Under current law, all true barter transactions, such as babysitting cooperatives, create taxable income. Although the IRS often fails to catch unreported transactions, lawyers and accountants have an ethical duty to advise clients to report these taxable transactions on their income tax...

In 1990, Colombia started a process of liberalization through which the traditional scheme of 'production towards domestic necessities' was left behind. In consequence, reforms in the tax, financial, foreign trade and constitutional systems took place. These reforms aimed at removing obstacles...

This Comment evaluates four recent proposals to reform tax laws affecting the financial industry. After introducing the proposals, the author provides a theoretical framework for evaluating them and then relies on this framework to explore the benefits and drawbacks of each. Ultimately, the...

This article criticizes a proposal recently put forward by the co-chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to abolish all tax expenditures and sharply reduce statutory tax rates. The author believes that abolishing all tax expenditures without regard to merit or a...

This document is the web appendix for Optimal Tax Policy and the Symmetries of Ignorance (June 2011). University of Pennsylvania, Institute for Law & Economic Research Paper No. 11-19; U of Penn Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 11-21. Available at SSRN: "http://ssrn.com/abstract=1856123"...

This paper assesses the extent to which the disaggregated book-tax differences (BTDs) detailed in the tax footnote are associated with earnings persistence and growth, and the extent to which these associations matter to investors. Using hand-collected data from the schedule of deferred tax...

Private initiatives have always been very important for the arts and cultural heritage. Even though government is a major source of funding for cultural institutions in most European countries, private patronage always had a role to play. In recent years, several European governments have...

This paper studies the short-run macroeconomic effects of legislated tax changes in Germany using a vector autoregression (VAR) approach. Identification of the tax shock follows the narrative approach recently proposed by Romer and Romer (2010). Results indicate a moderate, but statistically...

This article considers the tax consequences of a booster's contribution to a college athletics program, using the case study of financier Robert Burton's multi-million dollar contribution to the University of Connecticut football program. This article discusses the income and gift tax issues...