New WP alert! 💰💰
“Money Moves: Taxing the Wealthy at the State Level”
(forthcoming @CalifLRev)


This is of course joint work with @dgamage and Darien Shanske.

A thread. 1/14 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…




David, Darien, & I have been helping states draft new taxes on their richest residents. For example, we helped Vermont develop a bill to mark-to-market (or tax annually) gains on unsold wealth.

2/14nytimes.com/2024/01/23/us/…

I'm quoted here calling Harlan Crow's scheme to deduct his yacht expense "absurd." (I also called it a "tower of bullshit: it's one bullshit argument piled on top of another," but guess the editors didn't want to run that one). Here's how the scheme works. 1/

https://twitter.com/eisingerj/status/1680894599877865474

First, remember that you only can claim tax deductions for business costs, not personal expenditures. As ProPublica reported, Crow claimed that he was engaging in yacht rental for profit, even though, as best they can tell, no one but Crows and friends ever sailed. 2/

What happens when millions of people get pandemic unemployment benefits, and no one is sure whether they should be taxable? As @ENPancotti & I detail here, the answer is "a big mess that hard-hit workers can't clean up themselves." We sketch the stakes & possible fixes. /1

https://twitter.com/TCFdotorg/status/1358827180596240384

We point out that current law (law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26…) probably already makes many benefits tax-exempt, contrary to earlier guidance from the Mnuchin Treasury. The new administration should recognize that they will likely lose in court, and change position now. /2

Some thoughts on whether we can see any evidence of tax evasion -- a felony -- in @nytimes description of the #TrumpTaxReturns. In general, it is hard to spot evasion from just a return, and often difficult even if you can also see the "work papers," or supporting documents. /1 But there are red flags one looks for, and you can see some of them in the president's taxes. I prosecuted at least 2 cases, one of them that went to the Supreme Court, where a small-business owner used his family business as a checking account. /2

Wow. I'm reading the complaint... Link here: ag.ny.gov/sites/default/…

Looking forward to reading bad nonprofit law takes for the rest of the week.

Some brief thoughts on the Florida poll tax case (i.e., Florida's efforts to block ex-felons from registering b/c they haven't paid all their court costs, fees, etc.). I'll argue there is an historical reason to treat these fees as "taxes" under the 24th Amendment. /1 Recall that the 24th Am. prohibits any state from barring voting for failure to pay "any poll tax or other tax." law.cornell.edu/constitution/a… /2

A 501(c)(4) is at the core of the Ohio bribery story. And...under the new IRS rules for (not) disclosing c(4) donors, no one would have known. Good thing we have some old tax returns from this org, eh?
npr.org/2020/07/21/893… Loving the ways that the conspirators describe c(4) cash. "Monopoly money" is probably the best. This is literally what critics of c(4) political activity have been saying.

Folks, we're back with some new (to you) work on nonprofits. Finance types have long argued mandated disclosures don't matter b/c failure to disclose voluntarily sends adverse signals to supporters. Does this separating equilibrium also emerge for nonprofit donors? /1 In joint work w/ Put Barber (U. Washington) and Megan Farwell (U. Penn.), I look at 2 large-scale natural experiments on nonprofit disclosures of fundraising ratios. What do donors assume if an organization doesn't disclose its fundraising ratio when it makes a donation ask? /2

New work alert!: The Quick (Spending) & the Dead. This is an essay written for non-economists introducing some new evidence that donors can't effectively control their private foundation after death. Link here, some graphs to follow. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… The basic idea is to look at what happens at foundations just after their last living donor passes. Since that timing is fairly random, there's a pretty good inference that changes around this time are causal, not coincidental. /2

New work from me: "The Economic Case for Rewards Over Imprisonment" papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Abstract snippets below; summary follows. The standard economic theory of regulation recommends punishment or "sticks" over rewards or "carrots." scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1852/

This recommendation was seemingly confirmed by absence of evidence in the 1970's and 80's that rehabilitative programs & prevention efforts worked. /2

Now available for your reading pleasure, my online symposium essay for @UChiLRev , "Paying With Lumps." Gov'ts can pay for things w/ regulatory mandates instead of taxes. When does that imply about regulatory design? /1 When mandate-pay is good, we might regulate to protect bundles or "lumps" of products from regulatory arbitrage (say, prohibiting income-share agreements from undercutting gov't-subsidized student loan pools). /2

As Congress debates stimulus options, states have a big role, too. Just maintaining level spending would be a big step, given likely budget crash. But they should also pull out their credit cards. For example, there's a big cheap borrowing opportunity in unemployment ins. /1 States spend UI benefits out of a "Trust Fund" account. When this runs empty, they can get (temporarily) interest-free loans from the U.S. Many states today have fund balances far too low even to cover a modest recession. But that's kind of good news! /2

My take on corporate bail-outs in any stimulus package is that it is the mirror-image of the health care debate. Just as with individuals, it is optimal for government to socialize risk (and still privatize profit) IF there are risks for which gov't is least-cost risk-bearer. /1 That is, if we think private firms can't efficiently obtain insurance against risk of economic disaster, we should provide it to them, albeit with the usual underwriting efforts & w/ cost-sharing to mitigate moral hazard. /2

Because we failed to learn the lessons of the last recession, the unemployment ins system will be in its own crisis soon. Thread. As states run out of reserves, they will trigger automatic tax increases. Since the UI tax is imposed per worker, this means a tax on jobs. /1

https://twitter.com/byHeatherLong/status/1240615785095192577

Because we "experience rate," tax rates will also spiral up for employers as their workers claim benefits. This means some employers will be fighting tooth & nail to prevent their workers from successfully claiming. Many will hire lawyers & consulting firms to do this. /2

I guess the good news is IRS dropped these *before* I taught business expense deductions. federalregister.gov/documents/2020…

Haven't read yet, but readers will recall that I was pretty convinced the IRS had been drinking when they put out the first draft of these. medium.com/whatever-sourc… Not a promising sign that they've stopped drinking: on page 1 of the NPRM, they say that outlines of topics to discuss at the April 7 public hearing must be submitted by ... April 13.

Legal academic friends, kindly help the @TheAALS Section on Scholarship promote this discussion draft proposal for law review submissions reform. I've put a copy up as a blog post, and folks can also dm/email for a pdf. medium.com/@BDGesq/a-prop… . Here are some highlights. @TheAALS

w/ ht to @RichardRubinDC , herein my take on why a wealth tax might be second-best efficient, despite (because of!) its effects on the timing of consumption. 1/ @RichardRubinDC So, taxes on capital distort the timing of when we spend. With a wealth tax, of course, the incentive is to "consume" assets sooner, so that they are removed from the future wealth tax base. This is said to be bad b/c it discourages savings & investment. 2/

For, ah, no particular reason, found myself today reading @GeorgetownLaw Fall visitor @joshchafetz 's article on congressional efforts to hold executive officials in contempt, chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclrev/vol76/i…

I have thoughts. Josh's central normative argument is Part V of the paper. He does what I would call the full Tushnet (no, not that @rtushnet ): Courts shouldn't enforce congressional subpoenas b/c that would send a message undermining belief in congress' own authority to do for itself. ...

Ugh. Farewell, state taxes on capital?

https://twitter.com/tax/status/1142075566826360832

But, the moderate positive note: "In limiting our holding to the specific
facts presented, we do not imply approval or disapproval
of trust taxes that are premised on the residence of beneficiaries whose relationship to trust assets differs from that of the beneficiaries here."

A solid overview of the facts. Let me offer just a bit more detail on how it usually goes down in tax prosecutions where there's a corporate bookkeeper.
justsecurity.org/61831/trump-or… via @just_security The bookkeeper is in a vise. If he knows that the transactions he's entered are false, he's going to the slammer, and he's never working again in his chosen profession when he gets out. Typically, then, he is quite eager to explain that his boss lied to him about those costs. /2

Read this. Then, to the list of other problems with existing empirical studies of whether states capture the value of the SALT deduction, add the fact that no one has looked at off-budget responses. /1

https://twitter.com/DanielJHemel/status/959473432319680513

That is, suppose that state budgets are level before and after SALT reforms. Did SALT have no impact? We can't know unless we also look at off-budget programs, such as pensions, UI reserves, and cross-subsidies. If these are perceived by state as more costly... /2