Designing the Tax Treatment of Litigation-Related Costs

Defendants often deduct for income tax purposes their litigation-related costs, such as attorney fees and payments to settle claims or satisfy judgments. The result is often a large gap between the sticker price of settlements or judgments and their after-tax cost—what defendants really pay out of pocket. The problem: For every dollar that a defendant avoids in tax liability by, for example, deducting the damage awards it pays, the civil justice system falls that much short of its corrective-justice or optimal-deterrence goals in that case. For this reason, the entire civil justice system should care about this question: How should income tax law treat litigation-related costs? This Article identifies the critical tax-design choices that must be faced but that prior commentary has largely ignored: How to attribute litigation-related costs to an income-producing activity; whether to treat liability insurer payments made on a defendant’s behalf as income to that defendant; whether to coordinate the tax treatment of a payor’s damages payments with the tax treatment of those receipts to the payee; and whether litigation-related costs should be treated as capital expenditures. Then, the Article offers a new default rule for settlement agreements: Unless a settlement agreement expressly indicates otherwise, a settling defendant promises not to seek an allowable tax deduction for litigation-related costs. In so doing, this Article reveals the issues that lawyers, judges, and scholars must no longer ignore when they argue over how an income tax system could or should treat litigation-related costs

\u27Sex\u27 and Religion after Bostock

This paper reviews the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County. There, the Court held that by barring employer discrimination against any individual “because of such individual’s . . . sex,” Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also bars employment discrimination because an individual is gay or transgender. The paper then speculates about how much Bostock will affect how likely lower court judges will read other “sex” discrimination prohibitions in the U.S. Code in the same way, in part based on a canvass of the text of about 150 of those prohibitions. The paper also discusses the religion-based defenses that defendants may raise in response under Title VII itself, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. And the paper suggests how Bostock’s effect will likely vary with the influence of Trump-appointed federal judges

“A descriptive study to assess level of academic stress and anxiety of science stream students among selected higher secondary school at Kheda District.”

The words "Stress" and " anxiety" have permeated every aspect of our generation today.In order to function properly, every student has to experience pleasant academic stress and anxiety,also known as eustress.When a student is unable to study or cope with a circumstance, they experience negative stress,also known as distress.Stress is a condition where a student's usal state of equilibrium is altered.By the year 2020, according to the WHO ,that will be one of the main causes of disability.The concern over academic stress and anxiety among science students has grown in recent years.According to estimates, academic stress and anxiety connect to annual performance and result impair the overall performance of 10% to 30% of School students of science stream. AIM:The study aims are to assess academic stress and anxiety regarding school, education system and examination to improve level of knowledge and to reduce stressors, in higher secondary school students of science stream. METHODOLOGY: Non- experimental research design with quantitative research approach was used for research study. The researcher used purposive sampling technique for selecting 300 samples. The tools used, Section 1: socio-demographic data Section 2: structured perceived academic stress scale questionnaires regarding stress. Section 3: Anxiety scale to assess the attitude by anxiety scale. Validity of tool was assessed by 11 experts.Assessment was ascertained by the chi-square formula

The First Liability Insurance Cartel in America, 1896–1906

Whether works of authorship should be protected from unauthorized changes and, if so, in what manner, are questions of endless fascination to intellectual property scholars. Jewish law is not typically considered a “work of authorship” although in many ways it can be so viewed. This article is concerned with exploring the Jewish tradition as intellectual or cultural property. It focuses on the human dimension of creativity embodied in the Jewish tradition, and how that dimension is manifested in the rabbinic interpretation of Jewish law. The resulting tradition — as it is embodied in both the Jewish texts and lived by the people — has afforded the Jewish people their unique identity throughout the ages. Simply put, the Jewish tradition is a very unique form of cultural property. This analytical framework has significant implications for how to negotiate the balance between preservation and development of the tradition

Tax Liability for Wage Theft

This paper shows how, under existing tax law, illegal wage underpayment by an employer (sometimes called “wage theft”) may generate employer tax liability for unreported income or disallowed business expense deductions. Given that the tax authority needs information from the underpaid worker to prove such liability, the paper identifies two ways that a worker can transmit that information to a tax authority: becoming a tax informant, or bringing a qui tam action under a state false claims act. Finally, the paper discusses possible influences on the decision of the unpaid worker to inform on the employer to the tax authority, and considers the conditions under which a tax authority is likely to audit an employer based on such information. In so doing, the paper identifies a new approach to combating wage theft and an undiscovered implication of basic income tax law

Unpacking the Employee-Misconduct Defense

When a worker sues an employer, the employer sometimes learns thereafter that the worker had committed some misconduct at the time of hire or while on the job. In those cases, most American work laws provide the employer with a defense that precludes employer liability, or at least limits remedies, if the employer shows that, had it known of the worker’s misconduct at the time of its allegedly wrongful act, it would have fired the worker because of that misconduct. This Article evaluates the prevailing arguments for and against the employee-misconduct defense as it appears in the National Labor Relations Act, federal and state employment discrimination and retaliation statutes, state contract and tort law, as well as state workers’ compensation statutes. It finds that virtually all of these arguments (both for and against) are incomplete, incoherent, or rely on unverified empirical premises. This finding implies that, though pervasive, virtually no sound reason currently exists for adopting the defense or (apart from stare decisis) continuing to apply it

Tax Liability for Wage Theft

This paper shows how, under existing tax law, illegal wage underpayment by an employer (sometimes called “wage theft”) may generate employer tax liability for unreported income or disallowed business expense deductions. Given that the tax authority needs information from the underpaid worker to prove such liability, the paper identifies two ways that a worker can transmit that information to a tax authority: becoming a tax informant, or bringing a qui tam action under a state false claims act. Finally, the paper discusses possible influences on the decision of the unpaid worker to inform on the employer to the tax authority, and considers the conditions under which a tax authority is likely to audit an employer based on such information. In so doing, the paper identifies a new approach to combating wage theft and an undiscovered implication of basic income tax law