University of Florida Health Science Center
University of Florida Levin College of LawNot a member yet
6463 research outputs found
Sort by
Reassessing Corporate Philanthrophy from a Tax Perspective
No full textU.S. corporations make and deduct charitable contributions in excess of $20 billion annually. This Article reassesses corporate philanthropy from a tax perspective, asking first whether the federal tax subsidy for corporate philanthropy is greater than the subsidy for the alternative stakeholder philanthropy, as some commentators have previously found. The answer: it depends. The relative degree of subsidy depends on corporate and individual tax rates, obviously, but also on the incidence of corporate philanthropy, i.e., who bears the cost, which is generally unclear, as well as other details, such as whether individual stakeholders itemize deductions. At current tax rates, however, any outsized subsidies for corporate philanthropy result to a large degree from the constriction in itemizing that followed from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act). And many would view the effective restoration of individual deductions for charitable contributions as a positive feature of corporate philanthropy rather than as a bug. Moreover, from a policy perspective, corporate philanthropy provides numerous advantages over individual philanthropy that have not been discussed or emphasized in the literature. Corporate philanthropy mitigates the inequitable “upside-down” effect of the individual deduction for philanthropy that disproportionately favors charities supported by high-income taxpayers and may mitigate the windfall arising from stakeholder contributions of appreciated securities. Corporate philanthropy also is highly responsive to tax incentives, often provides utility to multiple stakeholders, and even transfers a portion of the cost of U.S. philanthropy to non-U.S. stakeholders. There is, in short, much to like about corporate philanthropy from a tax (and non-tax) policy perspective
Keeping the Ball Rolling: Enhancing the LRW and Skills Curriculum by Incorporating NextGen Bar Foundational Skills and AI Innovations
No full textAs of fall 2025, Legal Research, Writing, and Skills Professors nationwide are at a pivotal moment: determining whether and how to update their course curriculum to incorporate the NextGen Uniform Bar\u27s (NextGen Bar) Foundational Skills and the latest advancements in AI. This article discusses how Legal Research, Writing, and Skills Professors might revise their curriculum to incorporate the NextGen Bar\u27s Foundational Skills and advancements in AI
Analysis of the Downstream-Collusive Effect in Vertical Mergers
Full text linkThe downstream-collusion effect is one of the possible impacts on competition after a vertical merger. However, little legal and economic literature has discussed this topic thoroughly. Therefore, this Article first delves into analyzing the harm of the downstream-collusive effect. By using game-theoretic models, we find that the scale of the saved unit cost or downstream cost and the level of heterogeneity between the downstream firms’ final goods could affect the incentives of downstream-collusive behavior. Next, we integrate the concepts derived from the models into the Vertical Merger Guidelines and the burdenshifting framework. This economic concept should aid antitrust agencies in assessing the viability of bringing vertical merger challenges with some proof of downstream-collusive behavior. Finally, we address our critiques of the AT&T–Time Warner merger case and take it as an example to demonstrate how to apply the updated burden-shifting framework to a real-world merger case. This should aid federal courts in understanding how to analyze the downstream-collusive effect in future vertical merger cases
A Statutory Comparison of Condominium Law Under the Legal Regimes in Florida and Japan
Full text linkThis Note examines the rights of condominium unit owners, the responsibilities of association managers, and the affects of association corporate structures on those stakeholders to provide a framework for academics, business people, and policymakers alike to understand the fundamental differences between the American and Japanese approaches to condominium law. It details the condominium management processes provided for in each country and draws conclusions regarding the relative strength of each party’s rights and responsibilities
Revisiting the Interaction of the Interest Expense Deduction and the Foreign Tax Credit
Full text linkThis Article demonstrates that the most appropriate proxy for allocating and apportioning U.S. interest expense is one that first identifies the incremental US. deduction benefit attributable to the inclusion of foreign income. Now that the positive section 163(j) limitation enhancement attributable to the inclusion of foreign income into the section 163(j) computation can be readily determined, the allocation and apportionment regime should allocate that amount of US. interest expense (and only that amount) because that methodology actually matches the amount of the allocation and apportionment of US. interest expense to the actual interest deduction benefit derived from the inclusion of foreign income. The Article sets forth the manner in which this reform proposal would harmonize the section 163(j) disallowance regime with the allocation and apportioinment regime of section 861 and also discusses the advantages that the Article\u27s reform proposal has over competing paradigms
The Executive Compensation Threat to Retirement
Full text linkIn recent years a new phenomenon has appeared on the retirement savings landscape: the expansion into middle management ranks of a traditional tool of executive compensation, the so-called “top hat” pension plan. Top hat plans are unfunded deferred compensation programs for a “select group of management or highly compensated employees.” Properly structured, top hat plans amass retirement resources that are taxed to employee-participants only when distributed. From the participant’s viewpoint, that delayed inclusion appears comparable to the tax deferral accorded qualified retirement plan savings, yet top hat plans are exempt from all of the Code’s qualification conditions. They are likewise excused from virtually all of ERISA’s pension plan participant protections, including vesting, funding and fiduciary responsibilities. This regulatory immunity licenses three interconnected pathologies that undermine core retirement policy objectives. The inapplicability of ERISA’s worker protections, combined with preemption of state law, relegates top hat plan participants to a uniquely precarious position: their retirement savings are more exposed to depredation and vulnerable to loss than if ERISA had never been enacted. The inapplicability of the Code’s qualified plan nondiscrimination requirements allows employers to offer additional retirement savings to highly-paid managerial, technical and professional employees without having to pay comparable benefits to rank-and-file workers. And the dramatic disparity, post-2017, between income tax rates applicable to corporations and high-income individuals incentivizes that favoritism with a substantial tax subsidy that is unmeasured and generally overlooked. This article explores the unresolved ambiguity that has enabled top hat plan metastasis into upper-middle compensation ranges. It documents the sources of the pathologies associated with the expansion of top hat pensions and traces their consequences. And it surveys the leading responses to these developments, some of which offer only partial solutions, while others could be accomplished only by legislation
Reimagining a U.S. Corporate Tax Increase as a Supplemental Subtraction Vat
Full text linkThe U.S. federal government raises tax revenue almost exclusively through income taxes, both corporate and individual, whereas its trading partners and competitors rely for their national revenue on both income taxes and “destination-based” value added taxes (VATs), which are not imposed on exports but are imposed on imports. As a result, U.S. corporations, which are subject to U.S. corporate income tax, may be at a serious trade disadvantage to competitor non-U.S. corporations with respect to both U.S. domestic sales and foreign sales, if the U.S. corporate income tax exceeds the foreign country’s income tax imposed on those competitors. The Biden administration has proposed raising the tax rate on U.S. corporate income from its current 21 percent to 25 percent and perhaps even more likely to 28 percent. The proposed rate increase faces substantial Republican opposition. The opposition to the proposed rate increase argues that such an increase will chase business offshore and put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage in attracting business and selling products both in the U.S. and abroad that compete with foreign products. The problem, simply put, is that foreign countries rely on VATs and can afford to maintain lower corporate income tax rates than otherwise, but the U.S. does not have a supplemental source of revenue like a VAT. The issue of a competitive U.S. corporate income tax is not simply a current Biden/Republican tax rate disagreement about raising the U.S. corporate income tax. Rather, it is an issue about U.S. corporations having to compete with foreign corporations from countries that impose a lower income tax (and no VAT on exports) on those corporations than the U.S. imposes on its domestic corporations, and, further, that the U.S. cannot reciprocate by charging a lower income tax on its exports than on its domestic sales because of international treaty constraints. Thus, the issue reaches well beyond a proposed Biden administration corporate income tax increase, but rather to the structure of the U.S. business tax system of not having a VAT in some form as an integral part. This Article considers revenue raising alternatives to supplement the current business income taxes and recommends that a subtraction VAT should be added to the corporate income tax as, at the very least, a step in keeping the corporate income tax competitive with the U.S.’s trading partner countries, perhaps as the long-term solution but perhaps as a first step to the adoption of a credit VAT to supplement the corporate income tax. In doing the foregoing, the Article compares the two types of business-level consumption taxes, the credit method VAT and the subtraction method VAT, relating them back to the most basic consumption tax, the retail sales tax. The Article argues that the subtraction method VAT, although not adopted by any other country, should be the choice because it can be added to the corporate income tax as a supplemental tax and can most easily coexist and be coordinated with that tax. It thereby allows for the easiest transition and is likely to be most acceptable to the public, which is well used to the corporate income tax and, as many observers believe, would be unwilling to adopt a credit method VAT, seeing it as a refined retail sales tax, which is a consumption tax imposed on individuals. The Article then describes the proposed “Supplemental Subtraction VAT” that would supplement the tax on a corporation’s income and how it can be engrafted onto the existing corporate income tax to minimize the disruption to the current corporate income tax collection system. It then argues that the new supplemental subtraction VAT imposed on corporations, which would be destination-based, should be accepted as a VAT by the WTO and the U.S.’s trading partners for international tax and trade treaty purposes
Safeguarding Taxpayer Data
Full text linkThe Internal Revenue Service (IRS) collects more information on more individuals than any other government agency. The information is not only financial but personal, potentially including information about health care needs and decisions; the caregivers, disabilities and foreign birth of children; the educational progress and felony convictions of students; and one’s religious and charitable associations. In acknowledging the vast quantity of information held by the IRS, and the necessity of taxpayers trusting tax administrators with their information, Congress provided greater protection for taxpayer information under the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) than it was provided under the Privacy Act. Congress obligated IRS employees to keep taxpayer information confidential, and authorized felony charges and damages suits, including punitive damages for inappropriate disclosures of taxpayer information. These special protections were enacted almost 50 years ago, long before the spread of the internet and emergence of cybercrime. This Article proposes updating the IRC’s special protections for taxpayer information to reflect the cybersecurity objectives of the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), and the frequent audits of the IRS by its Inspector General that show the IRS’s persistent failures to comply with FISMA guidance, such as failing to encrypt taxpayer data, secure mainframe platforms, regulate system access, remediate known vulnerabilities and assist victims of data breaches
Foreign Territorial Sea-zures: Article I Supports the Application of the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act to Drug Trafficking Within Foreign Territorial Seas
Full text linkMaritime drug trafficking poses a serious threat to the security and societal well-being of the United States. As one of the largest consumers of foreign-cultivated illicit drugs, the United States serves as a lucrative market for international drug trafficking organizations. Exploiting this insatiable demand, drug traffickers often use maritime routes in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico to convey bulk quantities of drugs ultimately bound for the United States. The United States Coast Guard, which is charged with stopping drug traffickers within this six million square mile maritime zone, faces a task akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. Seeking to enhance the Coast Guard’s ability to suppress drug trafficking efforts as close to their origins as possible, the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (MDLEA), which criminalizes extraterritorial maritime drug trafficking, includes a far-reaching provision providing for United States jurisdiction over drug trafficking vessels interdicted in the territorial seas of a foreign nation. While the MDLEA has generally withstood constitutional attack since the statute’s enactment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit struck major blows to the constitutionality of this critical provision of the MDLEA in United States v. Bellaizac-Hurtado and United States v. Davila-Mendoza. In each case, the Eleventh Circuit held that Congress exceeded its authority under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution in criminalizing the drug trafficking conduct of foreign persons aboard foreign vessels in foreign territorial seas. The Eleventh Circuit’s holdings seriously undermine the United States’ ability to suppress maritime drug trafficking, signaling to drug traffickers that they may remain beyond the reach of the United States simply by shifting their trafficking routes to remain entirely within the territorial seas of Caribbean, Central American, and South American nations, where there is a markedly limited law enforcement presence. Contrary to the Eleventh Circuit’s holdings, however, this Note argues that Congress does have the power to criminalize the drug trafficking conduct of foreign persons aboard foreign vessels in foreign territorial seas under the Define and Punish Clause, the Foreign Commerce Clause, and the Necessary and Proper Clause. The Eleventh Circuit stands alone in holding that the MDLEA is unconstitutional as applied to foreign persons aboard foreign vessels in foreign territorial seas. Other circuits should not follow the Eleventh Circuit’s lead but should instead find that Article I, Section 8 supports such an application of the MDLEA
Haute Mess: Murky Fashion Copyright Law and a New Period of Pro-Designer Jurisprudence
Full text linkFashion copyright jurisprudence has left unclear standards for the copyrightability of fashion designs. As fashion lies at the intersection of functionality and design, courts have struggled to set bright lines for determining the copyrightability of fashion articles. This ambiguity perpetuates the use of inconsistent standards among courts, leading to periods of leniency and stringency in design copyright standards. This Note outlines current U.S. design jurisprudence and the waxing and waning of courts’ willingness to recognize the copyrightability of fashion designs. This Note then compares U.S. copyright protections to those in France and other member nations of the European Union (E.U.), suggesting that the protection disparities between the regimes stem from cultural differences and anti-feminism. This Note then predicts that courts are entering another period of copyright leniency and an era of pro-designer jurisprudence following the Star Athletica, L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands, Inc. U.S. Supreme Court ruling