Month: February 2018

Undue Burdens and the Retroactivity Issue in Wayfair

By Adam Thimmesch

The major question presented in South Dakota v. Wayfair is whether the Supreme Court should overturn its long-standing physical presence limitation on state taxing power. (I believe that it should, as do most people who have studied the issue.) One of the secondary issues presented in Wayfair is whether the Court could apply such a repeal on a prospective basis only or whether a repeal would have to apply retroactively. Daniel Hemel had a great post introducing this issue last month, but I think that it is worth adding another dimension to the analysis.

The retroactivity issue presents itself as obvious in some respects—why couldn’t the Court issue a prospective only decision? And yet, this issue has troubled the Court, and it appeared as a consideration in Quill itself. The retroactivity issue is also being addressed in the briefs in the case (South Dakota’s merits brief was filed on Monday), and the Court is sure to bring up the issue in oral arguments in April. It seems possible that the Court would have enough votes to overturn Quill on its merits, but that no clear majority would appear regarding the retroactivity of its holding. Worst case, disagreement about that issue could cause some Justices to get cold feet on the primary issue. For these reasons, it is worth exploring retroactivity from a couple of different angles.

Continue reading “Undue Burdens and the Retroactivity Issue in Wayfair” →

PyeongChang 2018!

I love the Olympics. Like, a lot. I mean, I realize that hosting the Olympics is basically a gigantic financial sinkhole. And I understand that the Olympics aren’t part of a massive geopolitical power struggle anymore. But the athleticism! the competition! the near-perfect score on a third run, after you lost a ski on your first two! I love it.

And, of course, I love the tax aspect to the Olympics, a tax aspect that has changed significantly for the last two. See, medalists don’t just get a valuable medal and an adorable stuffed tiger: the U.S. Olympic Committee pays Olympians $37,500 for a gold, $22,500 for a silver, and $15,000 for a bronze.

And, since the Rio Olympics in 2016, (most) medalists don’t have to pay taxes on that prize money. Continue reading “PyeongChang 2018!” →

IU Tax Policy Colloquium: Glogower, “Taxing Inequality”

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Left to right: Damage Gamage, Ari Glogower, Leandra Lederman, Tim Riffle

By: Leandra Lederman

On February 15, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law welcomed Prof. Ari Glogower from Ohio State University Moritz College of Law as the third speaker of the year in our Tax Policy Colloquium. Ari presented his paper titled “Taxing Inequality,” which argues in favor of a federal wealth tax and proposes a mechanism for integrating the base of such a tax with the base of the federal income tax. Ari’s paper sparked a really interesting discussion both in and outside the workshop on a wide range of issues, from distributive justice to the mechanics and likely impacts of his proposal.

The paper focused first on why we should have a federal tax on wealth. The draft points to rising economic inequality, and it grounds the need for a wealth tax in the theory of “relative economic power.” That theory, borrowed from political science, focuses on spending power—as opposed to actual spending—as a source of economic power. The basic idea is that the mere ownership pf wealth creates economic power without spending it. Moreover, “excessively unequal distributions of economic resources and market power can result in unequal divisions of political and social power as well.” (p.19) One of Ari’s paper’s contributions is to apply this economic-power theory as a justification for a progressive tax system.

The draft then describes the problem that tax-system designers have in imposing both a wealth tax and an income tax. Because the two types of taxes are imposed on different bases, if the taxes are not coordinated, taxpayers with very different abilities to pay based on their income or wealth may be taxed identically. The paper includes some nice examples of taxpayers with the same income but vastly different stocks of wealth and vice versa. It shows, for example, that a taxpayer with $200,000 of current income and no wealth (or negative wealth in the form of student-loan debt) has lower ability to pay than a taxpayer with $200,000 of current income and $35 million in wealth. (Ari’s talk included a great slide featuring an image of Scrooge McDuck swimming in money as the wealthy taxpayer, but for whatever reason, he resisted our suggestion to rename the paper “Taxing Scrooge McDuck”!) Continue reading “IU Tax Policy Colloquium: Glogower, “Taxing Inequality”” →

Taxing R2-D2? ABA Tax Section Panel on Automation and AI

Kerry Ryan
Associate Professor
St. Louis University School of Law

I had the pleasure of attending the midyear meeting of the ABA Tax Section this past weekend in San Diego. The Tax Policy & Simplification committee organized an interesting panel entitled: “Taxing R2-D2: How Should We Think About the Taxation of Robots and AI.” The panel was organized and moderated by Surly’s own Leandra Lederman, and panelists included Shu-Yi Oei (Boston College), Roberta Mann (Oregon Law), and Robert Kovacev (Steptoe & Johnson LLP).

For those of you who read Shu-Yi’s post, you know that she is “deeply skeptical” of the “robot tax” frame. At best, it is misleading—no one is attempting to impose a tax on a “robot” (whatever that is?) per se. As Robert Kovacev succinctly put it: “robots don’t pay taxes, people pay taxes.” The key question is which people: owners, workers, and/or consumers? Roberta linked this question to the long-standing debate about who ultimately bears the burden of the corporate income tax.

At worst, the “robot tax” terminology captures (and perhaps amplifies) the fear (“the robots are coming!”) and angst driving much of this discussion. The underlying concern relates to the potential negative impact on labor of increased utilization of technology/artificial intelligence (AI)/automation in the production process. Experts disagree about whether, over the longer term, automation will reduce the number, or merely the type, of human workers. The unanswered question is whether this is just the next in a long line of technological shifts in the economy dating as far back as the Industrial Revolution, or whether AI/machine learning truly represents a technological tipping point.

What is clear is that the transition to this new automated workplace may lead to worker displacement (particularly for those in manual/routine jobs). Mass unemployment could negatively impact the tax base—fewer workers mean fewer taxpayers. Notice that any revenue loss would hit at the same time as funding demands increased for re-training and/or social protection programs (existing and/or proposed universal basic income) for displaced workers.

Assuming you believe there is a problem(s), what is the policy prescription? While most of the panelists agreed that tax has a role to play here, they disagreed as to the contours of that role. Should we plug the hole in the income tax base by shifting more of the tax burden onto capital, as opposed to labor? Do we attempt to tax work completed by robots in the same manner as comparable work by employees (see Bill Gates proposal)? Should we raise the overall level of taxation (under existing or new tax structures)? Do we view automation as imposing negative externalities on the labor market and impose some type of Pigouvian tax? Should we attempt to slow the pace of technological development, rather than workplace implementation, by reducing either direct funding or tax incentives for R&D and innovation (see South Korea)?

Many interesting questions with no easy answers. At the very least, we must resist allowing zeitgeist to drive the policy response, while at the same time affirming the legitimacy of the underlying concerns and working to minimize their negative consequences on workers and their families.

ABA TaxSection Midyear Meeting Panel: Evolving Constraints on Tax Administration

tax-consultant-3094808_1920With a major new tax act to implement, it would be nice if the IRS had a positive image, a steadily increasing budget, and clarity on how to best promulgate guidance. Sadly none of that is true. The IRS public image after the Tea Party crisis in 2013 is poor; its budget has lagged behind its needs over the past 5 years; and, the legal landscape in which it enacts guidance has begun to seriously shift particularly over the past 10 years with cases like Mayo, Altera and Chamber of Commerce making it difficult to know the best strategy for publishing useful guidance on the new 2017 Tax Act.

The Teaching Taxation committee, held a panel this past Friday at the ABA Tax Section’s Midyear Meeting called Evolving Constraints on Tax Administration to consider this landscape the IRS finds itself in at the start of 2018. Our panel included Caroline Ciraolo, a partner at Kostelanetz & Fink, LLP and former Acting Assistant Attorney General in the DOJ Tax Division, James R. Gadwood, Counsel, Miller & Chevalier,  Kristin E. Hickman,  law professor at Minnesota Law School, and fellow Surly blogger Leandra Lederman, professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Continue reading “ABA TaxSection Midyear Meeting Panel: Evolving Constraints on Tax Administration” →

#TaxValentines

Heart1By: Leandra Lederman

It’s the time of year when tax experts are Twitterpated! Yes, on tax Twitter, it’s not Singles Awareness Day, but rather time for #TaxValentines! Twitter member Jeremy Cape reportedly started them a few years ago. Many of the valentines take the traditional format of the classic love poem, such as this never-before-tweeted basic tax valentine:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

I adore taxes

And I also love you

 

I like to play with the second line, such as in this one that I tweeted last year:

 

This next one plays with “rose” and is also a public service announcement:

 

Some of the tax valentines include plays on words, political commentary, and/or comments on recent tax developments. Here’s an example, with my follow-up, too:

Continue reading “#TaxValentines” →

The Future of Nexus

By Adam Thimmesch

As I’ve previously blogged, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in South Dakota v. Wayfair last month. The question presented in the cert petition was whether the Court should overrule the physical-presence rule of Quill. For most folks, the resolution of the case will be felt most directly in whether their favorite online stores start to collect use tax on their purchases. (If your favorite vendor is Amazon, fear not, you’re already paying…at least on some of your purchases.) For states, it could mean an infusion of tax revenue at a time when many are struggling with budget issues…or maybe they will use the funds to pay for President Trump’s infrastructure plan.

The primary issue in Wayfair is whether the Court should abandon its long-standing physical-presence rule. That rule dates back to the Court’s early regulation of states and how they taxed the itinerant drummers and mail-order companies of the 1800s and early 1900s. The Court originally imposed that jurisdictional limitation under both the Due Process and dormant Commerce Clauses, but it abandoned the former with its 1967 decision in National Bellas Hess v. Illinois. (Lawyers reading this post should remember something about personal jurisdiction and the Court’s move away from a physical-presences test for purposes of that concept during this same time frame.)

Continue reading “The Future of Nexus” →

IU Tax Policy Colloquium: Brooks, “The Case for Incrementalism in Tax Reform”

By: Leandra Lederman

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Left to right: Jake Brooks, Leandra Lederman, Bill Popkin, David Gamage, Tim Riffle

On February 1, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law welcomed Prof. Jake Brooks from Georgetown Law School as the second speaker of the year in our Tax Policy Colloquium. Jake presented an early draft of a paper titled “The Case for Incrementalism in Tax Reform,” which led to a lively and interesting discussion about what incrementalism is, what constitutes fundamental reform, how politics may affect the making of tax policy, and whether and how tax law differs from other fields of law.

The paper, which is not yet publicly available, argues that “fundamental tax reform,” while sometimes necessary, should not generally be the goal of tax policy, and that instead, policymakers should take an incremental approach to changing tax laws. “Incrementalism” has a long history in political science, and was first described by Charles Lindblom in an influential 1959 article, “The Science of Muddling Through.” In general, Lindblom’s approach in that article was to reject the urge to use a formal method that involves clarifying the principal goals up front, identifying the means to achieve them, and then analyzing every relevant factor in the decision. Lindblom instead advocated the use of a more casual method that he termed “successive limited comparisons,” which ignored important possible outcomes or alternatives and did not involve distinguishing means and ends. (Page 81 of Lindblom.) Lindblom argued that this “muddling through” approach was not only what was actually practiced by administrators, but also a method for which they need not apologize because administrators are less likely to make serious and lasting mistakes if they proceed through small, incremental changes (pp.86-87). As Jake acknowledges, Lindblom wrote at a time with much more limited ability to model and process large quantities of empirical data. He notes that incrementalism has continued to be an important theory in the literature. Despite technological advances, we cannot see the future, and there remain limits to what empirical data can help us predict.

Jake’s argument is driven in part by arguments in favor of tearing the Internal Revenue Code out by its roots and starting over. I agree with Jake that such an approach seems extremely risky. Policy driven by rhetoric and “horror stories” risks being ill-conceived, hasty, driven by political rent-seeking, and even destructive, as I have written about in the context of IRS reform. But does that necessarily mean that legislative tax changes should take a Lindblom-style incremental approach? Continue reading “IU Tax Policy Colloquium: Brooks, “The Case for Incrementalism in Tax Reform”” →