6th Annual Junior Tax Scholars Workshop Begins Today at UC-Irvine

The Sixth Annual Junior Tax Scholars Workshop kicks off today at UC-Irvine with these papers:

Panel #1: Tax Compliance

• Shannon McCormack (UC-Davis), Determining the Transactions to be Judged Under the Newly Codified Economic Substance Doctrine
• Commenters: Brian Galle (Boston College), Darien Shanske (UC-Hastings)
• Joshua Blank (NYU), Against Corporate Tax Privacy
• Commenters: Shannon McCormack (UC-Davis), Lilian Faulhaber (Boston University)
• Leigh Osofsky (Miami), Beyond the CAP Consensus
• Commenters: Susan Morse (UC-Hastings), Ben Leff (American)

Panel 2: Families

• Anders Christiansen (Loyola-L.A.), Undocumented Workers and the Earned Income Tax Credit: A Proposal for Reform
• Commenters: Joshua Blank (NYU), Rebecca Kysar (Brooklyn)
• Stephanie McMahon (Cincinnati), An Empirical Study of Innocent Spouse Relief: I Do Not Think That Statute Means What You Think It Means:: "Under existing law, spouses are jointly and severally liable for joint tax returns and, as a result, the IRS may pursue either spouse for any tax due but not paid. In 1998, Congress expanded the relief available to filers of joint returns to include innocent spouse relief, separation of liability, and equitable relief. Many critics of these three avenues of relief complain that the statute is too complicated and offers too little relief to spouses, generally wives, who sign returns under duress, while being deceived by their husbands, or while subject to some other marital compulsion. This paper first evaluates what Congress intended to provide to “innocent spouses” when it expanded relief. The paper then examines 445 cases decided on appeals from IRS denials of relief in order to evaluate whether the law is accomplishing that congressional objective. This paper’s aim is to judge the success and failure of the innocent spouse provision from Congress’s perspective."
• Commenters: Shu-Yi Oei (Tulane), Rachelle Holmes (George Mason)

Panel 3: Designing Tax Systems

• Lilian Faulhaber (Boston University), The Other Side of the Salience Debate: Hypersalience, Third-Party Marketing, and the Charitable Deduction
• Commenters: David Gamage (UC-Berkeley), Stephanie McMahon (Cincinnati)
• Brian Galle (Boston College), The Stick or the Carrot?
• Commenters: Ilan Benshalom (Hebrew University), Darien Shanske (UC-Berkeley)
• Shu-Yi Oei, The Functions of the Fiction: Envisioning a Debt-Equity Distinction for Natural Persons
• Commenters: Sarah Lawsky (UC-Irvine), Anders Christiansen (Loyola-L.A.)

Panel 4: Public Finance

• David Gamage (UC-Berkeley), The New Fiscal Politics, Government Shutdowns, and the Case for Default Budgets: "The threat of government shutdowns is becoming an increasingly severe problem at both the U.S. federal and state levels. In most areas of domestic policy, failure to pass a new law or other reform means that prior year law remains in effect. Not so with budgeting, where failure to regularly pass a new budget currently results in the government shutting down. We argue for making budgeting more like other areas of domestic policy by proposing that default budgets come into effect if Congress or a state legislature fails to pass a new budget by the specified deadline."
• Commenter: Adam Rosenzweig (Washington U.)
• Darien Shanske, A Vigorous, but Tentative, Defense of the New State Corporate Income Tax
• Commenters: Stephanie McMahon (Cincinnati), Leigh Osofsky (Miami)