This article discusses Allstar Marketing Group, LLC v. United States, in which the Court of International Trade ruled, in 2017, on a question of cosmic significance: whether, for purposes of computing the tariff due on importation, a Snuggie is a blanket or a garment. The stakes were...

This essay discusses the Origination Clause in the Constitution, which in form requires that “Bills for raising Revenue” originate in the House of Representatives, which was thought to be closer to the people than was the Senate. The Origination Clause had principle underlying it, but it has...

This article discusses what is usually thought of as a routine issue, but which many people, including at least some tax professionals, get wrong: What is a capital asset for federal income tax purposes? For one thing, the term covers lots of property that almost no one thinks of as a capital...

This article reviews several significant articles dealing with the national taxing power that were published (or made available) within the past couple of years. The articles discussed consider the Origination Clause, other constitutional issues arising from the Supreme Court's decision in...

This article discusses guidance issued in 2014 about key issues in Section 7701(o), the codification (or “clarification”) of the economic substance doctrine, and the associated penalty provision in Section 6662(b). In particular, Notice 2014-58 considered the meaning of the statutory terms...

In King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court concluded in 2015 that, despite some arguably straightforward language in the Affordable Care Act suggesting otherwise, Congress intended that “applicable taxpayers” be eligible for refundable tax credits whether they acquired their health insurance on...

This essay considers a couple of developments in 2014 that dealt, directly or indirectly, with taxation issues affecting college athletics: (1) a decision by a federal district judge, in O'Bannon v. NCAA, that the antitrust laws do not permit the National Collegiate Athletic Association to...

A recent decision by a National Labor Relations Board regional director, concluding that football players at Northwestern University are employees for purposes of the National Labor Relations Act, could have spillover effects in tax law. This article considers whether severing the connection...

This article comments on “Is a Broadly Based Mark-to-Market Tax Unconstitutional,” by Gene Magidenko. Magidenko gets all the big points right in questioning the constitutionality of a mark-to-market system of taxation, but this article suggests he did not emphasize one point enough: the...

This article examines an influential set of articles, written by Professor John Tiley in the late 1980s, about anti-avoidance doctrines developed by US courts. The trilogy of articles was written for a British audience, as part of Tiley's efforts to resist importation of US doctrines...