Abstract: Histories of the modern American income tax have generally focused on the role that soc... more Abstract: Histories of the modern American income tax have generally focused on the role that social and political forces have played in the development of a new tax system. This article seeks to move beyond the social and political determinants to examine the ...
... Some might disagree with Einhorn's characterization that Midwestern constitu-tion writers... more ... Some might disagree with Einhorn's characterization that Midwestern constitu-tion writers "misunderstood" the implications of uniform taxation. ... theorists and tacti-cians, but H. Robert Baker persuasively suggests that to the better known names of William Jay, Robert Rantoul, Jr ...
Abstract: Histories of the modern American income tax have generally focused on the role that soc... more Abstract: Histories of the modern American income tax have generally focused on the role that social and political forces have played in the development of a new tax system. This article seeks to move beyond the social and political determinants to examine the ...
... McGilchrist believes, like Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Martin Heidegger, that the... more ... McGilchrist believes, like Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Martin Heidegger, that there has been since ancient times a gradual encroachment over time of ra-tionality on the natural territory of intuition or instinct, which in his opinion has had baleful consequences for ...
In the last few years, corporate mergers and acquisitions witnessed explosive growth. Although mo... more In the last few years, corporate mergers and acquisitions witnessed explosive growth. Although more recent market conditions have halted the latest merger movement, scholars and commentators have used the earlier rise in merger activity to reevaluate the preferential tax treatment granted to those mergers and acquisitions that fall under the U.S. tax law's definition of a corporate "reorganization." Under the current Internal Revenue Code, neither shareholders nor corporations recognize gain or loss on the exchange of stock or securities in transactions that qualify as a "corporate reorganization." The significance of this tax rule raises a central question: why does this tax preference exist? Since its statutory inception in 1919, numerous scholars have debated the theoretical justifications for this tax law. Few, however, have sought to move beyond intellectual and conceptual origins to address the more pertinent question of institutional development: how and why has this tax benefit become a deeply entrenched part of American corporate tax law? This Article mainly addresses this second question. It contends that historically constituted political and economic interests have gradually transformed this law from its beginnings as a limited statutory exception into a modern version of voluntary corporate welfare. This transformation can be explained less by resort to timeless economic logic or legal doctrine than by reference to the institutional dynamics and the unfolding of concrete economic, political, and social processes.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the U.S. system of public finance underwent a dramatic, str... more At the turn of the twentieth century, the U.S. system of public finance underwent a dramatic, structural transformation. The late nineteenth-century system of indirect taxes, associated mainly with the tariff, was eclipsed in the early decades of the twentieth century by a progressive income tax. This shift in U.S. tax policy marked the emergence of a new fiscal polity-one that was guided not simply by the functional and structural need for government revenue but by concerns for equity and economic and social justice. This Article explores the paradigm shift in legal and economic theories that undergirded this dramatic shift in U.S. tax policy. More specifically, this Article contends that a particular group of academic economists played a pivotal role in supplanting the "benefits theory" of taxation, and its concomitant vision of the state as a passive protector of private property, with a more equitable principle of taxation based on one's "ability to pay"-a principle that promoted a more active role for the state in the distribution of fiscal burdens. In facilitating this structural transformation, these theorists were able to use the growing concentration of wealth and the ascendancy of new economic ideas as justifications for using a progressive income tax to reallocate the burdens of financing the burgeoning American regulatory, administrative, and welfare state.
Abstract: Histories of the modern American income tax have generally focused on the role that soc... more Abstract: Histories of the modern American income tax have generally focused on the role that social and political forces have played in the development of a new tax system. This article seeks to move beyond the social and political determinants to examine the ...
... Some might disagree with Einhorn's characterization that Midwestern constitu-tion writers... more ... Some might disagree with Einhorn's characterization that Midwestern constitu-tion writers "misunderstood" the implications of uniform taxation. ... theorists and tacti-cians, but H. Robert Baker persuasively suggests that to the better known names of William Jay, Robert Rantoul, Jr ...
Abstract: Histories of the modern American income tax have generally focused on the role that soc... more Abstract: Histories of the modern American income tax have generally focused on the role that social and political forces have played in the development of a new tax system. This article seeks to move beyond the social and political determinants to examine the ...
... McGilchrist believes, like Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Martin Heidegger, that the... more ... McGilchrist believes, like Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Martin Heidegger, that there has been since ancient times a gradual encroachment over time of ra-tionality on the natural territory of intuition or instinct, which in his opinion has had baleful consequences for ...
In the last few years, corporate mergers and acquisitions witnessed explosive growth. Although mo... more In the last few years, corporate mergers and acquisitions witnessed explosive growth. Although more recent market conditions have halted the latest merger movement, scholars and commentators have used the earlier rise in merger activity to reevaluate the preferential tax treatment granted to those mergers and acquisitions that fall under the U.S. tax law's definition of a corporate "reorganization." Under the current Internal Revenue Code, neither shareholders nor corporations recognize gain or loss on the exchange of stock or securities in transactions that qualify as a "corporate reorganization." The significance of this tax rule raises a central question: why does this tax preference exist? Since its statutory inception in 1919, numerous scholars have debated the theoretical justifications for this tax law. Few, however, have sought to move beyond intellectual and conceptual origins to address the more pertinent question of institutional development: how and why has this tax benefit become a deeply entrenched part of American corporate tax law? This Article mainly addresses this second question. It contends that historically constituted political and economic interests have gradually transformed this law from its beginnings as a limited statutory exception into a modern version of voluntary corporate welfare. This transformation can be explained less by resort to timeless economic logic or legal doctrine than by reference to the institutional dynamics and the unfolding of concrete economic, political, and social processes.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the U.S. system of public finance underwent a dramatic, str... more At the turn of the twentieth century, the U.S. system of public finance underwent a dramatic, structural transformation. The late nineteenth-century system of indirect taxes, associated mainly with the tariff, was eclipsed in the early decades of the twentieth century by a progressive income tax. This shift in U.S. tax policy marked the emergence of a new fiscal polity-one that was guided not simply by the functional and structural need for government revenue but by concerns for equity and economic and social justice. This Article explores the paradigm shift in legal and economic theories that undergirded this dramatic shift in U.S. tax policy. More specifically, this Article contends that a particular group of academic economists played a pivotal role in supplanting the "benefits theory" of taxation, and its concomitant vision of the state as a passive protector of private property, with a more equitable principle of taxation based on one's "ability to pay"-a principle that promoted a more active role for the state in the distribution of fiscal burdens. In facilitating this structural transformation, these theorists were able to use the growing concentration of wealth and the ascendancy of new economic ideas as justifications for using a progressive income tax to reallocate the burdens of financing the burgeoning American regulatory, administrative, and welfare state.
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Papers by Ajay Mehrotra