This testimony describes how taxes on corporate earnings have dropped because of corporate moves to avoid taxes and because of shareholder shifts from taxable to nontaxable accounts. Secondly, the testimony describes how a lower estimate of the taxable share of US stock complicates attempts to...
In this report, Rosenthal and Austin demonstrate that the share of U.S. stocks held by taxable accounts has declined sharply over the last 50 years, and they urge lawmakers to carefully consider this shareholder base erosion when determining how best to tax corporate earnings.
We explore issues related to a financial transaction tax (FTT) in the United States. We trace the history and current practice of the tax in the United States and other countries, review evidence of its impact on financial markets, and explore the key design issues any such tax must address. We...
The massive financial market failures that led to the Great Recession have prompted renewed calls for a financial transaction tax (FTT) to discourage excessive risk taking and recoup the costs of the crisis. A well-designed FTT could raise up to about 0.4 percent of GDP ($75 billion in 2017) in...
In response to the financial market crisis and Great Recession, there has been a resurgence of interest in financial transaction taxes (FTTs) around the world. We estimate that a well-designed FTT could raise about $50 billion per year in the United States and would be quite progressive. We...
In a recent Tax Notes article, Shay argued that Treasury could write regulations to reduce the tax incentives for U.S. corporations to expatriate. Rosenthal agrees with Shay and analyzes the legal support for regulations under section 385.
Private equity has grown exponentially: it now controls and operates a large number of the companies in our economy. But private equity is just that: private. Its operations are confidential and difficult to parse. This article attempts to demystify the business of private equity. It also...
The following is the text of a debate that occurred between Rosenthal and Needham at the May meeting of the American Bar Association Section of Taxation in Washington regarding the proper tax treatment of private equity funds and their partners under current law. The introduction should be...
Steven Rosenthal's testimony before the House Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures of the Committee on Ways and Means on the Discussion Drafts proposals to reform the tax rules for derivatives and securities investments.
Foreign investors, retirement accounts, and other tax-exempt entities now dominate US stock ownership. This shift has important implications for understanding who wins and who loses...
Bloomberg recently reported on an exchange traded fund (ETF) with the ticker symbol BOXX that exploits various tax rules to transform what’s effectively interest income,...
In the United States’ voluntary tax system, taxpayers are responsible for correctly reporting their incomes to the IRS, rather than having the government determine their...
Companies now spend more than a $1 trillion annually to repurchase their stock, in lieu of paying higher dividends to their shareholders, or investing more...
Third-party payment platforms such as Airbnb, eBay, and PayPal found a surprise gift from the Biden Administration in their Christmas stockings last month—one that likely...
The New York Times reported that Chicago businessman Barre Seid donated his entire business, tax free, to the Marble Freedom Trust, a tax-exempt advocacy organization...
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) approved by Congress last week included a new 1 percent stock buyback excise tax on US publicly traded corporations. Many...
President Joe Biden and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) have proposed different ways to tax unrealized capital gains every year. Their shared goal...
The “tax gap”—the difference between taxes owed to the government and taxes actually collected—often is equated with evasion . But the tax gap is more...
In a recent report co-authored with University of Chicago Professor Daniel Hemel, I described how our retirement tax system favors the rich disproportionately. But it’s...
Mega-IRAs are hot this summer, following a June 2021 report by the nonprofit news service ProPublica that revealed—based on leaked IRS files—that a handful of...
In his American Families Plan, President Biden unveiled a tax compliance initiative aimed at closing the gap between taxes that are owed and what are...
Last week, a group of prominent academic and government economists published a study that estimated the top 1 percent of Americans hide more than 20...
Our new analysis shows that foreign investors owned about 40 percent of US corporate equity in 2019, up substantially over the last few decades. Retirement...
Yesterday, I testified before the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight on “tax fairness,” and the hearing spotlighted the reporting of new details on President...
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the IRS are right: Because the hundreds of billions of dollars the businesses are getting through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief,...
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act grants massive tax relief for business losses, but most of the benefits will be reaped by...
