Since 2008, the world has been submerged in a severe and complex systemic crisis that has been affecting innumerable countries and challenging governments and economists from all over the planet to find solutions to deal with its devastating effects on the global economy. Reactions to the crisis range from trends pushed by multilateral organizations, such [...]
Executive Summary State governments have had to make tough budget choices in recent years. Tax revenues have stagnated as a result of the poor economy, and that has prompted governors to take a variety of fiscal actions to close large budget gaps. Some governors have cut spending to balance their budgets, while others have pursued [...]
In every era and area of law you find a never-ending battle between two groups of legal thinkers: formalists and functionalists. Each is connected to long-standing and honorable traditions in Anglo-American jurisprudence. The formalists tend toward the law side of those traditions the search for order and certainty and the functionalists tend toward the equity [...]
In March 2004 the European Commission solicited comments on a proposal to simplify value added tax (VAT) obligations through a one-stop scheme.[1] The proposal was modest in scope. It was designed to build upon the success of a similar scheme[2] that dealt with non-EU established persons supplying digital products to non-taxable EU persons.[3] That scheme [...]
This shelf project proposal covers several expenditures that are allowed as expenses as soon as they are incurred under current law but should be treated as capital expenditures. Given the treatment of debt financing, capitalization is needed to prevent negative tax or subsidy for investments, many with dubious merit. The expensing subsidy allows projects to [...]
A common trust fund (CTF) is a fund maintained by a bank exclusively for the collective investment of the funds of trust clients. Under section 584 of the code, a CTF pays no tax, but each participant must include its proportionate share of income and losses computed at the CTF level, even if the common [...]
I have a confession: I can’t spell. Not that you can tell from my columns, where I successfully hide behind the spell-check function and the good efforts of Tax Analysts’ editors. How bad am I? Well, in sixth grade I won the English prize, but instead of the usual plaque, they gave me a dictionary. [...]
