Under the standard the European Court of Justice (ECJ) uses to evaluate tax discrimination cases, a Member State discriminates when it taxes cross-border economic activities more than “similar” purely domestic activities. To determine when this occurs, the ECJ compares the complaining...

One of the IRS’s principal goals is to maximize voluntary compliance. Yet, there is often a great deal of confusion and consternation when taxpayers discover that the IRS refers to the annual filing and payment ritual as “voluntary;” especially since most taxpayers do not believe they have...

Estates and trusts are recognizing growing amounts of taxable income from “income in respect of a decedent” (or “IRD”). These are payments attributable to income earned by a decedent before death but received by an estate, trust, or other beneficiary after death, and taxed to that...

We present examples that show how the delta-based test of Prop. Reg. 1.871-15 can hinge upon superficial labeling of instruments rather than their underlying economics. We propose an alternative approach that eliminates the concept of a referenced number of shares and accurately reflects...

In Cavallaro v. Commissioner, the Tax Court held that a merger of two family-owned businesses resulted in a substantial taxable gift. The taxpayers avoided penalties by demonstrating that they relied in good faith on the mistaken advice of competent tax advisers

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...

This paper describes the relevance to lawyers and law students of the concept of income for tax purposes and tax policy. Three reasons are given for law practitioners to have an understanding of the policies underlying tax legislation: the complexity of the legislation; the fact that it can...

Non-tax legal rules regulating the workplace, the financial sector, real property, and many other areas affect the ability of governments to collect revenues and provide public goods. Yet tax-collection considerations rarely enter into economic analyses of non-tax legal rules. Usually,...

This article explains the simple regulatory actions that United States Department of the Treasury can take that would, in the absence of legislative change, improve the lives of Americans living overseas and permit the IRS to better focus its limited resources to more effectively administer the...

In 1932, the United States confronted a bleak economic landscape. Amid the financial carnage caused by the 1929 stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression, economic activity had ground to a halt, tax revenues had plunged, and the nation's debt had soared. The declining government...