Reasonable Tax Rules: Advancing Process Values with Remedial Restraint

The tax administration is at risk of an overcorrection with respect to its rulemaking process. Tax practitioners increasingly are mining the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) as well as chipping away at barriers to pre-enforcement review of tax rules. Tax rules include regulations, revenue rulings, revenue procedures, and more informal guidance to the public. APA-based challenges to tax rules have gained traction in the courts, typically alleging inadequate explanation or timing irregularities involving notice and comment. Such claims potentially pose major challenges for fair and efficient tax administration.This Article integrates administrative law scholarship calling for a rule of reason with respect to remedies for inadequate explanation and postpromulgation comment. There is no conflict between the push-back against tax exceptionalism and an approach involving remedial restraint. The harmless error approach is rooted in the text of the APA, which requires a court to set aside agency action for prejudicial error. Judicial restraint is unlikely to chill robust participation by tax advisors and should promote the issuance of stable and reliable guidance, compliance with the tax law, and fair treatment of similarly situated taxpayers

CLIENTS’ EXPERIENCES OF SPIRITUALITY IN COUPLE’S THERAPY: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH

While spirituality has been an increasingly researched topic within the field of marriage and family therapy, it has been largely overlooked within the context of couple’s therapy. The goal of the present study is to enhance the understanding of the role of spirituality in therapy by describing clients’ experiences of spirituality in couple’s therapy. The study utilized a phenomenological approach to come to a better understanding of the essence of clients’ experiences of spirituality in couple’s therapy. Semi-structured interviews with couples enrolled in couple’s therapy were conducted and analyzed. Four major themes emerged: spiritual experiences in couple’s therapy, perception of spirituality, spirituality as beneficial, and spirituality as a journey. Implications for clinicians and recommendations for future research are discussed

Using technology to create partnerships among school libraries and public libraries

The purpose of this study was to show the benefits of collaboration between school libraries and public libraries with a focus upon how technology was a catalyst in creating those partnerships. Through case study methodology, two elementary schools which are recipients of a wide area network though the public library were examined. The development of the network, the public library\u27s role, and the school staff\u27s perceptions of the service which provides Internet and database access were examined. Advantages such as positive outreach from the public library to an underserved public and provision of otherwise cost-prohibitive databases and electronic reference sources to the schools were included in the major findings of the study

Teacher Perceptions of an Evaluation Process: A Qualitative Case Study

The purpose of this study was to explore teachers’ perceptions of the evaluation system currently used in their district. This study was guided by the following research question: How do teachers perceive the teacher evaluation process in a Midwestern Teacher and student Advancement Program (TAP) school? The theoretical foundations used in this study were Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory and Kirkpatrick’s four levels of evaluating training programs. The researcher learned that Midwestern teachers in a TAP school perceived the evaluation system to have impacted their teaching in a positive manner and, at the same time, contributed to their stress level. Thirteen teachers participated in the study. Data sources included questionnaires, interviews, observations, and focus groups. The questionnaires, interviews, and observations were coded and used to determine the teachers’ perceptions of the evaluation system. The results indicated that teachers perceived the system both positively and negatively. The findings of this study indicated that a positive impact of the evaluation system had a positive impact on teaching. Further, the researcher uncovered negative perceptions that might be addressed

Facing the Sunset: An Egalitarian Approach Against Taxing Couples as a Unit

With the sunset of marriage penalty relief in 2025, Congress has a bittersweet opportunity to align the taxable unit with the guiding norm of taxation according to ability to pay. The federal income tax brackets have been designed around a misguided and poorly targeted assumption that comparing married couples is appropriate, whether because of pooling income, economies of scale, or untaxed housework and caregiving. This Article argues that the individual, rather than (married) couples, should emerge as the unit for income taxation under an egalitarian approach to distributive justice. Welfarist insights and egalitarian arguments sometimes align on solutions to tax policy questions. But the precise lens through which one views questions of distributive justice can make a difference in thinking about the taxable unit. A welfarist approach, in this context, opens the door to inequality through bonuses that depend on marriage or relationships. Although no perspective has an easy time with couple\u27s penalties, an egalitarian perspective more persuasively rejects taxing phantom income (especially in a tax system resembling the one that we have). This Article echoes prior calls for the end of the joint return. Although not necessarily theoretically tidy, distinct solutions are likely to be necessary to balance the importance of preventing abuse by related parties and to account for non-business deductions and credits. Realistically, then, it will likely be necessary to blur the lines between individual taxpayers for some--but not all-- purposes. This Article points to workable options for accomplishing this balancing while avoiding disproportionate benefit for high-income taxpayers

Embracing the Queen of Hearts: Deference to Retroactive Tax Rules

The Supreme Court’s decision in Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research v. United States underscored the importance of a uniform approach to judicial review of administrative action; accordingly, the Court clarified that tax administration is generally subject to the same review as other kinds of administrative action by other federal agencies. Tax guidance from the IRS and Treasury Department serves an important role in clarifying the tax law so that taxpayers may report their tax liability accurately and plan their affairs. Meanwhile, aggressive attempts by a relatively small number of taxpayers to avoid tax liability by exploiting arguable ambiguities in the tax law present a perennial challenge for tax administration. In either case, as long as statutory and regulatory ambiguities exist, some surprises in the form of retroactive resolutions of uncertain tax positions are inevitable; the issue is who decides? Because of the Internal Revenue Code’s unusual grant of retroactive rulemaking power to the Treasury Department, tax administration cannot simply be collapsed with all other administrative action into a uniform framework of judicial review. This Article attempts to shed light on judicial review of more typical prospective tax guidance in part by drawing from the special case of retroactive tax guidance. This Article also argues that the general approach to judicial review of administrative action, as infused by the Code’s express grants of retroactive rulemaking power, affords the IRS and Treasury flexibility to make policy retroactively through rulemaking and receive deference from the courts. Moreover, though some constitutional limitations on retroactivity exist, the retroactive administrative clarification of an ambiguity should not be unconstitutional. Finally, this Article briefly assesses strengths and weaknesses of the current regime and the principal alternatives

Structural Tax Exceptionalism

This Article argues that it is misleading to declare the death of tax exceptionalism and that structural tax exceptionalism may have important benefits. Part II provides a brief historical overview of the rise of federal agency administration of statutes and especially tax laws. The history trends to detract from anti-tax and anti-agency rhetoric that counsel disempowering the Treasury Department and other administrative agencies from comprehensively enforcing laws and making policy in their relevant domains. Part III analyzes how the Code\u27s structure for tax administration differs from the APA template for administrative agencies. Part IV deconstructs these differences, drawing from general administrative law scholarship to identify potential advantages and drawbacks of structural tax exceptionalism. This Article concludes by recommending caution before dismantling the exceptional features of tax administration