Did Taxes Bring Us Ghostbusters?

By Sam Brunson

Sadly, no. But it helped bring several B horror movies that I’ve never seen (and you probably haven’t, either).

Back in the 1970s, film tax shelters were big enough that the Ways and Means Committee got a report on the subject.[fn1]

But the US wasn’t the only market that allowed for film tax shelters. In 1974, Canada raised its Capital Cost Allowance from 60% to 100%. Investors could deduct 100% of the money they put into Canadian-produced movies. How important was this increased deduction limitation? In 1974, only three movies were produced in Canada. In 1979, the number had increased to 77. Continue reading “Did Taxes Bring Us Ghostbusters?” →

The Manafort Indictment

By Sam Brunson

After a late night watching baseball, I woke up this morning to news of Paul Manafort’s indictment.[fn1] And the 31-page indictment is filled with tax evasion. But, after laying out the fact of and ways in which Manafort evaded taxes, none of the counts seem to charge him with tax evasion. (I find that puzzling, though I’ve never been a litigator, much less involved in criminal tax cases, so I don’t really have any experience with which to judge the strangeness or not of not charging him with tax evasion.)

Even without charges, though, there’s a fascinating romp through tax haven-aided tax evasion here. Continue reading “The Manafort Indictment” →

ABA Tax Section 5th Annual International Tax Enforcement and Controversy Conference (Washington, DC, Oct. 27, 2017)

By: Diane Ring

Yesterday my frequent co-author, Shu-Yi Oei, and I attended the ABA’s conference on “International Tax Enforcement and Controversy” in DC. The panels and discussion covered a range of interesting intersecting issues. These included: (1) the relationship among international organizations and bodies (such as the OECD, UN, World Bank, IMF and G20) in directing the shape of international tax law content and enforcement; (2) the place of developing countries in the evolving international tax system; (3) competing goals of finance ministers and tax ministers in various countries and the impact of that conflict on taxpayers; (4) the consequences of and responses to limited IRS resources; and (5) continuing benefits to enforcement from the Swiss Bank Program.

But probably the most significant theme that ran through the day’s discussion was the role of data, especially “big data”. . . .

Continue reading “ABA Tax Section 5th Annual International Tax Enforcement and Controversy Conference (Washington, DC, Oct. 27, 2017)” →

Tax Surveillance and Tax Design

By Adam Thimmesch

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Late last week, I ran across an article from the UK (thanks tax Twitter!) regarding a significant uptick in the number of vehicles being “clamped” or impounded in the UK due to a failure of their owners to pay a required road tax. The story wouldn’t have really captured my attention, but for its inclusion of a quote from the Driver and Vehicle License Agency’s National Wheelclamping Manager. In response to the release of information about increased noncompliance with the tax, the DVLA posted a warning on its website: “Our enforcement teams are out and about on the roads around the UK all year. Their vans are equipped with number plate recognition cameras so any vehicle that isn’t taxed is at risk of being clamped or impounded.” As someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about tax privacy lately, this was intriguing, so I did some digging.

Continue reading “Tax Surveillance and Tax Design” →

International Sharing Economy Conference: Day 2 Takeaways

By: Diane Ring

Yesterday I blogged about Day 1 of the international sharing economy conference, titled “Reshaping: Work in the Platform Economy.” Today the Conference resumed in Amsterdam and included a fascinating roundtable with representatives from some of the platform firms alongside some sharing economy workers. Each offered their experience/perspective on the sector, posed questions to each other, and took questions from the audience.

Not surprisingly, just as there are a range of business models and niches in the sector, there are also a variety of reasons why workers participate in and do platform work. What workers seek from the platforms (beyond good pay) may differ from worker to worker. For example, a sharing economy worker may desire contact with other workers, a sense of community, predictability, or worker dignity. Building on the Day 1 discussions, several themes emerged by the close of the Conference:

Continue reading “International Sharing Economy Conference: Day 2 Takeaways” →

International Sharing Economy Conference: Day 1 Takeaways

By: Diane Ring

Today the “Reshaping: Work in the Platform Economy” Conference got underway in Amsterdam. In contrast to many academic conferences, the explicit goal here is to bring together a truly wide array of actors in the sharing economy (policy makers, academics, actual gig workers, platform businesses, research institutes, and media) in a mixed format setting that includes academic presentations, panel presentations by gig workers, small group active round tables, and research-poster sessions. The international dimension, with participants and presenters from a variety of jurisdictions, contributes to the breadth of discussion.

I thought I would offer a few of my takeaways from day one: Continue reading “International Sharing Economy Conference: Day 1 Takeaways” →

Chris Long, Philanthropist

On NPR this morning, I heard that Chris Long, a defensive end for the Philadelphia Eagles, is donating his entire year’s salary to various charitable organizations that provide scholarships and support to underserved youth. (He already donated his salary from the first six games of the season to fund two seven-year scholarships at his alma mater in Charlottesville.)

That is unequivocally a good thing, and a generous thing. But it’s not without tax consequences.

When I think about charitable gifts, the first thing that comes to mind is their deductibility. But it turns out that the deduction for charitable contributions comes with a couple limitations. First, of course, is that only taxpayers who itemize get to deduct charitable contributions. Of course, given that this is a $1 million plus (more on that in a minute) donation, Long will definitely itemize. Continue reading “Chris Long, Philanthropist” →

Remedies and the Parsonage Allowance

By Sam Brunson

On Friday, the Western District of Wisconsin ruled (again) on the constitutionality of the section 107(2) rental allowance for “ministers of the gospel.”[fn1] The litigation between the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the IRS has been going on for a long time—I first blogged about it in 2013—so I’m not going to spend a lot of space here discussing the specifics of the case. If you want to look at what’s been going on, you can check out this post and the posts I’ve linked to in it.[fn2] Long story short, this is the second time the court has ruled the rental allowance is unconstitutional. The first time, the Seventh Circuit reversed on the grounds that the plaintiffs had never tried to claim a tax-free rental allowance, so they had no standing. This time, they did claim a refund, which the IRS refused, the court found standing, and, in a well-written and extremely persuasive opinion, it again found section 107(2) unconstitutional.

Although the court declared that section 107(2) violated the Establishment Clause, it didn’t order a remedy. The opinion explains that in the first round, all of the parties assumed that the only relief available was to declare the provision unconstitutional and enjoin its enforcement. This time, though, the Freedom From Religion Foundation suggests that there may be two other remedies available. The first is to refund a portion of plaintiffs’ taxes and order the IRS to “extend benefits under the statute to those excluded.” The second is to declare section 107(1) (that is, the in-kind provision of tax-free housing to “ministers of the gospel”) also unconstitutional. Continue reading “Remedies and the Parsonage Allowance” →

Tomorrow’s Ninth Circuit Oral Argument in Altera

By: Leandra Lederman

Susan Morse and Stephen Shay have blogged today on Procedurally Taxing about the Ninth’s Circuit oral argument tomorrow in Altera Corp. v. Commissioner, as has Dan Shaviro on his blog, Start Making Sense. Altera is the transfer pricing and administrative law case involving the Treasury’s cost-sharing agreement regulation. The Tax Court invalidated the regulation under the Administrative Procedure Act, as arbitrary and capricious. That is because the Tax Court accepted the taxpayer’s argument that it need not share stock-based compensation costs under a qualified cost-sharing agreement because arm’s length parties would not do so. The Tax Court found that Treasury had inadequately addressed evidence in the notice-and-comment process that parties not under common control did not share stock-based compensation costs, although Treasury explained in the Preamble to the regulation that cost-sharing agreements between uncontrolled parties are not sufficiently comparable to those in controlled-party transactions.

Altera raises an important administrative law question about what is required of Treasury for its regulations to be valid. Susie and Steve spearheaded an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit in favor of the Commissioner, in which I joined, along with Dick Harvey, Ruth Mason, and Bret Wells. An amicus brief prepared by another group of professors also supports the Commissioner. There are also amicus briefs by business groups on the other side. See Susie and Steve’s blog post for more detail. And for prior coverage on the Surly Subgroup, see this post on our amicus brief, explaining why the Ninth Circuit should reverse the Tax Court’s decision invalidating the regulation.

IRS ‘Targeted’ Liberal Organizations and After All These Years TIGTA is Still Wrong

By: Philip Hackney

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) just issued a new report four years and five months after rebuking the IRS for using “inappropriate” criteria to select applications for tax exempt status for scrutiny. In the first report, TIGTA rebuked the IRS for pulling the applications of conservative leaning organizations for greater scrutiny.

This time it considers the fact that the IRS over a period of 10 years used liberal leaning names such as ACORN, Emerge, and Progressive as criteria for pulling applications for greater scrutiny. This resulted in the IRS applying greater scrutiny to these organizations. Some might say the IRS targeted these organizations. Those organizations appear to have faced long wait times as well, and sometimes some questions of limited merit.

I write this piece to make two points: (1) had this information been in the initial report, I don’t think we would have had the “scandal” that shook the IRS and the political world of the time; and (2) the TIGTA report built its primary claim on a garbled faux legal postulate. The original report did terrible damage to the IRS and individuals by failing on both of these fronts. Continue reading “IRS ‘Targeted’ Liberal Organizations and After All These Years TIGTA is Still Wrong” →

The Real IRS Scandal

By: Leandra Lederman

It is well known that the IRS was accused in 2013 of targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups for delays in their 501(c)(4) applications for tax-exempt status. TIGTA’s May 2013 report (and Lois Lerner’s statements at an ABA Tax Section meeting a few days earlier) launched the controversy, which harmed the IRS and a number of its employees. (Cf. my earlier Surly post, “Don’t Impeach IRS Commissioner Koskinen.”)

In 2016, I published an article, “IRS Reform: Politics As Usual?,” analyzing the facts underlying these accusations and the law applicable to the IRS’s determination of tax-exempt status. I argued that the facts showed that the IRS was not motivated by partisan politics. Rather, what happened was that IRS employees included a keyword approach in its efforts to triage the large volume of applications for tax-exempt status it was receiving. Its “Be On the Lookout” (BOLO) list of words was designed to help it identify for further scrutiny those organizations that were engaged in more political activity than was permitted under section 501(c)(4), which, generally speaking gants exempt status to organizations “for the promotion of social welfare.” As I describe in that article, the IRS tried but failed to get ahead of a brewing political controversy on this. There was evidence even in the 2010 IRS PowerPoint highlighting types of groups applying for a determination of exempt status under 501(c)(4) that the IRS had both Tea Party and progressive political organizations on its radar. But the news was full of stories of the IRS supposedly targeting conservative tax-exempt organizations.

The Washington Post has reported in an article titled Liberal groups got IRS scrutiny, too, inspector general suggests, that TIGTA will be issuing a new report finding that the IRS also used keywords to try to identify progressive groups engaging in too much political activity to qualify for the tax exemption under 501(c)(4) they were applying Continue reading “The Real IRS Scandal” →

Appealing Chamber of Commerce v. IRS?

By Sam Brunson

Last Friday the District Court for the Western District of Texas issued a decision in Chamber of Commerce v. IRS. In its decision, the court held that the IRS violated the Administrative Procedure Act in issuing Treas. Reg. § 1.7874-8T. The most interesting part of the case was that the Chamber got past the standing and Anti-Injunction Act hurdles; the substantive decision was that Congress didn’t eliminate the notice-and-comment requirement by expressly permitting time-limited temporary regulations. For a great substantive discussion of the case, take a look at Andy Grewal’s post on Notice & Comment.

The question on everybody’s mind now is, will the government appeal? On the one hand, as Andy explains, the court’s opinion is fairly summary; it may be right that the Anti-Injunction Act doesn’t bar the suit here, but it hasn’t done the work to make the holding bullet-proof.

On the other hand, the IRS takes a risk appealing to the Fifth Circuit. I’m not a close court-watcher, but I’ve heard talk that the Fifth Circuit is less than totally favorable to the IRS. Continue reading “Appealing Chamber of Commerce v. IRS?” →