Abusive transactions that claim inappropriate tax benefits are a perennial problem, but they are particularly distressing in a weak economy. When the IRS claims a transaction is abusive, courts generally examine whether the taxpayer had a business purpose and whether the transaction had economic...

Case law and commentators sometimes speak as if all income-producing activities are taxed similarly. However, that simply is not true for individuals. Although the expenses and losses of business activities generally are deductible from income of any source and net losses can be carried to other...

The purpose of this brief is to correct and respond to two arguments in Petitioner-Appellee Altera's petition for rehearing en banc and briefs of amici supporting the petition for rehearing. First, Treasury's regulation requiring cost sharing of stock-based compensation and the Ninth Circuit...

In 2016, Congress enacted a statutory Taxpayer Bill of Rights containing a list of ten rights but lacking an explicit remedy or enforcement mechanism. Are the rights listed therefore merely aspirational, or are some or all of them enforceable? It is worth noting that the statute does not say...

This is a thematic report on the topic of "Administrative Surcharges: Instruments of Cooperative Tax Compliance Regimes" for the 2015 annual meeting of the European Association of Tax Law Professors in Milan. Professors participating in the meeting were surveyed regarding their countries' use of...

This is the General Report for the United States on the theme of “Surcharges and Penalties in Tax Law” for the 2015 meeting of the European Association of Tax Law Professors in Milan, Italy. The Report addresses questions relating to the treatment of civil penalties, criminal penalties and...

The Treasury regulations at issue in Altera Corp. v. Commissioner condition the validity of controlled taxpayers' income allocation under a cost-sharing agreement upon the requirement that the controlled parties share all costs, including stock-based compensation costs, proportionately with the...

This April 1998 article discusses the U.S. Tax Court's then-existing practice of making the opinions and files in small tax cases unavailable to the public. It argues that that practice violated Internal Revenue Code provisions that make Tax Court documents public records

Stephanie Hoffer and Christopher Walker's excellent Minnesota Law Review article, The Death of Tax Court Exceptionalism, 'http://ssrn.com/abstract= 2393412' http://ssrn.com/abstract= 2393412, analyzes the topical and important question of whether the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) governs...

Most legal and economics scholars recognize both that the government needs information about taxpayers’ transactions in order to determine whether their reporting is honest, and that third-party reporting helps the government obtain that information. Given governments’ reliance on tax funds,...