Annually, the U.S. government collects nearly $3 trillion of income and employment taxes. With respect to these collections, Form 1040 (U.S. Individual Income Tax Return) seeks to ensure taxpayer accuracy. Currently, two sets of players dominate the Form 1040 preparation and submission process:...

Most of the literature on presumptive taxation limits its application to the less-developed economies. In this paper I argue that presumptive taxes are well entrenched in the modern world, although usually not classified as such. Presumptive taxes can take many forms, and can be incorporated in...

The authors use a computable general equilibrium model to estimate the marginal cost of public funds (MCF) for taxes on domestic goods, exports, imports, capital, and labor in 38 African countries. The resulting MCF estimates provide directions for tax reform in Africa. The authors investigate...

The public misunderstands many aspects of the tax system. For example, people frequently misunderstand how marginal tax rates work, misperceive their own average tax rates, and believe they benefit from tax deductions for which they are ineligible. Such confusion is understandable given the...

When digital tokens are used in debt finance, one cannot assume that the same orthodox tax treatment will apply. The highly specific nature of tax provisions means that they may apply very differently once digital tokens rather than fiat currency are involved. Through a case study of Singapore...

The post highlights three main issues that may result from the rapid and widespread automation of jobs: 1) declining tax revenues; 2) inequitable distribution of gains and losses from automation; and 3) social costs of job displacement, such as social support and retraining programmes for...

There has been a lot of interest lately in new IRC Section 199A, the new qualified business income (QBI) deduction that grants passthroughs, including qualifying workers who are independent contractors (and not employees), a deduction equal to 20% of a specially calculated base amount of income....

The Tax Court's Koons decision explains the rules for allowing an estate to deduct interest payments, and it details how the court arrived at a determination of the value of a family limited liability company interest

Federal tax law has long provided a tax benefit for charitable contributions of easements for conservation purposes. A fundamental problem with this conservation easement tax expenditure is that the measure for the tax benefit – lost economic development value – is erroneous. Use of such an...

Who is responsible for paying taxes to the government? Currently, the answer depends on one’s employment status. Employees enjoy the luxury of not having to think about tax remittance during the year because their employers withhold taxes from their paychecks. Non-employees, on the other hand,...