While the legislation popularly (or unpopularly) known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was working its way through Congress, many colleges and universities were afraid that the repeal of Internal Revenue Code section 117(d), as provided in the House version of the bill, would have...

The rescission doctrine, governing when parties can unwind a transaction with retroactive tax effect, has more than its share of ambiguities. When the Internal Revenue Service announced in 2012 that it was contemplating providing further guidance on rescission, the reaction of tax practitioners...

This article considers whether realization continues to be a constitutional requirement for an accession to wealth to be included in the base of the federal income tax. Most commentators had thought that the Supreme Court's 1920 decision in Eisner v. Macomber, which treated realization as...

This article reviews several significant articles dealing with the national taxing power and related subjects. The articles were published or generally made available within the preceding year or so. The pieces discussed focus on the presidential taxing power; NFIB v. Sebelius; King v. Burwell...

In Polar Tankers, Inc. v. City of Valdez, the Supreme Court in 2009 struck down a City of Valdez levy that was in form a personal-property tax, but that primarily reached oil tankers using Valdez’s ports, on the ground that the levy violated the Tonnage Clause of the Constitution (“No State,...

Except for a few snotty remarks of the sort a reviewer has to make to keep his union card, this review praises Jonathan Barry Forman's monumental Making America Work (2006). Forman is concerned about (1) perverse incentives that keep Americans from working to full capacity or, in some cases,...

This symposium article examines the meaning of the term Indian lands - the lands that might become sites for Indian gaming-in the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. At its core, the term is unambiguous: it includes reservations and other lands that, at the time of IGRA's enactment, were held...

This essay, in a volume honoring the distinguished British tax scholar John Tiley, examines statutory and regulatory developments that are changing American anti-avoidance law. After a look at the nature of tax shelters, the essay discusses several statutory and regulatory methods of dealing...