Browsing by Author "Hoffer, Stephanie R."

Now showing 1 - 10 of 15
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    The Adaptation of U.S. Tax Treaties to Changing Business Forms - a Case Study of Hybrid Entities
    (2008) Hoffer, Stephanie R.; Kemp, Matthew T.; Postlewaite, Philip F.
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    Adopting the Family Taxable Unit
    (2007) Hoffer, Stephanie R.
    In recent years, scholars have suggested that population stability plays an important role in countries' economic health. In light of that assertion, and with an eye toward declining birthrates abroad, this Article asks how the United States, through tax policy, might aid maintenance of a stable population level. Specifically, the Article recommends use of the family taxable unit as a means of reducing the effects of time and wage pressure on larger families. Use of the family taxable unit would, unlike some other tax provisions, bring conceptual coherence to the tax treatment of families while remaining neutral with regard to the labor market participation of secondary earners.
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    Caesar as God's Banker: Using Germany's Church Tax as an Example of Non-Geographically Bounded Taxing Jurisdiction
    (2010) Hoffer, Stephanie R.
    This Article compares the modern-day German church tax to church taxes levied by the American colonies and early states and concludes that, unlike its American counterparts, the German church tax is not wholly a "church" tax. Rather, it is largely a form of decentralized local taxation, the jurisdiction of which is determined by voluntary group affinity rather than geography. As such, it is a crucial part of the German taxing landscape that should not be abandoned but should instead be retained and extended to qualifying secular organizations. In that context-secular rather than sectarian-the tax may also serve as the starting point for developing a model of non-geographically bounded taxing jurisdictions.
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    A Comparison of Tax Exempt Organizations in the People's Republic of China and the United States
    (2005) Hoffer, Stephanie R.
    Both the United States and China are on the cusp of major changes in govern- mental regulation of charitable organizations. As China moves forward with the marketization of its socialist economy, the use of nonprofit organizations for both mediation and alleviation of market failure has become increasingly important. Toward that end, China's State Council has enacted a law describing the role and governance of charitable foundations in China. The United States, on the other hand, has a fully developed charitable law, but it is one that the government has considered amending to discourage instances of fraud and self-dealing that have recently come to light.'5 This article seeks to compare and contrast the two sys- tems with an eye toward informing the work of scholars and policy-makers inter- ested in the governance of charitable organizations.
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    The Death of Tax Court Exceptionalism
    (2014) Hoffer, Stephanie R.; Walker, Christopher J.
    This Article turns to another area where tax exceptionalism persists: the status of the United States Tax Court in the modern administrative state.4 The Tax Court plays an important role in the life of the federal judiciary. It functions as a tax specialist and hears over ninety-five percent of federal tax-related litigation." The overall volume of its work is impressive. As of 1995, for instance, the court had heard ap- proximately 360,000 cases with total tax liabilities reaching about $34 billion.6 And the number of cases filed, closed, and still pending has generally risen each year. From 2000 to 2010, the Tax Court closed nearly 260,000 cases while nearly 265,000 cases were filed during the same period.7 Regardless of this large number of cases, the Tax Court still had over 250,000 cases pending.8 Of the cases closed, the court released written opinions for over 8,400 of them.19 The dollar amount is also staggering. In 2006, the Tax Court closed cases with an aggre- gate tax liability of nearly $7.4 billion.20 From fiscal year 2008 to 2012, the Tax Court closed cases with an aggregate amount exceeding $33 billion.'
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    Is the Chief Justice a Tax Lawyer?
    (2015) Hoffer, Stephanie R.; Walker, Christopher J.
    This Essay focuses on two instances of a tax lawyer at work. First, in the Chief's approach to statutory interpretation one sees a tax lawyer as interpreter. As others have observed, the Chief and the Court more generally seem to be embracing a brand of contextualism that departs from the textualism that has predominated during Justice Scalia's tenure on the Court. The Chief's articulation of this interpretive approach in King, however, tracks tax law's substance-over-form doctrine. In particular, the Chief looks beyond Congress's formal, textual characterization of the statutory provision to recharacterize the provision based on strong proof of its true nature or substance.9 Indeed, this is not the first time the Chief has taken an approach similar to the substance-over-form doctrine when interpreting the Affordable Care Act. He also seemed to do so when rejecting the constitutional challenge to the statute three Terms prior.10 Second, as to King's sweeping administrative law holding that is the main subject of this Symposium, the Chief crafts a new major questions doctrine that could significantly cut back on federal agency lawmaking authority by not applying Chevron deference at all to "question[s] of 'deep economic and political significance.' Yet the Chief seems to develop this doctrine against the backdrop of tax exceptionalism-the notion that general administrative law principles do not apply to tax -and thus this development may be limited to extraordinary circumstances at the intersection of tax and administrative law. This Symposium importantly addresses the effect of King v. Burwell on tax law and administration. As this Essay illustrates, however, it is also worth exploring the potential effect of tax law on the Chief's opinion. Tax exceptionalism may well limit the opinion's impact on administrative law, and tax law may better inform the Chief's (and the Court's) evolution from textualism to contextualism in statutory interpretation. The growing call to abandon the perception that tax is exempt from general principles of administrative law may well be correct. We believe it is. But that does not mean tax law cannot provide us with special insights that can be applied in other legal contexts.
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    Making the Law More ABLE: Reforming Medicaid for Disability
    (2015) Hoffer, Stephanie R.
    Passed on the eve of Medicaid's fiftieth anniversary, the Achieving a Better Live Experience (ABLE) Act was a hard-fought victory for individuals with significant disabilities and their families. The law, which creates a new form of tax-preferred savings account, represents an invaluable work-around for highly restrictive Medicaid eligibility requirements. Medicaid eligibility is crucially important for individuals with intellectual, developmental, and other significant disabilities because it provides nearly exclusive access to government- coordinated habilitative care, such as in-home assistance, job supports, and adaptive equipment. These services are necessary to maintain a base-level quality of lfe, facilitate independent living, and preserve the dignity of individuals with disabilities. Despite their importance, they are difflicult to purchase and coordinate in the private market, and due to income and asset holding restrictions on eligibility, only the very poor can access them through Medicaid, even after passage of the Affordable Care Act. This Article argues that despite their facial neutrality, income and asset holding restrictions, commonly referred to as means testing, result in undue hardship when they are applied to the provision of government-coordinated habilitative care for individuals with significant disabilities. Congress's attempts to mitigate this hardship, including the recently passed ABLE Act, are important steps forward, but they also can impose economic, dignitary, and emotional harms on individuals with disabilities. Based on the distinctive needs of individuals with significant disabilities, this Article takes the counterintuitive position that these individuals should be afforded access to government-coordinated habilitative care through Medicaid without regard to income or wealth. Under current market conditions, non-means-tested access to habilitative care is a normatively superior solution because it preserves the autonomy and dignity of individuals with disabilities and may be simultaneously cost-neutral and utility-increasing. Granting unrestricted access to government-coordinated habilitative care to individuals with significant disabilities would eliminate perverse employment and financial planning incentives created by Congress's past attempts to broaden access. Finally, it would create parity among parents who plan for the future of children with disabilities and those whose children are typically-abled, as well as parity for retirement savings among workers with significant disabilities and those without. As a result, Congress should revisit and revise means-tested access to disability-related services through Medicaid.
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    Misrepresentation: The Restatement's Second Mistake
    (2014) Hoffer, Stephanie R.
    The contract defenses of mistake and misrepresentation can be used to unravel deals as big as a corporate merger and as small as the sale of a used car. These two defenses, while conceptually distinct in theory, contain a significant amount of overlap in practice, causing courts to conflate the two legal standards. A misrepresentation of one party, when believed, results in a mistaken belief of the other, and both defenses address fundamental flaws in bargaining that throw the contracting parties' consent into question. The coextensiveness of the defenses suggests that, absent an overriding normative justification, the legal test and remedy should be the same for each. Such a norma- tive justification exists only in the case of fraudulent misrepresentation which, unlike mistake or nonfraudulent misrepresentation, involves the intentional infliction of a dignitary harm. In such cases, punish- ment and deterrence are appropriate normative goals but neither are addressed by currently prevailing common law. Providing a single test for cases of misrepresentation and mistake with recourse to puni- tive damages in cases of fraud would harmonize the defenses with their normative underpinnings and eliminate inefficient redundancies in the common law.
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    Of Disunity and Logrolling: Ohio's One-Subject Rule and the Very Evils it was Designed to Prevent
    (2004) Hoffer, Stephanie R.; McDade, Travis
    This article looks at the one-subject rule's history and significant jurisprudence with particular note of any rules that can be determined. Next, we address the court's use of the rule in the controversial case of State ex rel. Ohio Academy of Trial Lawyers v. Sheward' Finally, we look at Amended Substitute Senate Bill No. 281-recently passed by the Ohio General Assembly-to determine if it will pass one-subject muster under recent jurisprudence.