The Kiddie Tax Needs a Better Fix Pt. 2

By Sam Brunson

As I explained in my previous post, the new kiddie tax is an absolute mess, with unintended and (I assume) unforeseen consequences that significantly harm, among others, poor college students and the children of service members killed in action. How is Congress going to fix this?

Poorly, I assume. And insufficiently.

I saw on Twitter yesterday that Rep. Cindy Axne is cosponsoring the Gold Star Family Tax Relief Act. Under the proposed legislation, the definition of “unearned income” will exclude survivor benefits received by the children of deceased service members. If this legislation were to pass, children of military members killed in action would no longer pay taxes at the top marginal rate on their survivor’s benefits. Continue reading “The Kiddie Tax Needs a Better Fix Pt. 2” →

The New Kiddie Tax Needs a Better Fix Pt. 1

By Sam Brunson

One of the first articles I published as an academic was on the kiddie tax. It was a sleepy corner of the tax world; most of the academic literature on the kiddie tax came from the 1980s.[fn1] And, for its first three decades, the kiddie tax stayed almost exactly the same.[fn2] Then, in a little-noticed provision of the TCJA, Congress fundamentally changed the kiddie tax. In response, I addressed the kiddie tax a second time in a piece for Tax Notes entitled Meet the New “Kiddie Tax”: Simpler and Less Effective. [Paywall] It turns out that I underestimated the ways in which is was not only less effective, but actually dangerously counterproductive.

But first, a quick primer into what the kiddie tax was and what it has become. In 1986, Congress had become worried that wealthy taxpayers were shifting income-producing assets to their children so that they could lower their tax bills. The tax game would go something like this: wealthy dentist father gives (or, I suppose, sells for a nominal amount) his x-ray machines to his 7-year-old daughter. He then leases back the x-ray machines for, let’s say, $10,000 a year. In 1985, the top marginal tax rate was 50%. Assuming our dentist was in that tax bracket, he could deduct the $10,000 he paid to lease the x-ray machines. Meanwhile, assuming that his 7-year-old daughter didn’t have any additional income, she would have been in the 16% tax bracket. According to Rev. Proc. 84-79 (and ignoring any exemptions or deductions she might have), the daughter would pay taxes of $1,054 on the $10,000 of income. Meanwhile, Dad’s $10,000 deduction saved him $5,000 in taxes. By shifting passive income to his daughter, then, Dad saved almost $4,000.[fn3] (Note that it didn’t have to be dental equipment: it could be any income-producing property). Continue reading “The New Kiddie Tax Needs a Better Fix Pt. 1” →

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

By: Leandra Lederman

IMG_4287a — 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”” →

Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: §§ 1221(a)(3)/1235 Disconnect

Deborah A. Geier
Professor of Law, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University

Does the sale of a patent by its creator create capital or ordinary gain? Prior to the legislation commonly referred to as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) enacted in late December, we had a clear answer: long-term capital gain (with some statutory limits). The TCJA has muddied the water significantly.

Prior to the TCJA, patents were not listed in § 1221(a)(3), which has long excepted self-created copyrights and self-created literary, musical, and artistic works from the definition of “capital asset” (with an elective “exception to the exception” for musical compositions in § 1221(b)(3), thanks to the Country Music Association). In addition, transferees of such assets also hold them as ordinary assets if their basis is determined by reference to the creator’s basis. The § 1221(a)(3) exception is premised on the analogy to labor income; although property is transferred, the property was created through the personal effort of the creator. While the same can be said of self-created patents, Congress provided them favorable treatment not only by failing to include them in the § 1221(a)(3) list but also by providing additional favorable rules in § 1235.

Section 1235 provides that the transfer of all substantial rights to a patent or an undivided interest in all substantial rights (other than by gift or bequest) to an unrelated party by certain “holders” generates long-term capital gain, even if the patent was held for less than one year and even if the consideration may look like (ordinary) royalty payments because contingent on (or measured by) use of the patent. The “holders” that can benefit from these favorable rules include patent creators (whether amateurs or professional inventors), as well as buyers of a patent from the inventor before the invention covered by the patent is reduced to practice, even if the buyer is in the business of buying and selling patents and even if he holds patents for sale to customers in the ordinary course of business, so long as the buyer is not the inventor’s employer. In Pickren v. U.S., 378 F.2d 595 (5^th Cir. 1967), the Fifth Circuit extended application of § 1235 to unpatented secret formulas and trade names, though the taxpayers failed to transfer all substantial rights to the property and thus were denied capital gains treatment under § 1235.

Section 3311 of the House version of the TCJA would have repealed the § 1221(b)(3) election to treat self-created musical compositions as capital assets and—more important to the current discussion—would have added the words “a patent, invention, model or design (whether or not patented), a secret formula or process” before “a copyright” in the § 1221(a)(3) exception to the definition of a capital asset. Thus, a patent held by its creator or by a taxpayer whose basis is determined by reference to the creator’s basis would be an ordinary asset. Consistent with this change, § 3312 of the House bill would have repealed § 1235.

The Senate version of the TCJA contained neither provision. Continue reading “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: §§ 1221(a)(3)/1235 Disconnect” →