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Reforming Business Taxation by Introducing a Resident Owner-Based Business Income Tax (ROBIT)
No full textFighting corporate tax avoidance is not a suitable method to save the integrity of the corporate tax. Rather, more fundamental reform is needed focusing on taxing the individual shareholders at residence. For this purpose, this Article proposes a resident owner-based business income tax (ROBIT).
The ROBIT retains taxation at the entity level but provides for reduced flat tax rates for all business enterprises, taxation only of the rent by introducing an ACE regime, and exemption of inter-company dividends. At the level of the individual shareholder, dividends and capital gains are taxed as ordinary income. Integration takes place via an imputation system for domestic taxes and (short of reciprocity) deduction of foreign taxes or alternatively through a withholding tax on dividends and capital gains. To curtail deferral, capital gains are taxed by charging interest for the holding period until realization for nontraded assets and for traded assets by taxing them on a mark-to-market basis. Some additional measures are also proposed especially referring to the residence taxation of individuals. By earmarking the revenue from the enactment of the ROBIT to redistributive purposes, reform can happen and will be sustainable. Support can also come from corporate managers if windfalls for existing shareholders are avoided through phased-in reform.
The ROBIT will attract and boost investment and all the positive externalities that it brings. Some emigration of individuals as a reaction is possible, but it can be addressed by regional cooperation which is easier as regards individual taxation. Finally, the ROBIT issuperior compared to other proposals for corporate tax reform, especially destination-based corporate tax proposals
Do Tax Judges Favor the Tax Authority?
No full textJudges and judicial systems have become more specialized in response to increasing legal complexity. While the theoretical literature has discussed judicial specialization extensively, deliberating its pros and cons and its implications—arguably an appealing background for empirical investigation—few empirical studies have attempted to quantify the relationship between judicial specialization and case outcomes. This Article fills that lacuna. It analyzes a hand-coded dataset of tax cases in which rulings were made by both specialized tax judges and generalist judges in Israeli District Courts. Its main finding is that specialized tax judges are more inclined than generalist judges toward the Tax Authority. It also finds that women judges and judges who worked in the private sector before their nomination are more inclined toward the Tax Authority than men judges and judges who were part of the public sector before taking the bench
Gaming the Endowment Tax
No full textThe 2017 law known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) enacted a tax on private, non-profit college and university endowments for the first time. Institutions with at least 500 tuition-paying students and endowments of $500,000 or greater per student now have to pay a 1.4% tax on their endowments. But like all taxpayers, colleges and universities may be tax averse or seek reductions in their tax burdens. That is, colleges and universities may try to avoid the tax through taking action to ensure they do not meet the threshold. Such actions include increasing the size of their student bodies, increasing student aid to ensure a small number of tuition-paying students, and spending down their endowments. Colleges may also attempt to offset taxed revenue by increasing other revenue streams. Examples of such behavior include increasing revenue from auxiliary services, admitting more “ full-pay” students who do not need financial aid, reducing financial aid for tuition-paying students (perhaps even while increasing the number of students who receive enough aid to become non-tuition paying), and admitting fewer low-income students. All of this would be economically rational behavior, but it could produce negative effects for higher-education stakeholder groups, such as students and their families.
In this Article, we assess the ramifications of the TCJA’s endowment tax for college and university revenue-seeking behavior. We use a national-level dataset and a quasi-experimental statistical model known as the “Synthetic Control Method,” which is underutilized in legal research, to examine institutional behaviors in the wake of the TCJA’s passage. We find that individual institutions—such as Northwestern University, Duke University and Vassar College, among others—may have changed their admissions, enrollment and revenue-generating behaviors to reduce their overall tax burden, offset losses in revenue or avoid the tax. We suspect that this is evidence of firm behavior to game the endowment tax imposed by the TCJA
Tax Regulations in a Loper Bright Light
No full textThe Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises. v. Raimondo overturned Chevron deference. In doing so, Loper Bright loosed chaos into many areas of administrative law, including tax. Indeed, the majority opinion in Loper Bright undid Chevron but left open the question of what the actual standard of review is, namely, whether it is de novo or Skidmore applies.
Tax too will suffer some of the chaos, especially as courts work out the matters. But both the positive citation in the opinion of Skidmore along with some of the language supporting long-standing regulations that are contemporaneously promulgated with the statute’s enactment will help, intimating a slight revival of the old National Muffler test. Additionally, some of the discussions on giving agencies more leeway on delegated matters should also help in the tax area. Furthermore, given the messy and technical nature of tax law, many judges may be willing to allow the IRS’s and Treasury’s interpretations to stay in place unless a hot-button political matter is involved.
But expect there to be major fights. One area where we could see some of these matters play out is in transfer pricing, which is a huge and complicated regulatory area. Treasury’s moves toward things like formulary appointment and away from the arm’s-length standard will likely get struck down as ultra vires. In the end, while Loper Bright creates significant chaos now, some of it will eventually wane. And in the end while there will be some stability restored and generally a decent range given to the agencies, expect some bumpiness in the coming years
“Uma Simples Flor nos Teus Cabelos Claros”: “Just a Flower in Your Long, Blonde Hair”
No full textEnglish translation of 'Uma simples flor nos teus cabelos claros' by José Cardoso Pires
Contributors
No full textNotes on contributors to volume 51, number `2 of the Journal of Political & Military Sociology. 
Literature and the Advancement of Cultural and Intellectual Modernity in Africa and the United States: Daniel Simon in Conversation with Chibueze Darlington Anuonye
No full textIn this conversation, Daniel Simon and Chibueze Darlington Anuonye discuss the role literature plays in the advancement of the intellectual and cultural modernity of Africa and the United States
Violence, Grief, and Ghosts: Examining Satire in Mohammed Hanif’s Red Birds
No full textSatire has been used widely to ridicule and criticize agents of oppression using literary tools like parody, irony, and exaggeration. In the wake of 9/11 2001, American neo-imperialist and global capitalist policies, effected through war, destabilized and destroyed many parts of the Middle East. However, this particular war also fused acts of violence with benevolence and aid. Pakistani Anglophone writer Mohammed Hanif’s novel Red Birds (2018), set in a refugee camp, uses multiple first-person narrators—representative of opposing sides—counter-realism, and multidirectional and referential satire to portray the war and its lingering aftereffects—emotional and physical—on all the actors involved. The novel satirizes the logic of war, intertwined violence and aid, and the intellectualization of destruction and grief. Importantly, while criticizing the US’s primary role in the war, the novel simultaneously also turns the gaze inwards, ultimately presenting a complex picture of varying degrees of resistance and compliance
Byomkesh Bakshi’s Calcutta: Crime and Detection in Saradindu Bandyopadhyay's The Menagerie (1954)
No full textLike the social novel in Bengal, Detective literature, a popular branch of fiction amongst the burgeoning middle classes, originated with the colonial encounter, paralleling the growth of a reading public that were buttressed by the ubiquitous presence of schools and colleges imparting an English education. Genealogies are always messy but if we look at the origins of this branch of popular literature then it is inevitable that we must link it to the growth of Calcutta as an imperial city, especially where goods, capital and labour flowed in and out with regularity. The vast hinterlands attracted a steady stream of the working poor to its portals just as it was a playing ground of the mighty. Detective literature in Bangla has been shaped with the vagaries of city life, its anonymity and its expanding population that made crime easy. This essay will explore the genre’s relationship with the postcolonial city with a discussion of the works by Saradindu Bandyopadhyay and his detective Byomkesh Bakshi. In particular it will look at a short novel The Menagerie (1954) that establishes the role the city played in how murders ‘had become the quiet game of the well-behaved.’ The text looks at what Foucault suggests is the embourgeoisement of crime, a peculiar feature of a post-war Calcutta as the setting of criminal activities embodying the rapid dereliction and movements of a migrant population. Set in a pastoral farmhouse, the classic detective story elements of a closed bunch of suspects and methods of ratiocination are used by Bandyopadhyay to turn an interrogative eye to contemporary Bengali society and the constant reversals of notions of law and order where the figure of the detective performs a crucial role as the provider of justice
An African Filmmaker's Journey Through Race, Art, and the Divide Between Two Continents
No full textThis essay chronicles the personal and professional journey of an African filmmaker navigating the intersections of race, identity, and artistic expression in his move from Europe to the US, confronted with different understandings of Blackness and racial difference. The essay reflects on how cultural dislocation, systemic bias, political commitments, and differing aesthetic values shape the filmmaker’s vision and voice. It also gestures toward possibilities for building a more unified Black Arts scene in the United States, transcending established divisions between African-American and African communities.