion is a victimless crime. But largely absent from this literature on individual taxpayers are studies of the motivations underlying aggressive, yet legal, tax avoidance strategies. In thinking about the U.S. tax system, this makes sense. Aggressive avoidance strategies are typically attributed to firms, where individual attitudes and other psychological factors are arguably less relevant. Evasion, on the other hand, is typically attributed to individual taxpayers (most often, sole proprietors), who often lack the resources to employ aggressive yet legal avoidance strategies. But if the U.S. were to adopt a wealth tax like the one proposed by Elizabeth Warren, the stakes or potential payoffs from avoidance might grow. If so, individual level avoidance strategies would presumably become much more commonplace.
So what do we know about the psychological factors that motivate legal tax avoidance, as distinct from evasion? It turns out, not much, but the study by Onu, Oats, Kirchler, and Hartmann sheds some light on this question. Continue reading "How Should We Think About Wealth Tax Avoidance?"
Jan 23, 2020 Daniel ShaviroTax Law
Why write a book rather than journal articles? Insofar as we write for ourselves, it’s a function of the project. Some ideas for projects may best lend themselves to articles, but others may need to be book-length in terms of their scope. But we also write for other people, and one great thing about being an academic is that you have wide entrepreneurial choice regarding which audiences you wish to reach—be it in general, or project-by-project. There’s no right or wrong about it (well, maybe there are better and worse choices sometimes), any more than novels should all fit in a particular genre, or scientific research should restrict itself to a particular subject area or methodology. There’s also no right answer as between the aims of advancing knowledge, engaging in art for art’s sake, and attempting to improve the world—all of these enterprises have value, and of course they often overlap.
Two outstanding recent books by prominent tax economists—Kim Clausing and William Gale—show how attempting to improve the world can overlap with advancing the other goals noted above through clear, lucid, convincing explanation and analysis. For the most part, Clausing and Gale explain things that some people already know, in addition to passionately advancing viewpoints to which I am generally sympathetic, although of course not everything they say is wholly beyond debate. Both books reflect admirable project choices by scholars who have done important original research to focus on amalgamation and explanation this time around, in response to the bad place where our country is right now across multiple dimensions (not limited to current political headlines). Clausing and Gale successfully communicate an urgency that even hardcore art-for-art’s-sake devotees will respect and admire as showing the authors’ commitment to valuable public service. But the books are also very different, in ways that help to show the lack of any single formula for making signal contributions to our society and discourse as a public intellectual. Continue reading "Writing Books Versus Journal Articles"
