One of the fundamental questions in business tax reform is whether to allow firms to immediately expense investments or require economic cost recovery. The conventional view is that expensing would generate stronger growth effects holding revenues constant. This view is rooted in traditional...

This is a reductionist article. It provides a simplified diagram and explanation of Apple's foreign tax planning that eliminates complexities not necessary to an understanding of either the relevant EU or U.S. tax issues. The primary focus of the article is identification of the stakeholders in...

Technology is revolutionizing our lives. With the touch of a button or a simple voice command, we can instantly order groceries, get directions, or find the nearest sushi restaurant. Sensibly, the private sector has capitalized on these recent innovations to drive up profits. To sell more...

Probably the most uncontroversial thing that one can say about international taxation is that it is a mess. Sophisticated planning techniques, which seem beyond the power of taxing authorities to control, enable highly profitable multinational enterprises (MNEs) to pay little or no tax on their...

This paper examines Chinese views on the ethics of tax evasion. Data used was gathered from the latest (Wave 6) World Values Survey. The sample size was more than 1800 and covered 23 regions of China. The study found that there was strong opposition to tax evasion, although the current...

For decades now, corporate inversions have been the topic of an ongoing debate between legislators, practitioners, and academics. Since the first inversion in 1982, while often arguing on the right methods, policy, and ways, Congress, the U.S. Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”), and...

Among government agencies, the IRS likely has the surest legal claim to the most information about the most Americans:their hobbies, religious affiliations, reading activities, travel, and medical information are all potentially tax relevant. Privacy scholars have studied the arrival of Big...

The purpose of this article is to propose a simpler verifiable gift tax, to reassert basic principles of transfer taxes, to encourage simple, outright gifts, and to eliminate some of the major abuses in the current gift tax regime. To accomplish these goals, the proposed tax would simplify gift...

Each year, the government loses hundreds of billions of dollars in tax revenue due to underreporting by individual taxpayers. According to standard deterrence theory, policymakers should be able to reduce tax evasion by increasing tax penalties, raising the audit rate, or some combination of the...

A discussion by a panel of experts, including Sir Ivor Richardson, of topical tax issues, including: (1) the scope for taxpayers to seek judicial review by the courts of the exercise of the Commissioner of Inland Revenue's powers, with particular reference to information gathering by the CIR at...