Present Law and Analysis Relating to Individual Retirement Arrangements

[Excerpt] The House Committee on Ways and Means, Select Revenue Measures Subcommittee, has scheduled a public hearing to take place on June 26, 2008, on the role of individual retirement arrangements (“IRAs”) in our retirement system. The hearing is scheduled to focus on the recently issued report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), entitled “Individual Retirement Accounts, Government Actions Could Encourage More Employers to Offer IRAs to Employees,” June 2008; the role of IRAs in our retirement system; and legislative proposals for automatic IRA enrollment. This document,1 prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, includes a description of present law and analysis relating to IRAs

History, Present Law, and Analysis of the Federal Wealth Transfer Tax System

[Excerpt]The Committee on Finance has scheduled a public hearing for November 14, 2007, entitled “Federal Estate Tax: Uncertainty in Planning Under the Current Law.” This document provides a history, description, and analysis of the Federal estate and gift tax rules. The overview presents data about the estate and gift tax, a brief discussion of possible economic effects of the tax, and a short summary of present law estate and gift tax rules. Wealth transfer taxes have been part of the U.S. Federal tax system since 1797. The present-law Federal wealth transfer tax system consists of three related components: a gift tax, an estate tax, and a generation-skipping transfer tax

The Dark Side of Transfer Pricing: Its Role in Tax Avoidance and Wealth Retentiveness

In conventional accounting literature, ?transfer pricing? is portrayed as a technique for optimal allocation of costs and revenues amongst divisions, subsidiaries and joint ventures within a group of related entities. Such representations of transfer pricing simultaneously acknowledge and occlude how it is deeply implicated in processes of wealth retentiveness that enable companies to avoid taxes and facilitate the flight of capital. A purely technical conception of transfer pricing calculations abstracts them from the politico-economic contexts of their development and use. The context is the modern corporation in an era of globalized trade and its relationship to state tax authorities, shareholders and other possible stakeholders. Transfer pricing practices are responsive to opportunities for determining values in ways that are consequential for enhancing private gains, and thereby contributing to relative social impoverishment, by avoiding the payment of public taxes. Evidence is provided by examining some of the transfer prices practices used by corporations to avoid taxes in developing and developed economies

Did Tax Incentives play Any Part in Increased Giving?

Since 2000, increased taxation incentives along with other measures have been used by the government to encourage philanthropy in Australia. Since the new incentives were introduced, claimed gift tax deductions have increased. However, generally, donors are not aware of the new tax incentives for giving and in any case they report that their motivation for giving is not primarily, if at all, to obtain tax incentives. This article examines this paradox and seeks some possible explanations

Explanation of the Tax Technical Corrections Act of 1995 (H.R. 1121) /

"JCS-6-95.""March 8, 1995."Shipping list no.: 95-0249-P.Distributed to some depository libraries in microfiche.At head of title: Joint committee print.Includes bibliographical references.Mode of access: Internet

Comparison of revenue reconciliation provisions of H.R. 2491 as passed by the House and the Senate /

Mode of access: Internet