Cryptocurrency, Legibility, and Taxation

In Jarrett v. United States, a taxpayer in Tennessee is arguing that staking cryptocurrency did not result in him earning “income” under federal income tax law. This case illustrates the fundamental challenge that cryptocurrency and blockchain technology present for tax law. Wealth creation in the crypto space is not readily legible to the state. This absence of legibility threatens tax law’s reliance on placing economic activities into categories to determine how they should be taxed. Furthermore, this case highlights the harms Congress and Treasury are risking by not taking action on cryptocurrency taxation. The uncertainty and lack of guidance on the appropriate taxation of cryptocurrency is opening the door for a critical juncture in tax law to be decided via strategic litigation. This threatens a jurisprudential evasion of the democratic and administrative process in a high-stakes moment for tax law

Tax\u27s Digital Labor Dilemma

Digitalization has reshaped the relationship between companies and their customers and users. Customers and users increasingly serve a dual role. They are not only consumers but also producers, creating data and content. They are a value-creating workforce, functioning as “digital laborers.” Digital laborers’ value creation highlights that there are two parts to the question of whether multinational companies are paying their “fair share” of taxes—one of amount and one of location. First, are companies’ total tax bills paid across all countries in line with their global income? Second, is taxing authority over multinational companies’ income being divided amongst countries in a coherent and fair way? Digital laborers’ value creation implicates the second. Under the current international tax system, the presence of digital laborers in a country does not grant that country taxing rights over income stemming directly from those digital laborers’ data and content creation. As a result, what are essentially the same activities— individuals creating products and performing services for a company— are taxed differently when they are performed by digital laborers rather than by a traditional workforce. This inconsistency and the accompanying outcome that countries cannot tax corporate income arising from extensive business activities within their borders have contributed to cries that the current system is unfair. Recent reforms addressing this outcome share a common weakness. They do not recognize the function of digital laborers as producers in the modern economy. As a result, they overturn the theory of source-based taxation as a taxing right granted only to the country of production and introduce major structural changes to the international tax system that apply only to a subset of global companies. These changes are all to correct an unfairness that can be remedied under the system’s current theoretical framework and structure. This Article rejects the notion that these major theoretical and structural changes are necessary or even appropriate methods to allow digital laborers’ home countries to tax income directly related to their data and content creation. Instead, the international tax system should recognize digital laborers’ role as a new type of workforce for companies and, accordingly, allow their home countries to tax income related to their work under the existing application of the source principle and with more incremental structural reforms. In addition to minimizing disruption in international tax law, this approach reinforces coherence and fairness by taxing equivalent economic activities equivalently

Cryptocurrency, Legibility, and Taxation

In Jarrett v. United States, a taxpayer in Tennessee is arguing that staking cryptocurrency did not result in him earning “income” under federal income tax law. This case illustrates the fundamental challenge that cryptocurrency and blockchain technology present for tax law. Wealth creation in the crypto space is not readily legible to the state. This absence of legibility threatens tax law’s reliance on placing economic activities into categories to determine how they should be taxed. Furthermore, this case highlights the harms Congress and Treasury are risking by not taking action on cryptocurrency taxation. The uncertainty and lack of guidance on the appropriate taxation of cryptocurrency is opening the door for a critical juncture in tax law to be decided via strategic litigation. This threatens a jurisprudential evasion of the democratic and administrative process in a high-stakes moment for tax law

May I Pay More? Lessons from Jarrett for Blockchain Tax Policy

In this article, Parsons examines Jarrett, t in which the taxpayers argue that blockchain reward tokens should be included in income only upon sale or exchange (a position that would raise their tax bills), and she explores why they sought this treatment and what implications it holds for policymakers trying to develop a tax regime for blockchain activities

Tax\u27s Digital Labor Dilemma

Digitalization has reshaped the relationship between companies and their customers and users. Customers and users increasingly serve a dual role. They are not only consumers but also producers, creating data and content. They are a value-creating workforce, functioning as “digital laborers.” Digital laborers’ value creation highlights that there are two parts to the question of whether multinational companies are paying their “fair share” of taxes—one of amount and one of location. First, are companies’ total tax bills paid across all countries in line with their global income? Second, is taxing authority over multinational companies’ income being divided amongst countries in a coherent and fair way? Digital laborers’ value creation implicates the second. Under the current international tax system, the presence of digital laborers in a country does not grant that country taxing rights over income stemming directly from those digital laborers’ data and content creation. As a result, what are essentially the same activities— individuals creating products and performing services for a company— are taxed differently when they are performed by digital laborers rather than by a traditional workforce. This inconsistency and the accompanying outcome that countries cannot tax corporate income arising from extensive business activities within their borders have contributed to cries that the current system is unfair. Recent reforms addressing this outcome share a common weakness. They do not recognize the function of digital laborers as producers in the modern economy. As a result, they overturn the theory of source-based taxation as a taxing right granted only to the country of production and introduce major structural changes to the international tax system that apply only to a subset of global companies. These changes are all to correct an unfairness that can be remedied under the system’s current theoretical framework and structure. This Article rejects the notion that these major theoretical and structural changes are necessary or even appropriate methods to allow digital laborers’ home countries to tax income directly related to their data and content creation. Instead, the international tax system should recognize digital laborers’ role as a new type of workforce for companies and, accordingly, allow their home countries to tax income related to their work under the existing application of the source principle and with more incremental structural reforms. In addition to minimizing disruption in international tax law, this approach reinforces coherence and fairness by taxing equivalent economic activities equivalently

Pleat Perspectives

The purpose of this research was to explore the importance of pleats in fashion, to identify the methods, uses, history, and design possibilities of pleats, and then to create a design based on one of the many pleat inspirations

Valuing Social Data

Social data production is a unique form of value creation that characterizes informational capitalism. Social data production also presents critical challenges for the various legal regimes that are encountering it. This Article provides legal scholars and policymakers with the tools to comprehend this new form of value creation through two descriptive contributions. First, it presents a theoretical account of social data, a mode of production which is cultivated and exploited for two distinct (albeit related) forms of value: prediction value and exchange value. Second, it creates and defends a taxonomy of three “scripts” that companies follow to build up and leverage prediction value and describes the normative and legal ramifications of these scripts.The Article then applies these descriptive contributions to demonstrate how legal regimes are failing to effectively regulate social data value creation. Through the examples of tax law and data privacy law, it demonstrates these struggles in both legal regimes that have historically regulated value creation, like tax law, and legal regimes that have been newly tasked with regulating value creation by informational capitalism, like privacy and data protection law.The Article argues that separately analyzing data’s prediction value and its exchange value may be helpful to understanding the challenges the law faces in governing social data production and the political economy surrounding such production. This improved understanding will equip legal scholars to better confront the harms of law’s failures in the face of informational capitalism, reduce legal arbitrage by powerful actors, and facilitate opportunities to maximize the beneficial potential of social data value

From Middle America to the Inner City: How the National School Lunch Program Became Black in the 1960s and 1970s

In the late 1960s, the National School Lunch Program entered the politics of poverty and emerged a "black" program. Liberal politicians and black leaders replaced Southern Democrats and farming interests as the main proponents of school lunches, and a series of legislative changes transformed the National School Lunch Program into an anti-poverty and social welfare initiative. With these legislative changes, the clientele of the school lunch program shifted from middle-class children to low-income children and, in particular, African-American children. With black leaders advocating for school lunches and black children comprising a disproportionate number of program participants, the American public and media began to associate the National School Lunch Program with African-Americans. Once school lunches became radicalized in public perception, they also became stigmatized. More and more, the media linked school lunches to AFDC and food stamps, portraying school lunches as part of the problem of the "welfare trap" and the "welfare queen." The school lunch program's involvement in the politics of poverty in the late 1960s and early 1970s did not simply make school lunches anti-poverty—it made school lunches black, stigmatized and, ultimately, a lesser priority for American lawmakers

Rewinding the waves: tracking underwater signals to their source

Analysis of data, recorded on March 8th 2014 at the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation’s hydroacoustic stations off Cape Leeuwin Western Australia, and at Diego Garcia, reveal unique pressure signatures that could be associated with objects impacting at the sea surface, such as falling meteorites, or the missing Malaysian Aeroplane MH370. To examine the recorded signatures, we carried out experiments with spheres impacting at the surface of a water tank, where we observed almost identical pressure signature structures. While the pressure structure is unique to impacting objects, the evolution of the radiated acoustic waves carries information on the source. Employing acoustic–gravity wave theory we present an analytical inverse method to retrieve the impact time and location. The solution was validated using field observations of recent earthquakes, where we were able to calculate the eruption time and location to a satisfactory degree of accuracy. Moreover, numerical validations confirm an error below 0.02% for events at relatively large distances of over 1000 km. The method can be developed to calculate other essential properties such as impact duration and geometry. Besides impacting objects and earthquakes, the method could help in identifying the location of underwater explosions and landslides