Advance Payments of the Child Tax Credit

By: Sam Brunson

Yesterday my neighbor texted me to mention that three pieces of my mail had been left in his mailbox; he dropped them off in front of my door. Two were just standard junk mail but one is potentially important: a letter from the Department of the Treasury.

Perhaps you also got this letter: it has some important information about the way the the child tax credit now works. In short, the American Rescue Plan, a law signed in March, makes a number of significant changes to the child tax credit.

Two of those changes are particularly notable. First, it increases the amount of the credit to $3,000 for most children and $3,600 for children five and younger.

Second, it makes allows the IRS to make advance payments of the child tax credit. Essentially, unless parents choose otherwise, starting in July the will receive monthly payments of $250 or $300 per child (depending on the child’s age).

Third, the credit is fully refundable. Even if a parent doesn’t have enough income to owe taxes, they will receive the full amount of the child tax credit.

Finally, the age limit for the child tax credit has been increased from 16 to 17. (Note that currently these changes are all temporary–they only apply to 2021, though the may be extended as some point.)

Continue reading →

IU Tax Policy Colloquium: Layser, “When, Where, And How To Design Community-Oriented Place-Based Tax Incentives”

By: Leandra Lederman IMG_0435 (002)c

On January 23, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law welcomed our first Tax Policy Colloquium guest of the year: Prof. Michelle Layser from the University of Illinois College of Law. She presented her draft paper on the design of place-based tax incentives, then called “When, Where, And How To Design Community-Oriented Place-Based Tax Incentives,” and since retitled “How Place-Based Tax Incentives Can Reduce Geographic Inequality.” An updated draft is available on SSRN.

Shelly explained that this draft is the second paper in a multi-part project she is conducting on place-based tax incentives. Last year, she published the first piece in the series, “A Typology of Place-Based Investment Tax Incentives,” 25 Wash. & Lee J. Civ. Rights & Soc. Just. 403 (2019). Place-based tax incentives are geography-based incentives that generally are intended to help low-income areas by fostering investment in those areas. The 2019 article distinguished among place-based tax incentives on two dimensions: direct and indirect tax subsidies and spatially-oriented versus community-oriented incentives. “Direct tax subsidies provide tax breaks directly to businesses that invest in low-income communities.” (p. 415) Indirect tax subsidies are instead provided to investors in such business (pp. 417-18). She cites as examples the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) of IRC § 45D and the Opportunity Zones (OZ) provisions in IRC § 1400Z-1 et seq. (The OZ provisions are the most oddly numbered Internal Revenue Code sections I’ve ever seen!). Spatially-oriented tax incentives focus on specific geographically-defined Continue reading “IU Tax Policy Colloquium: Layser, “When, Where, And How To Design Community-Oriented Place-Based Tax Incentives”” →

The IU Maurer Law School’s 2020 Tax Policy Colloquium

By Leandra Lederman CaptureTaxColloqFullPOsterJPG

Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s Tax Policy Colloquium will reconvene this Thursday, January 23, 2020. Michelle Layser from the University of Illinois College of Law will start us off, presenting her new paper titled “When, Where, and How to Design Community Oriented Place-Based Tax Incentives.” It’s a really interesting study of tax-expenditure design in the context of geography-based tax incentives. Prof. Layser’s paper includes original “heat maps” of Chicago showing areas with high poverty levels, areas with high numbers of low-wage jobs, areas that are eligible for the New Markets Tax Credit, and areas designated as Opportunity Zones. The talk promises to be really interesting!

The full schedule of talks is listed below, after the jump, and is also shown in the poster pictured above. Overall, this year’s line-up of speakers is more international than usual, following my wonderful Fulbright research stay at the University of Luxembourg in Spring 2019.

As I did the last time I ran the Colloquium, I’m planning to blog each workshop afterwards, with permission of the speakers. If you will be in Bloomington and are interested in attending one or more workshops, just let me know and I can add you to the email list or send you a particular paper once I receive it. (Most of the paper drafts will not be publicly available.) Continue reading “The IU Maurer Law School’s 2020 Tax Policy Colloquium” →

IU Tax Policy Colloquium: Williamson, Filer Voter: An Experiment Testing Voter Registration at Tax Time

Left to right: Pamela Foohey, Leandra Lederman, Vanessa Williamson, David Gamage, Tim Riffle

By: Leandra Lederman

On February 28, Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s Tax Policy Colloquium, hosted this year by my colleague David Gamage, welcomed Vanessa Williamson from the Brookings Institution. Vanessa presented a report that is due to be released at the end of March on a “Filer Voter” experiment she conducted at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites in Cleveland, Ohio and Dallas, Texas.

For those who may not be familiar with it, VITA is an IRS-run program that offers free tax return preparation (generally federal and state) for taxpayers who made $54,000 in income or less (for 2018) and meet certain other requirements. An IRS web page provides training materials and certification tests for volunteers. The IRS works with local groups in that it provides VITA grants to partner organizations. For example, in Bloomington, the VITA program is run by United Way of Monroe County.

Vanessa’s Filer Voter experiment involved offering some taxpayers who come to VITA sites for tax-return preparation the opportunity to register to vote. The experiment was structured as follows: Each VITA session was divided in half by time, and within each session, the first half or second half was randomly assigned the treatment of offering voter registration, and the other half of the session was the control. The study included collection of demographic information and consent forms from taxpayers in both the treatment and control groups. Continue reading “IU Tax Policy Colloquium: Williamson, Filer Voter: An Experiment Testing Voter Registration at Tax Time” →

Call for Papers: New Voices in Tax Policy and Public Finance (2019 AALS Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA)

The AALS Tax Section committee is pleased to announce the following Call for Papers:

CALL FOR PAPERS
AALS SECTION ON TAXATION WORKS-IN-PROGRESS SESSION
2019 ANNUAL MEETING, JANUARY 2-6, 2019, NEW ORLEANS, LA
NEW VOICES IN TAX POLICY AND PUBLIC FINANCE
(co-sponsored by the Section on Nonprofit and Philanthropy Law and Section on Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation)

The AALS Section on Taxation is pleased to announce the following Call for Papers. Selected papers will be presented at a works-in-progress session at the 2019 AALS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA from January 2-6, 2019. The works-in-progress session is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, January 5.

Eligibility: Scholars teaching at AALS member schools or non-member fee-paid schools with seven or fewer years of full-time teaching experience as of the submission deadline are eligible to submit papers. For co-authored papers, both authors must satisfy the eligibility criteria.

Due Date: 5 pm, Wednesday, August 8, 2018.

Form and Content of submission: We welcome drafts of academic articles in the areas of taxation, tax policy, public finance, and related fields. We will consider drafts that have not yet been submitted for publication consideration as well as drafts that have been submitted for publication consideration or that have secured publication offers. However, drafts may not have been published at the time of the 2019 AALS Annual Meeting (January 2019). We welcome legal scholarship across a wide variety of methodological approaches, including empirical, doctrinal, socio-legal, critical, comparative, economic, and other approaches.

Submission method: Papers should be submitted electronically as Microsoft Word documents to the following email address: tax.section.cfp@gmail.com by 5 pm on Wednesday, August 8, 2018. The subject line should read “AALS Tax Section CFP Submission.” By submitting a paper for consideration, you agree to attend the 2019 AALS Annual Meeting Works-in-Progress Session should your paper be selected for presentation.

Submission review: Papers will be selected after review by the AALS Tax Section Committee and representatives from co-sponsoring committees. Authors whose papers are selected for presentation will be notified by Thursday, September 28, 2018.

Additional information: Call-for-Papers presenters will be responsible for paying their own AALS registration fee, hotel, and travel expenses. Inquiries about the Call for Papers should be submitted to: AALS Tax Section Chair, Professor Shu-Yi Oei, Boston College Law School, oeis@bc.edu.

IU Tax Policy Colloquium: Burman, “The Rising Tide Wage Credit”

Colloquium pic) — Left to right: Len Burman, Tim Riffle, Leandra Lederman, Karen Ward, Frank DiPietro, Brad Heim

By: Leandra Lederman

On April 5, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s Tax Policy Colloquium welcomed Len Burman from Syracuse University and the Urban Institute/Tax Policy Center, who presented “The Rising Tide Wage Credit.” This intriguing new paper is not yet publicly available.

The paper proposes replacing the existing Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) with a new credit, the Rising Tide Wage Credit (RTWC), which, unlike the EITC, would be universal for workers, rather than phased out above low income levels. The RTWC also would differ from the EITC in that the amount of the RTWC would not depend on the number of children the taxpayer has. Instead, the RTWC would be a 100% credit in the amount of a worker’s wages, up to $10,000 of wages. The credit could be claimed on the taxpayer’s tax return, or subject to advance payment via the taxpayer’s employer. Thus, the maximum credit for an unmarried taxpayer would be $10,000, and for a married couple filing jointly would be $20,000. (The credit would not have a marriage penalty.) The credit would be indexed to increase with increases in GDP.

Because the proposed new credit would not vary with the number of children the taxpayer is supporting, the paper also proposes increasing the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,500, and proposes making the child tax credit fully refundable (rather than partly refundable, as it is under current law). The RTWC and the increase in the child tax credit would be funded by a value added tax (VAT). The paper estimates that the proposal could be fully funded with an 8% VAT, along with federal income tax on the RTWC. A VAT was chosen as the funding mechanism because it is closely correlated with GDP. The paper discusses 3 illustrative examples and includes a table that shows the overall progressivity of the proposal under certain assumptions. Continue reading “IU Tax Policy Colloquium: Burman, “The Rising Tide Wage Credit”” →

(Un)Happy New Year

Today is the first day of calendar/tax year 2018. Today is also the first day that taxpaying American families with children who do not have a Social Security number will no longer qualify for any amount of Child Tax Credit (CTC). IRC Section 24(h)(7). Certain members of Congress have for years been trying to target these working families and increase their already high effective income tax rate. Many of these families already pay federal income taxes at a higher effective tax rate than their U.S. citizen counterparts. I have blogged about this issue here and published scholarly articles about the oppressive “Illegal Tax” here, here, and here. Moreover many of them pay into Social Security and Medicare although they cannot qualify for any otherwise earned benefits. Fortunately, frontline advocates who support families, immigrants, and children have been successful pushing back against this oppressive goal until TODAY.

Continue reading “(Un)Happy New Year” →

A Mother’s Holiday Letter to Uncle Sam

Dear Mr. Tax Man, Uncle Sam, Sir:

I am writing this letter in December on my ten-minute break at work. I apologize for my rushed handwriting and the tardiness of this letter. I don’t have access to a computer, except for short periods (only 15 minutes per session) at the library. And the lines have gotten too long for me to wait while my three wiggly kids struggle to sit still (only to be hushed by the library staff and patrons every few minutes). I have been really busy balancing my new jobs with the kids’ schedules, especially with the holidays and all the stress and craziness that they add. Continue reading “A Mother’s Holiday Letter to Uncle Sam” →

Crip the Code*

By Francine J. Lipman

*Attribution, respect and applause to #CriptheVote Disability Visibility Project community organizers and activists.

“[W]ork is a valued activity, both for individuals and society; and fulfills the need of an individual to be productive, promotes independence, enhances self-esteem, and allows for participation in the mainstream of life in America.” Rehabilitation Act of 1973
Continue reading “Crip the Code*” →

Repeal of Child Tax Credit For Taxpayers Without a Voice, Is A Great Way to Defund the Success of America’s Kids

By: Francine J. Lipman

Senate & House dueling Tax Bills are now (more or less) out. Experts have determined the regressive nature of both tax bills, that is, overall tax increases on middle, low, lower, and the lowest income working families as compared to generous tax cuts for high, higher, and the highest income taxpayers. (Pet peeve here, please media et al. stop using “middle class” in lieu of “middle income” because if there is one lesson from 2017 that is that income level and class are not correlated).

Below is one of many compelling graphs from the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities evidencing that every group with income levels below $75,000 suffers a tax increase as compared to their higher income counterparts tax decrease in 2027. Many of these lower income taxpayers, including those with incomes below $30,000, suffer tax increases much earlier and most lower and middle income groups suffer tax increases by 2025, when the individual tax cuts phase out. Continue reading “Repeal of Child Tax Credit For Taxpayers Without a Voice, Is A Great Way to Defund the Success of America’s Kids” →

What Happened to Family Values?

By: Francine J. Lipman

The House GOP Bill is out and tax professionals across the globe are reading and re-reading the 429 pages of details. A few of the many things that jump off of the pages for me are that it doesn’t seem to support working families with kids (it REPEALS the up to $5,000 exclusion from gross income for dependent care assistance that many working parents use to subsidize the skyrocketing costs of child care while they work) or even those who (like my fantastic law students at UNLV) are pursuing and paying for higher education.

Continue reading “What Happened to Family Values?” →

The Surly Subgroup Turns One!

Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess. Today is the one-year blogiversary of the Surly Subgroup. What started off as a group-blogging experiment hatched at last year’s Critical Tax Conference at Tulane Law School has provided quite a bit of entertainment for Surly bloggers and our guest bloggers, and hopefully for our readers as well.

It’s obviously been a big year on tax and other fronts. Since our inception, we’ve published 206 blog posts on a variety of topics. And we’ve drawn readers from 140 different countries.

Surly regulars and guest bloggers have covered various tax-related issues surrounding politics and the 2016 election—including disclosure of presidential tax returns, the Emoluments Clause, the Trump Foundation, and the Clinton Foundation. We’ve written about churches, 501(c)(3)s and the IRS treatment of non-profits. We’ve discussed the tax reform proposals of the 2016 presidential candidates and the #DBCFT. We’ve written several administrative law posts about Treasury Regulations and rulemaking.

Politics aside we’ve also covered other important issues in tax policy—including taxation and poverty, healthcare, tax policy and disabilities, tax compliance, and tax aspects of the Puerto Rico fiscal crisis. We’ve discussed several issues in international and cross-border taxes, touching on the EU state aid debate, the CCCTB, taxation and migration, the Panama Papers, tax leaks more generally, and tax evasion in China.

We hosted our first ever online Mini-Symposium on Tax Enforcement and Administration, which featured posts by ten different authors on a variety of tax administration topics. The Mini-Symposium was spearheaded by Leandra Lederman. Leandra had organized and moderated a discussion group on “The Future of Tax Administration and Enforcement” at the 2017 AALS Annual Meeting, and many of the discussion group participants contributed to the online symposium. We hope to organize future online symposia on other topics.

We’ve blogged about various conferences, workshops, and papers, both tax related and not-so-much tax related. We’ve also had lots of fun writing about taxes in popular culture – Surly bloggers and guest bloggers have written about the tax aspects of Pokémon Go, tax fiction, music-related tax issues (Jazz Fest! Prince! “Taxman”!), soccer players, dogs, Harry Potter fan fiction, Star Trek, and John Oliver. Surly bloggers even recorded a few tax podcasts!

In short, it’s been a busy year, and we’ve had a lot of fun with the Surly platform. We hope you have as well. Going forward, we’re going to keep the blog posts coming. We also hope to draw more regular and guest bloggers and to organize other online symposia.

Thanks for reading!

TaxSlayer: Technically Acceptable for VITA Returns?

Adam C. Mansfield
Staff Attorney, Legal Services for Students, University of Kansas

The first time I logged into the TaxSlayer training lab I knew that this tax season was going to be a problem. It became obvious when I typed “1040NR” into the form lookup box in the upper left corner of the TaxSlayer screen and the search came up empty. Next I tried “1042-S” and “8843.” Same result. Now I’m not some old fuddy-duddy that doesn’t like change. I love working with new gadgets, software, or operating systems—as long as it does what it is supposed to do.

I work for Legal Services for Students at the University of Kansas. The main target population for our Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) grant is nonresident alien (NRA) students and scholars. Every tax year we help hundreds of international students and researchers determine their residency status, calculate any applicable tax treaty benefits, and prepare their federal and state returns. In the past, TaxWise has worked just fine for this purpose. I had no problem preparing a return for the student from Bangladesh who had income in both Kansas and Missouri or the Chinese student who has multiple 1042-S forms for scholarships and awards but still needs to apply treaty benefits to his or her wages. This year, TaxSlayer is just not up to the task.

I feel bad for Whitley, a member of TaxSlayer’s customer support squad, who is left with the task of informing me that they are aware of the “issue” that prevents their software from properly applying and reporting a tax treaty benefit on a nonresident alien return. She proceeded to tell me that they could only handle “simple” state returns in conjunction with an NRA return. This means that I can’t make any adjustments to the state return in order to properly apportion income. They are “working diligently to iron out the wrinkles.” Not being able to prepare a pretty basic nonresident alien return is a little more than just a wrinkle. Continue reading “TaxSlayer: Technically Acceptable for VITA Returns?” →

ClassCrits IX: The New Corporatocracy and Election 2016

Surly bloggers Sam Brunson, David Herzig and I (and Leslie Book over at Procedurally Taxing) are attending the ClassCrits IX conference hosted by Loyola University Chicago School of Law today and tomorrow. From the call for papers back in March:

As the U.S. presidential election approaches, our 2016 conference will explore the role of corporate power in a political and economic system challenged by inequality and distrust as well as by new energy for transformative reform.

There are some notable tax-related panels happening at the conference, along with other interesting panels relating to corporations and democracy:

Taxation, Social Justice and Development (Friday 10/21/16)

Doron Narotzki, University of Akron Business Administration
Corporate Social Responsibility and Taxation: The Next Step of the Evolution

Rohan Grey, Binzagr Institute for Sustainable Prosperity & Nathan Tankus, Modern Money Network
Corporate Taxation in a Modern Monetary Economy: Legal History, Theory, Prospects

Karl Botchway, CUNY Technology & Jamee Moudud, Sarah Lawrence Economics
Capacity Building, Taxation and Corporate power in Africa

Martha T. McCluskey, SUNY Buffalo Law, Corporatocracy and Class in State and Local “Job-Creation” Subsidies

Distributing Wealth, Law and Power (Friday 10/21/16)

Goldburn P. Maynard, Jr., University of Louisville Law
A Plea for Courts to Abolish the Judicially Created Right of the Wealthy to Avoid Estate Taxes

Victoria J. Haneman, Concordia University Law
The Collision of Holographic Wills and the 120-Hour Rule

Doron Narotzki, University of Akron Business Administration
Dark Pools, High-Frequency Trading and the Financial Transaction Tax: A Solution or Complication?

Robert Ashford, Syracuse University Law
Why Working But Poor?

Critical Perspectives on Tax Law (Saturday 10/22/16)

Shu-Yi Oei, Tulane University Law
The Troubling Case of Offshore Tax Enforcement

Les Book, Villanova University Law
Bureaucratic Oppression and the Tax System

Samuel Brunson, Loyola University Chicago Law
Avoiding Progressivity: RICs, Pease, and the AMT

David Herzig, Valparaiso University Law
Let Prophets Be (Non) Profits

Pro Bono Week Free ABA Tax Justice CLE

By: Francine J. Lipman

There are many wonderful reasons to be a member of the ABA – Section of Taxation, including the Tax Section’s commitment to pro bono and outreach especially its education efforts with its people and its purse to work on the front lines with less fortunate and vulnerable neighbors across America. I can say without hesitation the ABA not only talks the talk, but it walks the walk. Indeed we are partnering with the ABA Civil Rights and Social Justice Section to present a free webinar on October 24 during pro bono week 2016. Tax justice at its best. I am a proud ABA tax justice passion warrior, join us in our efforts to help others as it is the gift that keeps on giving … We can, do, and will make a difference in the lives of countless American families.

Continue reading “Pro Bono Week Free ABA Tax Justice CLE” →