Personal and Political Bias in the Debate Over Federal Income Taxation Rates and Progressivity

Unlike the commentaries of flat tax proponents, this article will not attempt to dispel the notion of progressive taxation. Rather, this article will first question whether professors who write about tax policy can as a group reach unbiased conclusions about progressivity policy. Next, this article will address a few progressivity concepts that fuel taxation debates. Finally, this commentary will outline some ideas for structuring the federal income taxation system in ways that reduce political rancor and potentially create reasonable acceptance by tax producers, tax beneficiaries, and their respective advocates

Application of Computer-Assisted Analysis Techniques to Taxation

Thus, it may be useful at this early point in the development of computer-assisted legal analysis to speculate on the full potential for computer applications to taxation in light of the analytic complexities commonly encountered in tax work

Coverage Flexibility for Qualified Retirement Plans After the Tax Reform Act of 1986

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 substantially changed the participation coverage criteria for qualified retirement plans. The purpose of this article is to set forth selected observations about the problems and opportunities that now exist respecting planning for coverage exclusions under the Internal Revenue Code Accordingly, this article will consider both surviving concepts from prior law and new rules that emerge from the 1986 Tax Act

A Perspective on Participant Loan Provisions in Qualified Retirement Plans After the 1986 Tax Act

The Tax Reform Act of 1986\u27 is the fourth major tax enactment in four years to have a significant impact on qualified deferred compensation plans. Like the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982,2 this most recent tax legislation substantially affects the use of participant loan provisions in qualified plans. The purpose of this article is to analyze the cumulative technical difficulties that retirement plan designers and administrators should now consider in reviewing the feasibility and operation of participant loan provisions

The Simplified Employee Pension: An Increasingly Attractive Alternative Among Qualified Retirement Plans

Even if the SEP rules remain unaltered for the next several years, employers will want to continue questioning whether their retirement contribution objectives are best served by conventional plans that are increasingly more difficult to administer and keep tax-qualified.9 In effect, the SEP may become more attractive by default, as I.R.C. § 401(a) plans continue to become less attractive as a result of the overly complex legislative and regulatory tinkering to which they are subject. Practitioners should reconsider this point when reviewing each new change or interpretation of law affecting standard qualified retirement plans. The discussion that follows is organized under headings reflecting the major plan design differences that distinguish the SEP from its more complicated alternatives

Federal Income Tax Developments: 1983

This article surveys substantive federal income tax developments in 1983, including relevant Supreme Court cases, deductions, legislative and treasury regulations, and income recognition and related topics

Federal Income Tax Developments: 1984

FEDERAL INCOME TAX DEVELOPMENTS: 1984 is the twelfth in a series of articles published at The University of Akron School of Law. In keeping with the established format, the scope of this survey is limited to selected substantive developments in the field of income taxation

NASA Image eXchange (NIX)

This paper discusses the technical aspects of and the project background for the NASA Image exchange (NIX). NIX, which provides a single entry point to search selected image databases at the NASA Centers, is a meta-search engine (i.e., a search engine that communicates with other search engines). It uses these distributed digital image databases to access photographs, animations, and their associated descriptive information (meta-data). NIX is available for use at the following URL: http://nix.nasa.gov./NIX, which was sponsored by NASAs Scientific and Technical Information (STI) Program, currently serves images from seven NASA Centers. Plans are under way to link image databases from three additional NASA Centers. images and their associated meta-data, which are accessible by NIX, reside at the originating Centers, and NIX utilizes a virtual central site that communicates with each of these sites. Incorporated into the virtual central site are several protocols to support searches from a diverse collection of database engines. The searches are performed in parallel to ensure optimization of response times. To augment the search capability, browse functionality with pre-defined categories has been built into NIX, thereby ensuring dissemination of 'best-of-breed' imagery. As a final recourse, NIX offers access to a help desk via an on-line form to help locate images and information either within the scope of NIX or from available external sources