MauledAgain

Last week, Senators Dodd and Shelby introduced The Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, described by them as a bipartisan agreement to help address the nation's housing crisis. Though the bill is an effort to address a serious problem, it is misnamed. It ought to be called The Foreclosure Mess Cleanup Act of 2008. Nothing in the bill prevents foreclosures. The provisions address the treatment of people who are going through or who have gone through foreclosure. To their credit, Dodd and Shelby don't claim to have created the be-all, end-all solution, but describe their package as "not perfect" and as not solving all of the problems. I applaud their efforts. But I think there is more that can be done, and in some respects, those things should be replacements for some of the proposals in the bill.

For example, making more people eligible for FHA mortgages doesn't prevent foreclosures. It might, as the bill's authors contend, make it easier for people to purchase homes. But isn't the current crisis fueled in part by lending practices that were touted as making it easier for people to buy homes? The bill's authors note that FHA financing requires down payments of 3.5%. The risk of foreclosure decreases as down payments increase, so the better approach for a foreclosure prevention act would be to require higher down payment percentages.

Another provision provides funds to counsel people who are facing foreclosure. The goal is help homeowners on the brink of foreclosure to explore ways to stay in their homes. Many lenders do hold off until there is no recourse but foreclosure. Eventually, unless some unexpected turn-around occurs, such as a substantial increase in income, foreclosure becomes the final chapter in the person's home ownership story. At best, but for a few situations, these other options delay foreclosure, but they do not prevent it. Almost all people facing foreclosure are in that predicament because their mortgage payments are too high for their income. The solution is to find ways to help people deal with two significant income-related problems. First, real income hasn't grown for most people during the past decade, while home prices, prior to the recent sag, increased at rates much higher than the rates at which nominal income rose. Second, tax burdens on the lower and middle classes remain high, both in terms of actual taxes and indirect taxes passed through by businesses, because the income tax distributional structure is skewed in favor of investors and high-income taxpayers.

The bill also increases the disclosure that some mortgage lenders, under some circumstances, must make to loan applicants. There is something I probably don't understand, because what the bill requires is what I thought already was required. The bill requires disclosure of maximum monthly payments possible under the loan. Is that not currently being done? Is it a matter of noncompliance with lending regulations? Of course, some loans are tied to rates that in theory can reach infinity. I'm not sure what impact the disclosure would have on the borrowers. The problem is that many people purchased beyond their means, encouraged by loan brokers who, having an opportunity to make up-front money, played on these people's desire to own a home. So they lent money to people with no assets, no income, no job, and I guess no common or financial sense. Would it not be better to insert a provision that penalizes loan brokers and loan merchants who induce people to take out loans they cannot afford? What about a provision to fund high schools so they can teach their students some basic information about home buying, so that they are much less likely to be bamboozled by loan merchants with more concern about their up-front fees than the economic well-being of their customers?

There is one provision that will prevent some foreclosures. It extends the length of time that a lender must wait before initiating foreclosure proceedings if the debtor is a member of the military. The lender must wait until a specified number of months after the debtor returns from military service. Interestingly, this provision also requires the Department of Defense to counsel members of the military with respect to financial difficulties. Why not require financial education for all Americans?

Of course, there are tax provisions. They saved the best for last. There are four of them.

The first tax provision would provide a "standard deduction" for $500 of property taxes ($1,000 on a joint return) for people who do not itemize deductions. Let's think about this. People who pay real property taxes usually pay mortgage interest. Those two items alone, to say nothing of state sales or income taxes, puts these people in a position to itemize deductions. So who would not be in that situation? People who don't pay mortgage interest because they own their home outright, usually after having paid off the mortgage. Those folks aren't facing foreclosure by lenders because they don't owe money on a loan secured by a mortgage. A few face seizure by local governments on account of non-payment of real estate taxes, but a $500 standard deduction isn't going to help them. If they're not itemizing, the odds are the $500 will save them $50 to $75 in taxes. So here's a provision that adds complexity without doing much of anything other than provide campaign trail sound bites. The solution, which would open the door to tax reform and thus meet much resistance in the Congress, is to abolish non-business deductions and make the personal exemption a sensible amount as it was when it was first enacted, namely, the cost of living (including rent, mortgage payments, whatever) for a person. But the bottom line is that this proposed standard deduction plan does absolutely nothing to prevent foreclosure, nor does it do anything to deal with people who have suffered through foreclosure and probably aren't paying property taxes.

The second tax provision would increase the limit on tax-exempt private activity bond authority. The goal is to provide funds for refinancing failed subprime loans, for first-time homebuyers, and for multifamily rental housing. Yes, this provision would help clean up the mess. But it wouldn't prevent foreclosures.

The third tax provision would permit corporations to carry net operating losses back four years rather than two. This benefits corporations. It does nothing to prevent foreclosures.

The fourth tax provision is a tax credit, yes, another tax credit, to encourage the purchase of homes in foreclosure. The rationale is that foreclosure pushes down the value of nearby homes, so encouraging purchases of homes in foreclosure will prevent that decline. There's no need for a tax credit, though, because there are people buying up foreclosure properties at bargain basement prices, knowing that because they can afford to wait, within a few years they will recoup far more than what they invested. The list of people who have made money this way in previous recessions is long. A tax credit to encourage people to purchase homes in foreclosure is like a tax credit to encourage people to purchase and eat or drink sugar, chocolate, coffee, alcohol, and ice cream.

So with one exception, none of the provisions prevent foreclosure. And none of the tax provisions accomplish that goal. Nor do the tax provisions do much to fix the problem. Allowing a loss deduction for the people who realize losses on the foreclosure, though admittedly they're not in the majority, would be of more value to those people than the provisions in the bill.

It is no secret that many taxpayers have too much federal income tax withheld from their wages. Though some people find some sort of psychological boost from getting a refund in early spring, as though it were a serendipitous gift, the reality is much less comforting. The refund is the person's money, taken out over the course of a year and then repaid without interest. Others note that over-withholding is an effective way of being forced to save money, but there are other, better ways to save, including withholding for retirement and similar benefit plans. Though the IRS supposedly adjusted the withholding tables to reduce overwithholding, there is no doubt that overwithholding exists. It's not all the fault of the tables. Unless the employee claims additional withholding exemptions to account for itemized deductions, overwithholding will occur.

On the other hand, there are taxpayers who discover that they owe additional taxes. In some instances, they are subject to a penalty for underpayment of estimated taxes. Though it is called a penalty, the charge is essentially interest. Isn't it troubling that Congress chooses to charge interest when taxes are underpaid but not to pay interest when taxes are overwithheld?

Trying to claim the appropriate number of withholding exemptions so that the tax liability for the year is roughly the amount of federal income taxes that have been withheld is an exercise for those who delight in dancing with numbers. One has to work backwards, and can do so only with access to the withholding tables used by employers to determine the amount of the withholding. It is a particularly daunting exercise for students who are employed for the summer but whose employers withhold at rates based on the assumption that the student will be employed all year. Even bright law students, and even some of those who are "into" tax, begin to lapse into a comatose state when I describe the process of analytical computation in which they must engage.

The other day I received an email from someone at Kiplinger, inviting me to visit a new "Withholding Calculator" tool now on its website. If it works, it certainly does away with the agonies and frustrations of trying to do the computation with pencil and paper. Yes, I know spreadsheets exist, but how many taxpayers are about to sit down and program a spreadsheet to accomplish this task?

Unfortunately, the Kiplinger calculator uses a short-hand method to compute the number of additional withholding allowances that should be claimed. After obtaining filing status, 2007 taxable income, and the amount of the 2007 refund, it then determines if the refund is large enough, considering the amount of taxable income, to justify claiming additional withholding allowances. If the taxpayer expects an increase in 2008 itemized deductions, or the arrival of another child who would generate a dependency exemption, the calculator does not accommodate those changes. The student who works during the summer will not find in the calculator a means of figuring out how many withholding exemptions to claim so that excessive taxes are not withheld from summer pay. The calculator does not take into account estimated tax payments, which are the preferred means of paying in taxes during the year if the taxpayer's income fluctuates from week to week or month to month.

As to the user interface, the calculator ought to ask for the three items of information on one web page. As presently designed, it requires the user to enter one item of information, click on a "Submit" button, enter another item of information, click again, and so on. That is annoying, and it adds avoidable traffic to the internet. It appears that each click brings another chance for more ads to appear on the page, but I'm sure there's a way of putting all of the ads on one entry page.

With a few tweaks, the calculator could be modified to provide useful assistance to people planning to work for only 10 or 15 weeks. A few other adjustments would permit the calculator to take into account income, deduction, and exemption changes expected in 2008. Adapting the calculator for estimated tax payments would be a bit more challenging. With all of these caveats, there are some taxpayers who will find the calculator in its present instance to be useful. They ought to use it, because many of them are paying in more taxes throughout the year than they need to be paying.

In many states, the federal income tax law is a role model for the state income tax law. As horrible as that sounds, it has its benefits, because the alternative, state income tax systems using totally different concepts and principles, would be even worse.

So the question is whether states are going to jump on an income tax rebate bandwagon. My feeble attempt to research the question turned up very little other than the stories that triggered the question. The stories involve a now-dead proposal for a Pennsylvania income tax rebate to stimulate the Pennsylvania economy.

The Pennsylvania rebate tale began in early February when Pennsylvania's Governor Rendell proposed a rebate for poor families. According to this story, the plan would have sent as much as $400 to approximately 475,000 low-income families. Unlike the federal rebate, which is funded by increasing the deficit and thus borrowing from foreign nations and investors, the Pennsylvania rebate would have come out of a general fund surplus that is expected to be more than three times the $130 million cost of the rebate proposal.

Opposition to the rebate, however, popped up immediately. One concern was the wisdom of relying on a projected surplus at a time when economic uncertainties make the size, and even existence, of that surplus far from guaranteed. Other alternatives to stimulating the state economy, such as reducing the income tax rate, were floated.

By late March, the Governor dropped his rebate proposal. According to this report, the Governor concluded that there was insufficient support in the legislature for the idea. Neither political party warmed to the concept.

Although Rendell's argument in support of his proposal appears sound, the notion that rebates will fix what is wrong with the economy, on either the national or state level, is well-intentioned but misguided. As I pointed out in Can a Tax Rebate Band-Aid Stop the Economic Bleeding?, the problem is much deeper than one that would be resolved through one-time rebates of a few hundred dollars. Rendell's argument, that low-income families are most affected by inflation, particularly with respect to energy costs, and are more likely to spend the rebates to purchase food and other items, proves that these families need assistance, but doesn't prove that a state income tax rebate is most suitable for the task.

Though there are other states with tax rebates, for such things as energy conservation expenditures, those provisions are not designed to provide economic stimulus. Because they were enacted before, and not in connection with, the current federal income tax rebate program, they cannot be treated as participants in an economic stimulus rebate bandwagon. If there is a state that has imitated, to a greater or lesser extent, the federal rebate, it would be useful to know.

My post last week, Why Law School Education Doesn't Mesh with Law Practice brought an affirmative and encouraging response from Andrew Oh-Willeke, who practices law in Denver, Colorado. With his permission, I share his response:

I have twelve years of experience in a general civil practice involving considerable tax and transactional work, but no degree beyond a J.D. I have at times worked with an attorney who has an L.L.M. in taxation but little practical experience beyond law school on business tax and transactional law matters.

The difference is striking. My colleague knew the black letter law and the textbook explanations, but had absolutely no idea how the various tax and non-tax statutes are customarily used in real life transactions, or what kinds of questions were reasonable to analyze and, in turn, what kind of analysis should be dismissed out of hand as irrelevant or impracticable. Similarly, my colleague was unaware of which considerations were the ones actually driving a client's choice in practice.

Law practice is driven by rules of thumb, typical transactions and signpost facts.

While interviewing a client is difficult to teach in a classroom setting, it is not difficult, although it is rare, to teach law students not just the black letter rules of law, but also the mechanics of the transactions most commonly established as a result of those rules, and tax and non-tax concerns that motivate parties to usually formulate a transaction in a particular way. For example, it is amazing how many people come away from a graduate level corporate taxation course
assuming that most closely held C corporations actually pay corporate level income tax in meaningful amounts on a regular basis. Likewise, it is amazing how many people who have taken multiple business taxation courses must engage in lengthy original analysis to figure out whether an S corporation or an LLC is appropriate for a certain kind of business activity.

Knowing how facts typically cluster themselves in real life, and what concerns are really driving typical transactions can provide a knowledge basis that makes the client interviewing that follows from that knowledge much more efficient, accurate and complete. Knowing what to expect provides both an error checking mechanism (useful in litigation, due diligence and transaction documentation alike), and makes mundane skills like the ability to scan lengthy contracts quickly for their important and exceptional elements easy.

One can no more understand the living tax code by reading it, than one can understand Christianity, as it is practiced today, by reading the Bible. Once you know how things are done, the original work can enlighten that understanding, but the original texts are insufficient standing alone.

J.J. White, the graybeard teaching the Uniform Commercial Code while I attended the University of Michigan law school, did an admirable job of developing a practical awareness of how these transactions were structured that made it much easier to make sense of the legal rules involved. (He also had the endearing tendency to pose hypothetical questions with more zeros after the dollars signs than more meek professors usually do, which added a certain urgency to their
resolution.) Law schools would be better advised trying to provide their students with a non-legal business context with their substantive courses, than teaching the kind of touchy feely skills that formal instruction does not impart well.

One of the points Andrew raises correlates with another of my concerns about legal education, namely, that students are assumed to understand, or assumed to make themselves understand, the underlying transactions or events with respect to which the law operates. That is one reason most first-year students find Torts and Criminal Law to be easier, and more interesting, than Property or Contracts. They are much more familiar with the transactions and events that involve torts and criminal law. Unlike the medical profession, which require 7 years of preparation after college, along with the completion of specified college courses, the legal profession accepts 3 years of preparation after college, without the requirement that any specific college course be completed. As it becomes more difficult, financially and otherwise, for law firms to provide the other 4 years of preparation, it would not be surprising to see legal practitioners demand more of law schools than what now is provided. Whether and how law schools respond remains to be seen.

Headlines, like soundbites, can be misleading. Sometimes, deliberately so. Consider the headline in this recent story out of California: Is Schwarzenegger Serious About Taxing Lawyers?

When I saw the headline, my first thought was, "Huh? California is going to enact an occupation tax that targets lawyers?" After reading the article, though, it became clear that the governor was proposing an extension of the sales tax to include professional services. In other word, the tax would be imposed on amounts paid to lawyers for their services, but also on amounts paid to other professionals for their services.

So, it turns out that it is not a matter of taxing lawyers. Nor is it a matter of singling out the legal profession as a source of revenue.

Perhaps the headline writer thought that because the tax would be imposed on legal services it would be paid by the lawyers and thus would be a matter of "taxing lawyers." But it is likely, if the proposal is enacted, that the tax would be added to the invoice sent to the client. So, if one wants to use the word "taxing" in the headline, it ought to be "taxing clients." During this time of year, that phrase has a totally different meaning for many tax return preparers, as they encounter demanding, difficult, and uncooperative clients.

Whether the governor's proposal goes through is questionable. San Francisco abandoned a similar proposal several years ago. The governor admits simply throwing the proposal "out there" to see what happens. Ultimately, though, chances of enacting the proposal, which would take money out of the pockets of anyone who pays for professional services, and that's a lot of people, are increased when it is touted as "taxing lawyers" rather than "taxing everyone who pays for professional services." That's why soundbites and misleading headlines can be dangerous. Not that they are too simplistic, , but that they mislead people and cause them to make decisions that are not the decisions they otherwise would have made.

An article in this month's ABA Journal, "Stuck in the Rut: It's Time to Stop Handling Cases as if You're in Law School" (94 A.B.A.J. 24 (March 2008), caught my eye even though it appeared to be about litigation. That's because the tag line suggested that the chasm between law school and law practice would be scrutinized. It was.

The author, Jim McElhaney, is a litigator who turned to law teaching several decades ago. He has written several books on trial advocacy, and writes a monthly column on litigation for the ABA Journal. Several years ago, his columns were bundled into a book. He travels widely, lecturing at CLE and similar programs. He lives in that borderland between law school and law practice, a place few practitioners and few academics inhabit. That is why I was elated to read what he wrote in his latest column.

McElhaney's point is, to quote him, that "a legal education can actually turn into a rut that leads to the kind of mediocrity" often seen in law practice. How does that happen? In part, says McElhaney, because "law schools are not interested in teaching their students to communicate with laypeople, so they leave the job half-done." He makes a point so obvious it boggles my mind that outside of clinical courses and an occasional course here and there taught by someone living in that borderland, law school courses don't focus on questions such as those I ask, including, "What does one now ask the client?" and "How would you explain this to the client?" Those questions bring some of the most vociferous objections from law students, chiefly, I think, as some have explained, because they are unaccustomed to being so challenged in a law school classroom. They're accustomed to, and have become adept at, something else. Why is that?

McElhaney explains the flaw in how law schools prepare students. "In law school, finding all the issues in the case -- not saying how the case should be decided -- was the right way to answer almost every exam question. The students who never understood what the teachers were after didn't last very long. The winners were the people who could list both sides of all the issues in every question." He's absolutely right. When I ask students questions such as "What additional facts must be identified before the client's question can be answered?" I often get recitations of black letter law, replete with identification of issues many of which are not relevant to the inquiry. Worse, students too frequently use the IRAC (issue, rule, analysis, conclusion) approach in their writing, rather than restricting it to where it belongs, namely, their thinking. I deliberately frame most, though not all, of my examination and semester exercise questions so that students need to demonstrate something other than issue recognition skills, black letter law regurgitations, and dual-sided analyses that do not reach conclusions.

McElhaney then digs deeper into the problem. "Throughout law school," he notes, "you had to accept the facts as stated -- whether in the appellate decisions you read, the hypothetical questions the teachers spun in class or the final exam questions you puzzled your way through. In school, the facts were a given and the question was, what are the rules? Now, that's all reversed. In a trial, the rules are given and the question is, what are the facts?" Why is this so difficult for law faculty to understand? Years ago, when I discovered that my upper-year law students were skilled in issue recognition and black letter law regurgitation, but not much else, I redesigned my courses so that they students had ample opportunity to develop other law practice skills. About ten years ago, a very bright student, ranked near the top of her class, came to my office several times, each visit after a semester exercises, bewildered and frustrated by her low scores. It made no sense to her that she, obviously gifted and successful during her first year, was doing so poorly. We talked about how lawyers think. Finally, she returned, about four weeks into the semester, and proclaimed, "I figured out what you are doing. We're used to being told, 'Here is A and B, what does it get you?' and were expected to find C, but you're telling us we have A, need to get C, and must figure out what's missing." She articulated for me, in a way that I had not formulated, what I was trying to get students to do. I borrowed her words. She didn't mind. Not only did her scores then rocket back to the top end, but she also explained that it changed how she thought her way through exams in other courses, and caused her to refine her writing to the point that the law firm where she was clerking made her an offer for a permanent position. She went from being most dissatisfied with my teaching to thinking I was brilliant. It wasn't a joking matter at the outset, but by the end of the semester we laughed about it.

Though she and I can see the smile-generating value in her epiphany moment, law students don't find humor in the frustration that confronts them when they discover the limited utility of black letter law regurgitation and issue spotting. Yes, those skills are important, but are they so important that they dominate law school to the point of pushing other skills out of the picture or, at best, into clinical courses and a few other small-enrollment, practice-like experiences? As McElhaney puts it, "But the practice of law -- in or out of court -- is not a law school exam." He's absolutely correct. Why, I ask again, does that reality go unnoticed by most law faculty? One might think that a person who decides to fork over $120,000 or more in law school tuition would receive in return education that guides the student through the process of learning all the intellectual skills required to practice law, rather than an education in which two of many skills are emphasized to the point of ad nauseam. Fortunately, curricular reform proposals once again are sweeping through law schools. Though calls for reform and pledges to restructure curriculums have popped up every 20 years or so in the legal academy, this time law schools had best get it right. The cost of failure might be far more than dissatisfied hiring partners, unhappy legal employers, and a few griping law professors willing and able to criticize from within the legal education system. This time, it may be the clients, who should be the ultimate focus of legal education, who rebel against paying huge fees to fund large salaries for law school graduates who don't know how, as McElhaney puts it, to do what they need to do by "turning everything you learned in law school upside down."

Several days ago, in response to an ABA-TAX listserve discussion concerning some technical issues presented by the tax rebate program, Glynn Shaw wrote:

I do not know about the taxability of the rebate (I assume it is non-taxable so as to stimulate the economy), but following is how to spend this nice rebate so as to help our economy.

If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, all the money will go to China. If we spend it on gasoline it will all go to the Arabs, if we purchase a computer it will all go to India, if we purchase fruit and vegetables it will all go to Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, if we purchase a good car it will all go to Japan, if we purchase useless crap it will all go to Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy....so we need to keep that money here in America. The only way to keep that money here at home is to buy beer, since those are the only businesses still in the US.

When I asked if I could incorporate this wit into a MauledAgain post, I received this response:

It is time to fess up. Anything you pull down from the internet is probably borrowed from someone else :=)) This particular post was modified from a post sent to me by my wife, who got it from a friend. All of the previous "Fwd" have been deleted so I can't even give someone else credit. I thought it was good enough and timely enough to post as a response to [a previous ABATAX post].

When I started trying to figure out who first wrote this rather humorous, though technically incorrect, spoof of the many saving graces of the tax rebate claimed by its advocates, I discovered not only that I could not trace it back to one person, but that it exists in a variety of forms. When I googled the first line of the joke, hundreds of hits popped up.

A close look at the advice reveals a hint that something changed. "The only way to keep that money here at home is to buy beer, since those are the only businesses still in the U.S." One business, but a plural subordinate clause? An apparently earlier version, perhaps sanitized along the line, concluded as follows: "so the only way to keep that money here at home is to drink beer, gamble, or spend it on prostitution. Currently it seems that these are the only businesses still left in the U.S." So it seems the former governor of New York was simply being patriotic, making an advanced expenditure of his anticipated rebate (see Why Some Politicians Fear the IRS?). Of course, it's most likely he's not going to get one because his income is over the limit.

To be technical, and isn't this an awful way to ruin a joke, it's not true that money spent on gasoline necessarily goes to Arab nations. Some stays here (e.g., Sunoco), some goes to Russia, some goes to Canada, and so on. Some of the fruit and vegetables that we buy comes from California, Oregon, and yes, New Jersey, to give but a few examples of domestic sources of those foods. As for beer, aren't there Americans who buy nothing but imported brews? Yes, there's a lot of stereotype in the hardly disguised criticism of the rebate. I wonder why. There's also some misunderstanding of where the dollars go when they are spent on a retail item. The proprietor of the gasoline station retains a very small portion of the purchase price. Some of the receipts taken in by the local Wal-Mart is funneled into salaries paid to employees.

The best response to Glynn's posting came from Cheryl Collins, who noted, "Glynn- Buy services, that is our real industry. We all need a good massage after tax season. I could use one right now." It's not just tax return preparation that creates that need.

When Glynn then noted "Ok, but it most of the humor disappears when you say....'spend it on legal and accounting fees..........'" he resonated with a point I had made in an earlier MauledAgain post, Getting Those Tax Rebates Might Not Be So Easy. I suppose it's an American tradition that when government policy-makers make foolish decisions, one way of coping with the distress and frustration is to find one's sense of humor. The problem is that the people paying fees to tax return preparers in order to get a rebate aren't laughing. Nor are the folks whose economic situations would have been improved by government action more responsible than the enactment of vote-buying rebates and the adoption of policies that fertilized the borrowing glut that now threatens to spark something perhaps worse than a recession. That raises a question for a future post: So What Will You Do When the Rebates Run Out?

Several days ago, someone posted an inquiry to the ABA-TAX listserve concerning the tax consequences of a sale of a partnership interest. The inquirer wanted to know if the proposed analysis was correct, and if so, whether some other arrangement could be structured to avoid the undesirable tax outcome. The proposed analysis appropriately included the parsing of at least four major partnership taxation Code provisions. It was no surprise to me that the inquiry carried the subjecte heading of "D#$% Partnerships!"

Shortly after I replied to the question, someone else provided a terse but telling response: "My head hurts too much to even read your email, I don't have an answer (sorry) I just wanted to chime in re: #$%%** Partnerships! Hate em."

I could not resist. I tried to cast the responsibility for the mess where it belongs:

It's not the fault of partnerships. They've been around for several centuries.

It's the fault of the complex legislation that includes overlaps, lack of clarity, overkill, and gaps in coverage (e.g, sec 465 and 469 as applied to partnerships, sec 752 with no definition of share of liability, sec 721 not mentioning services one way or the other, sec 751 with two definitions of inventory depending on the transaction, sec 736(b) with different rules for general partners in services-type partnerships, sec 743(b) somewhat elective but at times mandatory, sec 732(d) which is elective and mandatory and wouldn't be required if sec 743 were mandatory, sec 724 and sec 735 being asymmetrical, a different set of rules for large partnerships in sec 771, etc). It's the fault of regulations that attempt to set rules for every possible situation, thus generating more complexity, but that also are imbued with vagueness, and gaps in coverage (regs under sec 704(b) and 752 take the prize, with the regs under sec 704(c) coming in closely behind, whereas the regs under sec 706(d) are yet to be issued, and so on and so on).

It's the fault of taxpayers who try to use partnerships to end run flat-out unquestionable rules, which entices the Congress and the IRS to enact or issue so-called "anti-abuse" provisions (e.g. sec 704(c)(1)(a), 737, 706(d), 751(f), 721(c), 731(c), 732(c), and others, the anti-abuse regs, etc etc). Though some of the complexity comes from the entity v aggregate disparity, far more comes from responses to taxpayers gaming the system, trying to find ways to turn OI into CG, to turn transactions not qualifying for like-kind exchanges into ones that appear to qualify, etc.

Years ago, at an ABA-TAX meeting, I proposed simplification that would treat partnerships as S corporations. I could smell the tar being heated and hear the chickens squawking as their feathers were being removed.

As my students know, I do not hold in high esteem the various maneuvers, the billowing smoke, the polished mirrors, and the other machinations that are designed solely for the purposes of avoiding, or even evading, a tax liability that Congress certainly intends to be paid. Some examples might help.

Section 731(c) is a long provision, most of which consists of a definition of "marketable securities." It exists because some clever folks found a way to get around the basic rule that a distribution of cash to a partner in excess of the partner's adjusted basis in the partnership constitutes gain. Because a distribution of property does not generate gain, some partnerships obtained and distributed marketable securities so that the partner would not be taxed. For all intents and purposes, marketable securities are so much like cash that their distribution accomplished the same objectives as did a distribution of cash. Although the IRS could have prevailed on the argument that the partnership was acting as the partner's agent in buying securities with cash that could be deemed distributed to the partner, the IRS did not take that route because some partnerships purchased the securities ahead of time. So to put a stop to this end-run around the basic rule, Congress added several pages of text to the Code.

Sections 704(c)(1)(B), 704(c)(2), and 737 exist because several practitioners decided they could use partnerships to circumvent the limitations on the section 1031 like-kind exchange nonrecognition rules. Under section 1031, exchanges of like-kind property are not taxed except to the extent property not of a like-kind is transferred. Thus, an exchange of two properties not of like-kind one to the other is taxed. Because there is nonrecognition on the contribution of property to a partnership and on the distribution of property from a partnership, taxpayers wanting nonrecognition on the exchange of properties not of a like-kind, a goal denied by Congress in section 1031, would contribute both properties to a partnership and then distribute each property to the other exchange partner. In other words, although Congress clearly intended to limit nonrecognition on property exchanges to like-kind property, cagey planners used partnership provisions intended to deal with other types of transactions to circumvent Congress' intent. Add another four pages of text to the Code to deal with this one.

It's not my purpose to defend Congress. Surely there are enough ambiguities, unaddressed issues, and inconsistencies in the partnership tax provisions to generate all sorts of angst for tax practitioners who are trying to help their clients comply with the tax law. When the IRS comes along to fill in the gaps, it adds to the complexity. The simple phrase "share of partnership liabilities" in section 752 spawned page after page of regulations. The phrase "substantial economic effect" generated dozens of regulation pages. Neither phrase is defined in the Code.

Partnership taxation probably is the epitome of what's wrong with the tax system. It is almost a farcical exaggeration. Yet it is very real, and very challenging to tax practitioners. It could be simplified, but attempts to do so would bring howls of objection from those who find in its complexities little folds and wrinkles in which they can hide yet another scheme to circumvent the general purpose of subchapter K. Simplification attempts would also be opposed by those who have advantages under the current system that they would lose if the partnership provisions were simplified. The same, unfortunately, can be said about most other areas of the tax law, though perhaps not quite to the extreme level as afflicts partnerships.

For the moment, all one can do is to find a way to learn partnership taxation. It's an endeavor that should be approached with a willingness to dig in and work with overwhelming effort, probably a level effort unlike anything previously experienced. It isn't easy, but partnership taxation is so pervasive that it's difficult to practice tax law or to be a tax practitioner without understanding it. The few students in my Graduate Tax partnership course who have tried to prove they could practice without getting involved in partnership taxation issues eventually, sooner or later, came around to realizing, glumly in some instances, that it was inescapable. That it is, and frustrating, too.

Earlier this month, in Using Taxation for Non-Tax Purposes, I criticized the use of the tax code to compel, entice, or discourage activities not related to taxation:

There is a problem with using taxation to control behavior. For example, the Internal Revenue Code is overloaded with credits and other provisions dealing with energy conservation, energy production, adoption of children, and other issues better handled more directly. Everyone complains about the complexity of tax laws, yet too many people jump on the bandwagon of proposals that contribute to that complexity.

One of Senator Barack Obama's proposals illustrates how a great idea can become tainted by inserting it into the Internal Revenue Code rather than where it belongs.

Obama is a strong believer in the value of citizen service. One of his many ideas for encouraging service and volunteer activities is the American Opportunity Tax Credit. Obama's website describes the proposal as one that would "Require 100 Hours of Service in College," one that would "establish a new American Opportunity Tax Credit that is worth $4,000 a year in exchange for 100 hours of public service a year." His speech in which he outlined the idea puts it differently: "For college students, I have proposed an annual American Opportunity Tax Credit of $4,000 to make tuition affordable. To receive this credit, we'll require 100 hours of public service."

Two aspects of this proposal concern me. One involves tax, and the other involves civics.

Turning to the question of what citizenship means, is volunteer service truly volunteer if the person providing the service is compensated? Whether the reward comes in the form of wages or tax credits, a monetary return for performing services removes it from the category of volunteer activity. Obama may be correct that providing economic compensation for service would encourage college students to engage in helpful activities, but let's not call it volunteer work.

Turning to the tax question, does it make sense to add yet another credit to a tax code already stuffed with tax credits and other provisions? If the goal is to reward college students for providing services, why not simply issue a check to the student? If there is concern that the money would not be used for tuition, then why not simply issue a voucher? If there is concern that the student would somehow not get the voucher to where it should go, why not simply issue a check to the student's college? Ought this not be administered by the Department of Education? Why bring the IRS into the picture? Could it be that Congress, elected officials, and candidates have far more faith in the IRS to get the job done properly than they do in some other agency? If that is the answer, then why do we tolerate the existence of agencies that cannot do what they ought to be doing and that need to be bailed out by the IRS?

The Congress appears to be on its way to approving a budget that contemplates a repeal of at least some of the tax cuts enacted at the urging of the Bush Administration during the past eight years. According to this report, the Senate approved a budget that "would torpedo hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts won by President Bush." Some Republican Senators criticized the decision, claiming that letting the tax cuts expire as they are set to do under the law that enacted them will amount to a massive tax increase that will choke the economy.

Though the budget resolution is non-binding, and though even Democrats in Congress suggest that ultimately they will preserve some of the tax cuts, especially the few targeted at the middle class, barring unexpected election results later this year, it is likely that by 2011, tax increases for at least some taxpayers will be the order of the day. Is this outcome as bad as its critics assert?

At present, the economy is a mess. It very well could get worse. The list of problems begins with the credit crisis and doesn't end with high gasoline prices. It includes rising unemployment, fading home sales, drops in housing starts, federal budget deficits, trade deficits, spot shortages of commodities, a very unhappy stock market, reduced incomes for retirees on fixed incomes, the continuing decline in the value of the dollar, and the ugly cloud of inflation. That's not an exclusive list, but simply a series of examples to support the contention that the economy is a mess.

Why is the economy a mess? Commentators offer all sorts of ideas, but I think that the economy is a mess because of the factors underlying the decline in the value of the dollar. The dollar's value represents what the markets think of the economy. On the edges, that value is affected by the issues of the day, but the longer term value reflects the opinion of investors, traders, and others on the health of American enterprise and the national economic system.

So why has the dollar shrunk in value? Why is it not worth as much in the world market? The dollar represents the worth of the nation, and the nation been on a headlong rush into serious debtor status. China, Saudi Arabia, and other foreign nations and investors are beginning to drown in dollars. Things tend to lose value when there are so many of them that a person or nation can drown in them. Why are there so many dollars held abroad? In part it is because American consumers are sending dollars overseas in order to acquire goods and services produced overseas. In larger part, it is because the United States Treasury continues to borrow money to finance the federal deficit.

Why is there a federal deficit? There is a federal deficit because federal expenditures exceed federal revenue. Why has that happened? It has happened because at the same time federal revenues were trimmed through tax cuts, chiefly benefitting the wealthy, federal expenditures soared on account of the war in Iraq. As I asserted in War Taxes: Even A Discussion Can Teach Lessons:

War cannot be done on the cheap. War is not free. War ought not be purchased on a credit card. War is a national commitment. Hiding the true cost of war in order to influence a nation's willingness to engage in war is wrong. Ultimately, the price to be paid will be dangerously high.

The advocates of keeping taxes as they are claim that deficits can be eliminated by reducing federal spending. When asked, they claim that there is enough "fat" in the budget to account for sufficient cuts. Yet when one adds up the expenditures that are not "fat," one tallies up an amount larger than federal revenue. Unless cuts are made in social security, medicare, or defense spending, cutting expenditures alone will not accomplish what needs to be done. A significant, and increasing, portion of federal expenditures is interest on the national debt, and so the failure to balance the budget during the past decade means that it will be even more difficult to do so in the future. When individuals go through life spending more than they earn, they end up in bankruptcy and even if they avoid bankruptcy, lose many of their possessions, including their homes. Why would it be any different with the nation? The answer, that a government can print money whereas we mere mortals cannot do so, at least not legally, is no answer, because the printing of money devalues its worth. And that brings the analysis back to the declining dollar.

Change is necessary. If someone needs a phrase to describe it, that person can borrow this one: our elected officials need to act responsibly and put aside their irresponsible ways. Unfortunately, when the legislation that permits the tax cuts to expire came up for a vote, the Senate overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to do away with earmarks. The moral of that story is that if change is to occur, it must occur in more than one office on Pennsylvania Avenue. That office is only one part of the problem and only one part of the solution.

In the flurry of news reports, editorials, commentaries, and blog posts dealing with the latest adventures of New York's now ex-governor, so much attention has been given to the sensational aspects of the story that almost lost in the buzz is the role of the IRS as the triggering actor in the entire affair. Yes, the story begins with the IRS.

According to the New York Times, the story began when several banks discovered "unusual movements of cash" in accounts connected with the governor. The banks reported these transactions to the IRS. I suppose one could argue that the story begins with the banks, but if there were no IRS, then the story very well may not have been a story. The IRS determined that the governor seemed to be trying to disguise the "source, destination, or purpose" of the cash transactions. When the investigators discovered that the cash was moving into shell companies, they suspected financial crimes. They were thinking about bribes, corruption, illegal campaign contributions, and similar wrong-doing. So the IRS called in the FBI, asking for agents expertised in political corruption. After a little digging, the FBI discovered that the transactions were being hidden to "conceal" Spitzer's transactions with the escort service employees. After establishing a contact with a former employee, the agents obtained a warrant for cell phone wiretaps of individuals involved in the business. It turned out that the payments made to the escort service were funneled into those shell corporations. Why? According to a former employee of the escort service, this was done so that the payments would look "like a business transaction." I wonder if the customers have tried to deduct the payments.

Many people, even those not practicing tax, know the story of how Al Capone was brought down. Of all the government agencies and law enforcement officials trying to deal with him, it was the IRS -- technically, its predecessor -- that triggered his downfall. The IRS is powerful. Why? Because the IRS administers the tax law. The tax law touches almost every aspect of human life. The IRS also does more than administer the tax law. It is, for example, the agency to which cash transactions exceeding $10,000 must be reported. Why? Because the Congress knows that if it wants something involving money done thoroughly, the IRS is the agency to use. That's why there are dozens of tax credits involving energy, adoption, housing, transportation, employment, and other social policies that should be administered by agencies dealing with those issues.

So it's no wonder that the IRS, having been given power over the administration of tax laws, which reach into all sorts of transactions, is in a position to examine the transactions of every citizen. After this latest episode, it would not be surprising to see a resurgence of "anti-IRS" sound bites from candidates and office holders. It's been said that the "anti-IRS" politicians hate the IRS. Perhaps it's not a matter of hate. It may be that they fear the IRS.

According to a recent Philadelphia Inquirer report, the controversy in Pennsylvania over how to fund highway and other infrastructure repairs has narrowed down to a choice between raising tolls, including imposing them on Interstate 80 which currently is toll-free, or leasing the turnpike. Apparently whatever plans there were to increase the gasoline tax have fallen by the wayside.

The gasoline tax has lost its appeal in part because new information released by several state and federal agencies suggests that the revenue flow from state gasoline taxes will not keep up with needs, even if the proposed increases that have been floating around were to be enacted. The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue reported that taxable gallons of gasoline had fallen by 4 percent, from 5.2 billion gallons in fiscal year end 2005 to 5 billion gallons in fiscal year end 2007. Revenues from the gasoline tax, though technically it is a liquid fuels tax because it also applies to fuels other than gasoline, grew by only 25 percent from 1997 through 2007, whereas other taxes revenues grew by 50 percent. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has reported a 0.13 percent decline in vehicular traffic at 59 counting points, and the Federal Highway Administration indicates, in preliminary reports, that nationally, miles driven in December 2007 were only 99.6 percent of those driven a year earlier.

Other information also suggests that gasoline, or liquid fuels, usage will decline, or at least not grow at a rate that would generate sufficient revenue. Sales of hybrid and electric vehicles is increasing as a proportion of new vehicle sales. New federal mileage standards almost certainly will reduce, or at least significantly slow the growth in, gasoline consumption as the next decade unfolds. The population of Pennsylvania is not growing.

For these reasons, advocates of toll increases and advocates of leasing the turnpike join forces to push aside increases in the gasoline tax. One legislator predicted that even a two-penny increase would fail miserably in the legislature. Unfortunately, the advocates of toll increases and the advocates of leasing the turnpike fail to see the fatal flaws in their own favorite fund-raising fiascos. Toll increases are fine, when it comes to taking care of the toll road, but it isn't feasible to impose tolls on roads other than limited access highways. It makes no sense to require drivers using the turnpike or I-80 to subsidize repairs to Routes 1, 3, 320, 252, or 202, to name but a few highways in the southeastern part of the state where I live. Imposing tolls on the Schuylkill Expressway, which is a limited access highway, would be a difficult logistical maneuver, all opposition aside. I explored the toll increase proposals in Raising Revenue Through Tolls Isn't Simple, and in User Fees and Costs, to name but two of my several posts on the topic. When it comes to leasing the turnpike, all that needs to be said at this point is that it is a terrible idea, at best a short-term solution with a excessive long-term cost, as I explored in Selling Off Government Revenue Streams: Good Idea or Bad? and in Selling Government Revenue Streams: A Bad Idea That Won't Go Away.

It's easy, of course, to pan all three proposals. It's more difficult to provide a constructive suggestion. Yet in this instance it is easy. As I discussed in Mileage-Based Road Fees, Yet Again, the answer is the mileage-based road fee. As I previously explained in Tax Meets Technology on the Road and in Mileage-Based Road Fees, Again, this fee is not restricted to limited-access highways, does not require the building of toll gates and toll booths, is not dependent on the level of liquid fuels use, can be adjusted for the degree of wear and tear inflicted by the vehicle on roads and bridges, and is easy to administer. It already is being used in other jurisdictions.

The Pennsylvania legislature needs to look beyond the present and consider implementing ideas that are ready to be put in place for the future. Gasoline taxes, tolls, and selling public goods to profit-hungry private enterprises are, or at least should be, strategies of the past. They are being eclipsed by newer, better ideas, and Pennsylvania needs to get on board. It doesn't help when a leading state legislator describes tolls as the "wave of the future," because in doing so, what he demonstrates is a surprising ignorance about the actual wave of the future that already is in the present, namely, mileage-based road fees. With a $1.7 billion annual shortfall in road and bridge maintenance requirements, the Pennsylvania legislature cannot afford to continue functioning in ways that account, at least in part, for the stagnation in the state's population and economic growth.

Yesterday's post, Bridge Motorists Easy Mark for Inflated User Fees, in which I criticized the DRPA's decision to use bridge tolls to fund infrastructure improvements for a professional soccer franchise, has brought a humorous, though certainly serious, response from a reader, who remains anonymous:

Was it 35 years ago that Philadelphia Magazine ... ran a much praised piece titled "The River Pirates" about the DRPA of that time?

My sister thinks any soccer team that plays in Chester should carry that moniker.

The more things change......

Indeed. I think the reader's sister should enter the team naming contest, which according to this story is soon to be underway. The Chester River Pirates. How appropriate!

A week ago, in Soccer Franchise Socks It to Bridge Users, I noted the decision by the Delaware River Port Authority to divert some of its funds to financing the construction of a soccer stadium complex in the city of Chester, and explained why I objected to the use of bridge tolls for purposes other than the maintenance, repair, upgrading, or construction of the bridge or projects designed to alleviate the impact of the bridge on surrounding areas. The incongruity of the decision is exacerbated by the DRPA's announcement that it needs to raise bridge tolls in order to finance bridge repairs. It seems rather absurd to be asking motorists for what could be 66% toll increases while dishing out allegedly surplus funds to a major league sports franchise.

On Saturday, a spokesperson for New Jersey's governor Corzine announced that Corzine would not use his veto power to block the DRPA plan to funnel toll revenue to a sports franchise. According to this Philadelphia Inquirer report, Corzine had been thinking about doing so, explaining that using bridge tolls for that purpose was not his "first choice on where to put money." Under the terms of the law that established the DRPA, which oversees bridges that connect two states, the governors of Pennsylvania and New Jersey have the power to veto DRPA decisions.

What changed the governor's mind? The governor's attorney revealed that Corzine perceived the $10 million hand-out to developers of restaurants and businesses to be "a legitimate alternative use." Hah. The reason is implicit in the next part of the attorney's explanation. Corzine expects that the members of the DRPA from Pennsylvania to support "New Jersey projects" and thus he would not veto the money for the Pennsylvania project. So, folks, in the not too near future, expect to see the DRPA raise tolls yet again, to finance perhaps a private shopping mall in New Jersey, there being such a shortage of them, he says sarcastically, or some other private venture whose owners think it's a legitimate business plan to get taxpayers to pay for their enterprises. Surely this will be the payback to prevent the governor and his political party from losing votes in the next relevant election, when the residents of south Jersey who pay bridge tolls consider that their objections to the use of tolls for private projects might affect their choice for the state's next governor. If this is the way a democratic government should function, we ought not be so eager to export it as a high quality alternative to civic order. Members of the DRPA are appointed and do not run for their positions, so they simply are not accountable to the people on whom they impose bridge tolls. One would think that the DRPA's charter should limit its expenditures to repair, maintenance, and reconstruction of bridges and other infrastructure under its control, but apparently there is nothing to prevent the DRPA from handing out money to unrelated private endeavors and then making up for the politicians' support by dishing out more money for more unrelated private endeavors. Where's the democracy in this system?

In fact, the DRPA has been handing out so much money to unrelated development projects that it has racked up more than a billion dollars in debt. To service this debt, almost half of the tolls that it collects is used to pay interest and principal on these loans. Does it seem as though some banks are doing well with this system? Why did the DRPA put money into Lincoln Financial Field, the Kimmel Center, the New Jersey Aquarium, and dozens of other projects that surely are not bridges? I can imagine the excuses but there aren't any viable worthwhile justifications.

It comes down to one thing. Motorists who need to use the DRPA bridges have no other choice. They do not have a say in who gets appointed to the DRPA. At best, they have a vote for the people who appoint the DRPA, or in some instances, a vote for the people who select the people who appoint DRPA members. In other words, the bridge-using motorists are easy marks for those who want to divert public money to the benefit of private entrepreneurs. That's no way to run a tax system, and it's no way to run a user fee system.

The editors at Blawg Review directed my attention to a post on Leesburg Tomorrow that suggested copyrights be taxed. The editors asked me if I cared to respond. Yes, I will.

Understanding the question is easier if the analysis begins at the beginning. In an editorial addressing the arguments by the owners of copywritten material and by those who defend sharing that material through peer-to-peer and other means, the Los Angeles Times noted that attempts to compare intellectual property to real and tangible personal property fall short. A poster on Slashdot noted that someone responding to the L.A. Times editorial had asked "If Intellectual Property is actually property, why isn't it covered by a property tax?" To that inquiry, Leesburg Tomorrow asked why copyrights aren't taxed. The post noted that taxing copyrights would raise revenue, and also have the effect of causing copyright owners to release their rights into the public domain sooner and more frequently.

The Leesburg Tomorrow post quoted the Los Angeles Times editorial: "The present system treats these copyrighted works as a funny kind of real property with no carrying costs, taxes or significant fees."

There are two issues to consider. One is the assumption that copyrights are not taxed. The other is whether copyrights should be taxed.

It may come as a surprise to many people, but in most states that do have intangibles taxes, copyrights, patents, and other intellectual property is included in the list of intangible property subject to the tax. For example, property subject to taxation under the Arizona Intangibles Tax of 1933 included "copyrights, patents, trade-marks or other intangible property not otherwise specifically taxed used in the conduct of a trade or business." Georgia Code section 48-1-2(13) defines intangible personal property as "the capital stock of all corporations; money, notes, bonds, accounts, or other credits, secured or unsecured; patent rights, copyrights, franchises, and any other classes and kinds of property defined by law as intangible personal property." I haven't tried to research all of the states. I will leave that effort to others. Some states tax intangibles, and some don't. The intangibles tax is a property tax on intangible property, and although it is not as widespread as the more familiar real property tax, it exists. Compliance with the intangibles tax may be spotty, but to claim that copyrights are not subject to a property tax as is real property isn't correct as a universal principle.

Should copyrights be taxed, in some sort of universal way? It depends on the purpose of the taxation. If one accepts the wisdom of a tax imposed on property, there should be no distinction between real property and personal property, or between tangible property and intangible property. Putting aside questions of exemptions for the first so many dollars of property, and putting aside rates, it does make sense to treat property as property. On the other hand, if one digs more deeply, the underlying question is why should a tax be imposed on property. The answer might suggest treating different types of property differently. For example, a property tax imposed on owners of real property the proceeds of which are used to plow snow on streets accessing the property and to collect leaves raked from the property makes sense. A property tax imposed on the value of real property and the tangible property thereon, the proceeds of which are used to fund fire and police protection makes sense. Of course, in many states, real property taxes are used to fund public education, and serious arguments can be made that this is not the most appropriate nor efficient means of funding public education. So the question is what does the owner of intellectual property obtain from a tax imposed on that property? A fee used to administer some sort of copyright protection system is easily justified. A fee or tax used to finance public education can be criticized in the same manner as is the taxation of real property to fund public education.

Should intellectual property be taxed in order to persuade its owners to release it into the public domain more readily and more quickly? There is a problem with using taxation to control behavior. For example, the Internal Revenue Code is overloaded with credits and other provisions dealing with energy conservation, energy production, adoption of children, and other issues better handled more directly. Everyone complains about the complexity of tax laws, yet too many people jump on the bandwagon of proposals that contribute to that complexity. If society thinks that intellectual property should be released into the public domain more quickly than presently occurs, the solution is a change in the period for which the law provides a monopoly with respect to intellectual property. Trying to accomplish this objective through taxation obscures the debate that would occur if the proposal to shorten the periods of monopoly were addressed up front.