The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution allows Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states on the basis of population. It was passed by Congress in 1909 in response to the 1895 Supreme Court case of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. The Sixteenth Amendment was ratified by the requisite number of states on February 3, 1913, and effectively overruled the Supreme Court's ruling in Pollock.
A progressive tax is a tax in which the average tax rate increases as the taxable amount increases. The term "progressive" refers to the way the tax rate progresses from low to high, with the result that a taxpayer's average tax rate is less than the person's marginal tax rate. The term can be applied to individual taxes or to a tax system as a whole; a year, multi-year, or lifetime. Progressive taxes are imposed in an attempt to reduce the tax incidence of people with a lower ability to pay, as such taxes shift the incidence increasingly to those with a higher ability-to-pay. The opposite of a progressive tax is a regressive tax, where the average tax rate or burden decreases as an individual's ability to pay increases.
In the United States, habitual offender laws were first implemented on March 7, 1994 and are part of the United States Justice Department's Anti-Violence Strategy. These laws require a person guilty of committing both a severe violent felony and two other previous convictions to serve a mandatory life sentence in prison. The purpose of the laws is to drastically increase the punishment of those convicted of more than two serious crimes.
Tax exemption is a monetary exemption which reduces taxable income. Tax exempt status can provide complete relief from taxes, reduced rates, or tax on only a portion of items. Examples include exemption of charitable organizations from property taxes and income taxes, veterans, and certain cross-border or multi-jurisdictional scenarios.
Haig–Simons income or Schanz–Haig–Simons income is an income measure used by public finance economists to analyze economic well-being which defines income as consumption plus change in net worth. It is represented by the mathematical formula:
Most individual U.S. states collect a state income tax in addition to federal income tax. The two are separate entities. Some local governments also impose an income tax, often based on state income tax calculations. Forty-three states and many localities in the United States may impose an income tax on individuals. Forty-seven states and many localities impose a tax on the income of corporations.
The Internal Revenue Code (IRC), formally the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, is the domestic portion of federal statutory tax law in the United States, published in various volumes of the United States Statutes at Large, and separately as Title 26 of the United States Code (USC). It is organized topically, into subtitles and sections, covering income tax, payroll taxes, estate taxes, gift taxes, and excise taxes; as well as procedure and administration. Its implementing agency is the Internal Revenue Service.
A habitual offender, repeat offender, or career criminal is a person convicted of a new crime who was previously convicted of a crime(s). Various state and jurisdictions may have laws targeting habitual offenders, and specifically providing for enhanced or exemplary punishments or other sanctions. They are designed to counter criminal recidivism by physical incapacitation via imprisonment.
Gross income is all a person's receipts and gains from all sources, before any deductions. The adjective "gross", as opposed to "net", generally qualifies a word referring to an amount, value, weight, number, or the like, specifying that necessary deductions have not been taken into account.
Income taxes in the United States are imposed by the federal, most state, and many local governments. The income taxes are determined by applying a tax rate, which may increase as income increases, to taxable income, which is the total income less allowable deductions. Income is broadly defined. Individuals and corporations are directly taxable, and estates and trusts may be taxable on undistributed income. Partnerships are not taxed, but their partners are taxed on their shares of partnership income. Residents and citizens are taxed on worldwide income, while nonresidents are taxed only on income within the jurisdiction. Several types of credits reduce tax, and some types of credits may exceed tax before credits. An alternative tax applies at the federal and some state levels.
Edward McCaffery is a tax law professor at the University of Southern California Law School and also a visiting professor of Law and Economics at the California Institute of Technology. At USC he is Robert C. Packard Trustee Chair in Law and Professor of Law, Economics and Political Science. He teaches Federal Income Taxation, Property, Intellectual Property, and Tax Law and Policy at USC, Law and Economics and Law and Technology at the California Institute of Technology. He also teaches Corporate Taxation, Federal Income Taxation, Partnership Taxation, Property and a Tax Policy seminar.
The Competitive Tax Plan is an approach to taxation, suggested in the United States, that would impose a 10–15% value added tax (VAT) and reduce personal and corporate income taxes. The plan was created by Michael J. Graetz, professor at Columbia law school, and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy. Graetz states that it would generate enough revenue so that families with $100,000 of annual income or less — almost 90% of all current filers — would not have to pay income taxes or file tax returns. Graetz would provide a new payroll tax offset to replace the Earned Income Tax Credit and to protect low and moderate income workers from any tax increase under the new system. Under the initial proposal, households with an annual income of more than $100,000 would be taxed at a flat 25% rate and the corporate income tax rate would be reduced to 25%. Graetz argues that reducing the corporate tax rate "would make the United States an extremely attractive nation for corporate investments for both U.S. citizens and foreign investors". According to an article in the November 19, 2002 issue of The Wall Street Journal, the Competitive Tax Plan is already being given consideration by officials in the United States Treasury Department. In 2013, Graetz presented an updated version of his plan for 2015.
Marvin A. Chirelstein was a Professor Emeritus of Law at Columbia Law School, where he taught for nearly 30 years. He taught a contracts course to first year law students as well as tax and corporate finance courses. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Professor Chirelstein taught for over 15 years at Yale Law School. He authored several course books on law.
Tax protester arguments are arguments made by people, primarily in the United States, who contend that tax laws are unconstitutional or otherwise invalid.
Jody David Armour is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, where he specializes in race issues in legal decision-making.
Stanley S. Surrey was a United States tax law scholar known as "a dean of the academic tax bar" and "the greatest tax scholar of his generation." Among his notable contributions to the field was the phrase "tax expenditure" which he coined in a 1967 speech to refer to tax breaks that serve as government subsidies unrelated to attempts to accurately measure the tax base.
Alison Dundes Renteln is a Professor of Political Science, Anthropology, Law, and Public Policy at the University of Southern California. She holds a B.A. from Harvard-Radcliffe, a J.D. from USC's Gould School of Law, and a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence & Social Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. She is also the author of The Cultural Defense (2004) which was first book-length study which provides a comprehensive overview of the debate surrounding the admissibility of cultural evidence in the courtroom. Renteln contends that the cultural defense should, in both criminal and civil matters, be given formal recognition.
Nancy Christine Staudt is the dean of the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and the Howard and Caroline Cayne Professor of Law. She is a scholar in tax, tax policy, and empirical legal studies.
