We use machine-learning models to analyze and anticipate the outcome of the IRS’s appeal of the Tax Court's decision in Cross Refined Coal LLC v. Commissioner, No. 19502-17 (2019) (bench op.). We predict that the D.C. Circuit will hold that the taxpayer had been carrying on a partnership...

This article considers the judgment of the D.C. Circuit in Cross Refined Coal, which addressed whether a business venture that was guaranteed to be unprofitable pretax could still be considered a bona fide partnership for federal income tax purposes. In previous work, we analyzed the Tax...

The debt-versus-equity question is largely relegated to the common law. The central inquiry is the “extent to which the transaction complies with arm's length standards and normal business practice.” The courts have established a list of recurring factors to determine whether a transfer...

Several months ago, we examined the Tax Court’s decision in Reserve Mechanical and predicted with 77 percent confidence that the taxpayer’s appeal would be dismissed and the Tax Court’s decision affirmed. The Tenth Circuit has now made that prediction accurate. In its decision, the Tenth...

The source concept of income is difficult to pin down in Canadian income tax law. It is elusive and defies simple explication. Nowhere is this more true than in the context of gambling winnings. In this essay, the tax treatment of poker and other gambling winnings is used as a window into how...

Governments throughout the developed world worry incessantly about the implications of sophisticated tax planning for their tax revenues. And yet the same governments routinely stop short of doing all that they can legally do to combat tax avoidance. Why? One response is that a thick conception...

Contracts that contemplate alternative possible modes of performance, frequently referred to as alternative contracts, are common wherever written contracts are routinely used and relied upon. Nevertheless, courts in major legal systems have encountered enormous difficulty articulating a...

Until now the legal and regulatory measures that have been taken in the United States and Canada to combat excessive executive compensation have been largely ineffectual. The one possible exception is the tax deductibility cap of ý162(m) of the US Internal Revenue Code, which was introduced in...

The subject of this paper is the impact of the new globalized order on the integrity of corporate governance. Corporate governance is the system of laws, markets and institutions that seeks to control and discipline corporate activity in the service of the public interest. Over the last several...