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1156 results in Taxation Law

Page 27 of 58

Double Taxation and the League of Nations
  • Sunita Jogarajan
  • Published online:
    28 April 2018
    Print publication:
    10 May 2018
  • Modern-day tax treaties have their foundations in one of the three Model Tax Treaties developed by the League of Nations in 1928. Using previously unexplored archival material, Sunita Jogarajan provides the first in-depth examination of the development of the League's Models. This new research provides insights into questions such as the importance of double taxation versus tax evasion; the preference for source-taxation versus residence-taxation; the influence of theory and practice on the League's work; the development of bilateral rather than multilateral treaties; the influence of developing countries on the League's work; the role of Commentary in interpreting model tax treaties; and the influential factors and key individuals involved. A better understanding of the development of the original models will inform and help guide interpretation and reform of modern-day tax treaties. Additionally, this book will be of interest to scholars of international relations and the development of law at international organisations.

  • 2 - On Making the Tax Law

  • Samuel D. Brunson
  • Book:
    God and the IRS
    Published online:
    12 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018, pp 23-33

  • Summary

    While the United States made a couple stabs at enacting a federal income tax in the nineteenth century, the modern income tax was enacted in 1913, just after the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified. Like any other federal law, the income tax is formally enacted by Congress and signed by the President. In practice, though, the creation of tax law belongs to all three branches of government. While Congress enacts the law, the Treasury department and the IRS produce more and less authoritative regulations and rules for interpreting and applying it. Even the courts have produced a handful of extra-statutory tax law rules. This lawmaking intersection between all three branches both complicates the narrative of how tax law is made and means that religious accommodations within the tax law can come from any of the three branches of government.

  • 7 - Deductible Contribution or Purchase of Religious Benefit?

  • Samuel D. Brunson
  • Book:
    God and the IRS
    Published online:
    12 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018, pp 117-132

  • Summary

    Many religious individuals make contributions to their religions. And in many cases, they can deduct those contributions. Contributions cease to be deductible, though, to the extent the donor gets something of value in exchange. And what counts as value? While that is easy to answer for the most part, on the religious margins, it is a difficult question. The Supreme Court, for example, held that Scientologists’ auditing (a religious activity that helps them achieve their spiritual goals) was value, and, as a result, held that Scientologists could not deduct the cost of auditing. The IRS ultimately accommodated Scientologists, permitting them to deduct the costs of auditing in spite of the religious benefit they derived. And the IRS’s accommodation led to Orthodox Jewish taxpayers claiming the ability to deduct a portion of their children’s religious school tuition. The courts again held that, because they were paying for education, the tuition was nondeductible.

  • 6 - Neither a Borrower nor a Lender Be

  • Samuel D. Brunson
  • Book:
    God and the IRS
    Published online:
    12 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018, pp 98-116

  • Summary

    Under U.S. tax law, individual taxpayers can deduct their payments of certain types of interest, including any paid in the course of their business and interest on their mortgages. Like any interest deduction, the mortgage interest deduction reduces the cost of homeownership, essentially providing a government subsidy for homeownership.That subsidy is unavailable to Muslim homebuyers, though. Islamic law prohibits Muslims from paying interest. To avoid this prohibition banks have created alternative Islamic finance instruments, instruments which allow banks to lend money to Muslim borrowers without charging interest while earning an interest-equivalent return. Although that interest-equivalent return makes Islamic lending financially attractive to banks, it is explicitly not interest. And if it is not interest, the tax law does not provide for its deductibility. Unlike their non-Muslim neighbors, Muslim homeowners bear the full cost of their house. The government has not proffered any accommodation, in spite of the near-identity between the economic situation Muslims face and those faced by their non-Muslim neighbors.

  • 10 - Religious Communitarians

  • Samuel D. Brunson
  • Book:
    God and the IRS
    Published online:
    12 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018, pp 169-186

  • Summary

    In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a number of American Christian churches tried to emulate the Apostolic Church from the New Testament. Among other things, they tried to hold all property jointly. The majority of those churches either no longer exist or have subsequently retreated from communitarianism. Still, there are a number of religious communities, including Shakers and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, that continue this communitarian experiment. And, since the 1930s, the tax law has included a special accommodation for them. Communitarian religious organizations do not pay income tax. Rather, their members—who, for religious reasons, do not own individual property—pay taxes on a pro rata share of the organization’s income.

  • 4 - Taxing Citizens of the Kingdom of God

  • Samuel D. Brunson
  • Book:
    God and the IRS
    Published online:
    12 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018, pp 49-76

  • Summary

    Some individuals claim that their religious beliefs or practices somehow excuse them from paying taxes. The claims range from the plausible—Catholic clergy who have taken vows of poverty—to the entirely implausible—mail-order clergy whose vows of poverty are illusory. Similarly, some religious individuals balk at helping fund programs and practices they object to from a religious perspective. Some Catholics do not want to pay indirectly for abortion; some Quakers do not want their money to pay for war; the Amish object to Social Security. Courts, however, have consistently held that neither religious belief nor practice excuses individuals from their taxpaying obligation, irrespective of the sincerity or opportunism of the belief.

  • 9 - Without Purse, Scrip, or Taxes

  • Samuel D. Brunson
  • Book:
    God and the IRS
    Published online:
    12 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018, pp 147-168

  • Summary

    Many churches employ either volunteer or professional missionaries. Both types of missionary work raise tax questions. For professional missionaries, the question is, does missionary work differ from other employment enough to justify accommodation? For volunteer missionary work, there are two main questions. The first is, should family and friends be able to deduct contributions to support missionaries? The story of Mormon missions illustrates the evolution of thinking here. Up until the 1980s, Mormon missionaries—or, more often, the missionaries’ parents—paid their own costs of missionary service. A number of missionary parents attempted to create a self-help accommodation, deducting the amounts they sent to their children as charitable deductions. The Supreme Court decided that payments made directly to a taxpayer’s missionary child were not deductible expenses. The story of taxing missionaries does not end with the Supreme Court’s decision, though. Shortly thereafter, the Mormon Church changed its missionary funding procedures; instead of paying their own expenses, Mormon missionaries today make a standardized donation to the church, which then proceeds to pay for missionaries’ expenses. But this newer version of missionary finances leads to the second question: should Mormon missionaries be taxable on the support they receive from the church?

  • 8 - A Right to Tithe?

  • Samuel D. Brunson
  • Book:
    God and the IRS
    Published online:
    12 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018, pp 133-146

  • Summary

    In general, taxpayers can arrange their finances however they want. While failure to pay taxes will subject them to interest and penalties, the government generally does not exercise any significant control over how taxpayers choose to spend their money. There is a significant exception to this lack of oversight, though: payment plans. When taxpayers enter into a payment plan with the IRS, the IRS determines how much a taxpayer must pay each month based on her income and permissible expenses. The IRS’s administrative guidelines generally do not include tithes or other religious donations as permissible expenses. That does not prevent taxpayers from making religious donations, but if a taxpayer wants to make the contributions, she must cut back on other permissible expenses. Courts have consistently upheld the constitutionality of the IRS not providing accommodating a taxpayer’s religious donations in determining how much she can afford to pay.

  • 5 - Housing Clergy

  • Samuel D. Brunson
  • Book:
    God and the IRS
    Published online:
    12 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018, pp 77-97

  • Summary

    As a general rule, an employee must pay taxes on anything of value she receives from her employer. That includes employer-provided housing. In the early days of the modern federal income tax, the Treasury department determined that in some circumstances, employees could exclude employer-provided housing from their gross income. But it unequivocally determined that clergy did not qualify for tax-free housing. Congress objected and amended the tax law to allow clergy to live in parsonages tax-free. Decades later, to equalize the treatment of wealthier and poorer churches, Congress allowed churches to provide in-kind housing or to provide a housing stipend to clergy, all tax-free. This “parsonage allowance” has become perhaps the most controversial accommodation in the tax law, one with limited economic justification, but with even more limited recourse for challenge. The provision still exists, protected by Congress, in spite of attempts by courts, academics, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation to challenge it.

  • 11 - A Framework for Religious Tax Accommodation

  • Samuel D. Brunson
  • Book:
    God and the IRS
    Published online:
    12 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018, pp 187-221

  • Summary

    Tax accommodation is inevitable. Because of its inevitability, it is important that tax policymakers have tools to evaluate and design accommodation. This final chapter provides those tools, a framework of questions that policymakers should ask when confronted with a potential accommodation. The framework asks three questions: (1) Does an individual’s religion cause her to act in a tax-disadvantaged way? (2) If so, what type of accommodation would put her in a similar after-tax position as other taxpayers without the same religious constraints? (3) Are there extrinsic reasons that the tax law should not provide that accommodation? The answers to these three questions will help tax policymakers determine whether a particular religious practice warrants a tax accommodation and, if so, how that accommodation should look.

  • Introduction

  • Samuel D. Brunson
  • Book:
    God and the IRS
    Published online:
    12 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018, pp 1-6

  • Summary

    While the majority of Americans willingly (if perhaps grudgingly) pay their taxes, there is a small group of tax protestors who try to figure out arcane reasons why they are not subject to the tax. A subset of this group has decided that their religious beliefs or practices excuses them from taxpaying. And certainly the government has accommodated some religious practices. Because its tax accommodations lack a principled common thread, though, it is impossible to determine whether a novel religious practice will be accommodated. This opens the door for unscrupulous tax protestors to try to claim their own accommodation. If tax policymakers were to have a framework they could use, both sincere and insincere religious believers could know whether they were likely to be accommodated. This book will develop that framework.

  • 1 - Religion and the State

  • Samuel D. Brunson
  • Book:
    God and the IRS
    Published online:
    12 April 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018, pp 7-22

  • Summary

    Debates over the place of religion in American life date back to the founding of the United States. Out of those debates emerged the current constitutional framework for religion: the free exercise clause and the establishment clause. The free exercise clause prevents the government from prohibiting religious practice, while the establishment clause acts as a check on government favoring or disfavoring religion. At times, these clauses conflict and, where they do, the government must determine whether to impinge on an individual’s religious practice or accommodate that practice, granting a special exemption from the generally-applicable law. Scholars have argued over whether there is a principled reason to treat religion differently from other human pursuits. Whether one agrees that religion is fundamentally distinct or not, though, certain accommodations are likely to exist.

Page 27 of 58