“Tax Simplification”—Grave Threat to the Charitable Contribution Deduction: The Problem and a Proposed Solution

The present National Administration has continued to support proposed legislative changes aimed at substantially reducing the number of income tax returns in which deductions are itemized. The author contends that these tax simplification proposals are incompatible with the preservation of the charitable contribution deduction and would undermine the position of voluntary charitable organizations by reducing the incentives for giving. He proposes a solution to this dilemma by promoting the charitable contribution deduction, with certain limitations, to the position of a deduction from gross income, rather than a deduction from adjusted gross income

“Tax Simplification”—Grave Threat to the Charitable Contribution Deduction: The Problem and a Proposed Solution

The present National Administration has continued to support proposed legislative changes aimed at substantially reducing the number of income tax returns in which deductions are itemized. The author contends that these tax simplification proposals are incompatible with the preservation of the charitable contribution deduction and would undermine the position of voluntary charitable organizations by reducing the incentives for giving. He proposes a solution to this dilemma by promoting the charitable contribution deduction, with certain limitations, to the position of a deduction from gross income, rather than a deduction from adjusted gross income

Deduction as Reduction

Deduction systems and graph rewriting systems are compared within a common categorical framework. This leads to an improved deduction method in diagrammatic logics

Deduction modulo theory

This paper is a survey on Deduction modulo theor

Principles and Implementation of Deductive Parsing

We present a system for generating parsers based directly on the metaphor of parsing as deduction. Parsing algorithms can be represented directly as deduction systems, and a single deduction engine can interpret such deduction systems so as to implement the corresponding parser. The method generalizes easily to parsers for augmented phrase structure formalisms, such as definite-clause grammars and other logic grammar formalisms, and has been used for rapid prototyping of parsing algorithms for a variety of formalisms including variants of tree-adjoining grammars, categorial grammars, and lexicalized context-free grammars.Comment: 69 pages, includes full Prolog cod

Finitary Deduction Systems

Cryptographic protocols are the cornerstone of security in distributed systems. The formal analysis of their properties is accordingly one of the focus points of the security community, and is usually split among two groups. In the first group, one focuses on trace-based security properties such as confidentiality and authentication, and provides decision procedures for the existence of attacks for an on-line attackers. In the second group, one focuses on equivalence properties such as privacy and guessing attacks, and provides decision procedures for the existence of attacks for an offline attacker. In all cases the attacker is modeled by a deduction system in which his possible actions are expressed. We present in this paper a notion of finitary deduction systems that aims at relating both approaches. We prove that for such deduction systems, deciding equivalence properties for on-line attackers can be reduced to deciding reachability properties in the same setting.Comment: 30 pages. Work begun while in the CASSIS Project, INRIA Nancy Grand Es

Mortgage Interest Deduction

Reviews the mortgage interest deduction's fiscal costs, its limitations in subsidizing homeownership, and alternatives. Analyzes the estimated effects of eliminating it, replacing it with alternative tax credits, and limiting the deduction to 28 percent

Upside-down Deduction

Over the recent years, several proposals were made to enhance database systems with automated reasoning. In this article we analyze two such enhancements based on meta-interpretation. We consider on the one hand the theorem prover Satchmo, on the other hand the Alexander and Magic Set methods. Although they achieve different goals and are based on distinct reasoning paradigms, Satchmo and the Alexander or Magic Set methods can be similarly described by upside-down meta-interpreters, i.e., meta-interpreters implementing one reasoning principle in terms of the other. Upside-down meta-interpretation gives rise to simple and efficient implementations, but has not been investigated in the past. This article is devoted to studying this technique. We show that it permits one to inherit a search strategy from an inference engine, instead of implementing it, and to combine bottom-up and top-down reasoning. These properties yield an explanation for the efficiency of Satchmo and a justification for the unconventional approach to top-down reasoning of the Alexander and Magic Set methods

Incentives for Conservation Easements: The Charitable Deduction or a Better Way

Halperin talks about tax-policy concerns relating to the charitable deduction for conservation easement donations. The conflict of interest between charity and other owners raises a concern that the charitable deduction would not reflect the ultimate charitable benefit. The deduction for conservation easements is the principal exception to this rule despite the significant potential for abuse and the distinct possibility that the public benefit may be less than anticipated