International Taxation Policy: Issues and Considerations
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 [...]
Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors: 2010
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 [...]
The Never-Ending Battle
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 [...]
The one-stop-shop in VAT and RST: common approaches to EU-US consumption tax problems
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 [...]
Tax Opinions in TIC Offerings and Reverse TIC Exchanges
Co-author: Todd D. Keator[*] TABLE OF CONTENTS I.INTRODUCTION II.DEVIATIONS FROM THE REVENUE PROCEDURE A.Common Deviations 1.Deemed Consent 3.Investor Loans 4.Sponsor Guarantees 5.Sponsor Bridge Loans B.Significant Deviations 1.Multiple Properties 2.Non-Pro Rata Debt 3.Construction Activities 4.Sponsor-Retained Interests III.REVERSE EXCHANGES INVOLVING TIC INTERESTs A.Securities Issues B.Contractual Issues C.Lender Approval IV.CONCLUSION I.INTRODUCTION Tenancy-in-common (“TIC”) investments offer investors the ability to [...]
Omnibus Capitalization Proposals
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 [...]
Common Trust Funds: The Living Fossil of Passthroughs
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 [...]
Tax Return Preparer Fraud and the Assessment Limitation Period
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. [...]
Taxing the Publicly Traded Stock In a Corporate Acquisition
Under current law, if a corporate acquisition qualifies as a reorganization, the target shareholders do not recognize built-in gain on the stock they surrender when they receive publicly traded stock. The proposal would treat sale stock would be taxed as if the stock had no sale restrictions. Restrictions on votes or the absence of votes [...]
Experimental Evidence of Tax Framing – Effects on the Work/Leisure Decision
David Gamage Andrew Hayashi (Correspondence Author) Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP Brent K. Nakamura, University of California, Berkeley, Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program Keywords: Experiment, Framing, Labor Supply, Taxation Abstract The choice between a set of alternatives often depends on how those alternatives are described, as well as their actual economic costs and benefits. We report [...]
Key practical issues to eliminate double taxation of business income
Fernando Daniel de Moura FonsecaPost-graduate degree in Tax Law from Fundação Getúlio Vargas. Accountant. Lawyer. Updated version of the Brazilian national report presented to the 65th Congress of the International Fiscal Association (Paris, 2011). 1. INTRODUCTION The issues related to international double taxation and to the methods of preventing it necessarily relate to the intensification [...]
Free competition: how tax evasion and tax competition distort markets – the Brazilian perspective
ABSTRACT The article discusses how tax evasion and tax competition jeopardise free competition between companies. Focusing on the Brazilian experience, it shows that the country is not a major player in international tax competition, but that there is a ferocious tax war between Brazilian States and Municipalities. The article describes the two main examples of [...]
