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TaxProf Blog

Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law

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  • Paul Caron

    ACTEC Sponsors 2007 Student Writing Competition

    Actec_2The Legal Education Committee of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC) is sponsoring the 2007 Law Student Writing Competition:

    Purpose:  This competition was created by ACTEC’s Legal Education Committee, which consists of law school professors who teach in the area of trusts and estates and practitioners who teach as adjuncts in the trusts and estates field. The competition honors the late Mary Moers Wenig, a member of ACTEC’s Legal Education Committee, who was a law school professor for over 30 years.

    Consistent with ACTEC’s purposes, the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel Mary Moers Wenig Student Writing Competition was created to encourage and reward scholarly works in the area of trusts and estates. ACTEC’s purposes are to maintain an association of lawyers, international in scope, skilled and experienced in the preparation of wills and trusts; estate planning; probate procedure and administration of trusts and estates of decedents, minors and incompetents; to improve and reform probate, trust and tax laws, procedures, and professional responsibility, to bring together qualified lawyers whose character and ability will contribute to the achievement of the purposes of the College; and to cooperate with bar associations and other organizations with similar purposes.

    Subjects: The paper must relate to the area of trusts and estates, broadly defined to include:

    • Business Planning
    • Charitable Planning
    • Elder Law
    • Employee Benefits
    • Fiduciary Administration
    • Fiduciary Income Taxation
    • Fiduciary Litigation
    • Estate Planning and Drafting
    • Professional Responsibility
    • Substantive Laws for the Gratuitous Transmission of Property
    • Wealth Transfer Taxation (Estate, Gift and GST Tax)

    Prizes:

    • 1st Prize: $5,000 and publication in the ACTEC Journal.
    • 2d Prize:  $3,000, online publication on ACTEC’s website, and possible publication in the ACTEC Journal
    • 3d Prize:  $1,000, online publication on ACTEC’s website, and possible publication in the ACTEC Journal

    Deadline:  May 1, 2007.

    For more information:

  • Paul Caron

    Repetti Critiques International Aspects of President’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform Report

    Repetti_2 Ssrn_210James R. Repetti (Boston College) has posted Will U.S. Investment Go Abroad in a Territorial Tax: A Critique of the President’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform, 8 Fla. Tax Rev. ___ (2006), on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

    This article critiques the Report of the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform (the “Report”). The Report recommends the U.S. adopt a territorial tax system that would exclude income earned by U.S. taxpayers actively conducting foreign businesses. The Report anticipates that its proposal might generate concern about whether a territorial system would cause U.S. businesses to allocate more jobs and assets overseas to low-tax countries. Referring to an article by Altshuler and Grubert, the Report says:

    (more…)

  • Paul Caron

    New Issue of Basic Income Studies

    Bepress_15 The Berkeley Electronic Press has published Vol. 1, Issue 2, of Basic Income Studies, an international journal of basic income research:

    Basic Income Studies (BIS) is the first academic journal to focus specifically on basic income and cognate policies. BIS provides a forum for the discussion of theoretical issues and empirical research on the design and implementation of basic income schemes, and also aims to address broader questions regarding the future direction of universal welfare policy.

    Vol. 1, Issue 2, guest-edited by Loek Groot (Utrecht University), features a debate on the merits and disadvantage of using an experimental approach in basic income research.

    For the full table of contents, with links to the 15 articles in the current issue, see here.

  • Paul Caron

    Tax Tidbits

    Jim Maule (Villanova) has a cornucopia of interesting tax items on his blog this morning, including:

    • The tax consequences to a pregnant Chicago woman offering to sell advertising space on her belly in exchange for Super Bowl tickets (story and vido here).
    • Arizona’s decision to increase cigarette taxes 80 cents pursuant to language in a ballot initiative petition, even though the actual ballot language approved by the voters said .80 cents (details here).
    • The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue’s announcement that it has mailed one million Forms 1099 reporting erroneous state income tax refunds and interest payments (they mistakenly used 2005 figures rather than 2006 figures).
    • A new tax website with a variety of useful tools:  IRS Forum:  The Taxpayers Form.
  • Paul Caron

    IRS Checking Inflated Telephone Excise Tax Refunds

    Irs_7The IRS announced yesterday (IR-2007) Some Telephone Tax Refund Requests May Be Too High; IRS Will Deny Improper Requests:

    The IRS said today that early filings show some individual taxpayers have requested large and apparently improper amounts for the special telephone tax refund. The IRS is investigating potential abuses in this area and will take prompt action against taxpayers who claim improper refund amounts and the return preparers who help them.

    See Associated Press coverage.

  • Paul Caron

    Marriage Tax in Bulgaria

    Interesting article in The Standard Daily:  Marriage Tax to be Introduced in Bulgaria:

    The Kyustendil municipality has prepared a bitter wedding "present" for the newly-married couples – they will pay VAT on their wedding ceremonies which will cost by 20% more than it was the case by now. The price of the ceremony which includes a speech delivered by an authorized person and a choir performance – has been increased from 78,9 levs to 95 levs (1euro=1.95 levs). If the newly married couple does not insist on such a ritual the price is only 16 levs for putting down the signatures.

    (Hat Tip:  Richard Ainsworth.)

  • Paul Caron

    Margalioth Presents The Case for Accelerated Depreciation at UCLA

    Ucla_4Margalioth_1Yoram Margalioth (Tel Aviv University Law School) presented Not a Panacea for Economic Growth: The Case for Accelerated Depreciation at UCLA yesterday as part of its Tax Policy and Public Finance Workshop Series, Here is part of the Introduction:

    Accelerated depreciation deductions have been a tenet of US tax policy for the past 50 years. They are widely believed to promote economic growth.1 In this paper, I argue that accelerated depreciation is based on a questionable economic growth theory and suggest switching to a depreciation method that is closer to economic depreciation. This may allow lowering tax rates or increasing tax incentives to research and development — the real engine of economic growth.

  • Paul Caron

    Kane on Ownership Neutrality, Ownership Distortions, and International Tax Welfare Benchmarks

    Kane_3Mitchell Kane (Virginia) has published Ownership Neutrality, Ownership Distortions, and International Tax Welfare Benchmarks, 26 Va. Tax Rev. 53 (2006). Here is the abstract:

    The literature analyzing the efficiency consequences of international tax policy has for many years emphasized the impact of a nation’s tax laws on the location of capital (either in saving or in investment). By contrast, Mihir Desai and James Hines have recently suggested that policy analysis should take greater account of the efficiency consequences of ownership. Desai and Hines have put forward capital ownership neutrality (CON), as a benchmark that promotes global efficiency (from an ownership perspective), and national ownership neutrality (NON), as a benchmark that promotes national welfare (from an ownership perspective). This paper analyzes the empirical and theoretical arguments for adopting international tax welfare benchmarks that are keyed to ownership distortions. It concludes that existing empirical evidence does not provide a good indication of the magnitude of ownership distortions, as compared to locational distortions. The paper’s chief theoretical contribution is to describe the many tax and non-tax features of the global economy that can lead to ownership distortions. Because distortions arise in many ways that have nothing to do with the manner of double tax relief, it is not possible to make theoretical efficiency claims (at either the global or national level) based merely on modification to methods of double tax relief. Thus CON and NON do not necessarily promote global and national welfare (from an ownership perspective). Ownership distortions should play an important role in the setting of international tax policy. Determining actual policy prescriptions, however, requires further theoretical and empirical investigation of the complicated interaction of locational and ownership distortions.

  • Paul Caron

    Dean Presents Philosopher Kings and International Tax Today at NYU

    Dean_4 Nyu_15Steven Dean (Brooklyn) presents Philosopher Kings and International Tax, 58 Hastings L.J. ___ (2007), at NYU today as part of its Colloquium on Tax Policy and Public Finance series.  Here is the abstract:

    Tax flight treaties could help to solve the $50 billion-a-year problem that tax flight (the evasion of income taxes through the use of offshore tax havens) poses for the United States. Tax flight treaties would offer tax havens a substantial portion of the increased tax revenues that they could generate by providing the United States with the enforcement assistance it needs. Those payments, potentially representing as much as half of the added tax revenue produced by tax flight treaties (and in all probability an amount that is greater than any GDP gains attributable to eliminating waste and other economic distortions related to tax flight), would give tax havens both the resources and the incentive they need to develop the administrative capacity necessary to supply the United States with income tax information. It is likely that those treaties would reduce the United States’ collective well-being (particularly if measured in simple GDP terms) by transferring wealth from U.S. tax cheats to the governments of tax havens. A simplistic “philosopher king” model of international tax law, the strong form of which assumes that governments engage in cross-border tax cooperation to boost their respective GDPs, would suggest that tax flight treaties could never be effective. However, the more sophisticated model of inter-governmental behavior developed by the international law scholar Oona Hathaway, her “integrated theory,” supports a more optimistic conclusion regarding the potential of tax flight treaties.

  • Paul Caron

    Slemrod Presents The Economics of Tax Remittance Today at Penn

    Penn_1Slemrod_2Joel Slemrod (Ross School of Business, University of Michigan) presents Show Me the Money: The Economics of Tax Remittance at Penn today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series.  Here is the beginning of the Introduction:

    Nearly all of the modern economic theory of taxation is concerned with what actions or states of affairs trigger tax liability, and virtually none is concerned with who or what entity remits funds to the government to cover that liability. Indeed, both elementary public finance textbooks and advanced surveys suggest that the remittance responsibility—such as whether the buyer or seller of a commodity must remit any sales tax triggered by the sale—is irrelevant to the consequences of a tax.

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