• Selected
• Entire List

Abstract:
Taxation is shadow life. As our culture monetizes more and more life activities, the shadow grows. This article looks at the potential tax issues arising from a new life activity: online role-playing games in virtual worlds. Currently, some 12 million people regularly play such games and the number is growing. Exploring the reach of the Tax Code into virtual world transactions not only responds to the potentially practical needs of millions of U.S. taxpayers, it also permits a reevaluation of core principles of income tax as they interplay with life activities in the context of 21st century American culture.

This article's central thesis is that while player activity in virtual worlds produces measurable economic value to the player, player activity that occurs solely within the online virtual world is not gross income under the law. The article argues for a "cash out" rule. Players whose added wealth consists solely in what are defined as "units of play" should not be taxed unless and until they convert those units into cash or property that is something other than a unit of play. Conversely, when the play ceases, taxation begins. The resulting line-drawing difficulties have nothing to do with player intent nor with "fun" and "games." Instead, the issue presented is as old as the Tax Code itself: at what point does economic gain become legal gain? The new context of virtual words allows for a renewed exploration of how and why the legal concept of "income" differs, and indeed must differ, from the economic concept.

The article proceeds in three parts. Part I describes the relevant facts of online role-playing games. It describes two popular virtual worlds which sit at opposite ends of the spectrum of online gaming - World of Warcraft and Second Life - and describes how game-related activity produces economic income. Part II reviews the basic rules of income tax, focusing on the broadness of the theory of gross income under section 61. Part II argues that the limits of section 61, whether imposed by Congress, the courts, or the IRS, are best described as operational limits. Part III applies the basic tax rules to virtual worlds and advances a theory based on "units of play" to distinguish between virtual worlds that are games and virtual worlds that are the equivalent of bingo halls or barter clubs. Using the concept of imputed income, Part III discusses the circumstances under which economic activity in-world involving only trade of virtual goods or services for virtual money will cast a real world tax shadow.

tax, virtual worlds, World of Warcraft, Second Life, Everquest, imputed income, realization, gross income, tax administration, tax policy, law and economics, American culture, cyberproperty, cyberlaw, property

Abstract:
Governor Palin's 2006 and 2007 tax returns create several teaching opportunities for basic tax classes. This paper analyzes five substantive issues created by the returns and by a legal opinion letter written by Roger Olsen on some of the issues.

The five issues are: (1) the proper treatment of $17,000 paid to Palin by the state of Alaska as her travel allowance; (2) the proper treatment of $43,000 paid to Palin as a travel allowance for her husband and children; (3) the proper treatment of a $9,000 loss claimed for her husband's racing activity; (4) whether the Palins are subject to the penalties for negligence; and (5) whether Mr. Olsen's letter meets the standards for tax practice in Circular 230.

Palin, hobby loss, circular 230, covered opinions, travel reimbursements, income tax, civil penalties, negligence, tax returns, tax return preparation

Abstract:
One common issue facing those who create trusts is how to protect beneficiaries from creditors. One of the biggest, baddest creditors out there is the Internal Revenue Service (IRS or Service), wielding two weapons of mass collection: the federal tax lien and the federal tax levy. These weapons regularly pierce boilerplate spendthrift provisions. Discretionary trusts do not fare much better. Court decisions over the past ten years make it increasingly likely that even pure discretionary trusts contain clauses that traitorously turn over the treasure house keys to the federal tax lien. Once the lien attaches, the IRS can enforce it through either administrative or judicial attachments, blowing through state law barriers that keep out other creditors.

This Article offers some ideas on how to keep the federal tax lien locked out from trust assets using property law concepts of springing and shifting executory interests. This Article posits that a properly drafted tax lien lockout provision can deflect the federal tax lien. Moreover, tax lien lockout provisions can do this in the context of a support trust, thus allowing settlors to give enforceable directions to their trustees and to avoid the potential downsides of pure discretionary trusts. In short, tax lien lockout provisions can protect trust assets from the long and mighty arm of the IRS while preserving a client‟s wish to hold trustees to clear standards of behavior towards beneficiaries.

This Article proceeds in three parts. Part II illustrates the limited role that state law plays in controlling the scope of tax liens and in protecting non-delinquent third parties from the effect of the lien. It explains the basics of the federal tax lien, focusing on the relationship between state and federal law and the two key methods by which the IRS enforces the lien: the administrative levy and the lien foreclosure suit. Part III introduces a basic hypothetical involving a fictitious elderly widower who wants to create a trust for his kids and grandkids. Part III then uses this hypothetical to illustrate why spendthrift provisions offer no protection from federal tax liens and why it is likely that neither discretionary nor protective trusts do much better. Finally, Part IV looks at how Texas law regarding shifting executory interests might provide an opportunity for the well-advised settlor to craft trust provisions that can lock out the federal tax lien when a beneficiary encounters either expected or unexpected tax difficulties.

NFTL, notice, tax, lien, levy, creditors, trusts, estates, spendthrift, sprinkling, discretionary, trustees, tax procedure, tax evasion, tax avoidance, assets, asset protection, IRS, tax administration

Abstract:
In a series of hearings in 1997 and 1998, Congress heard allegations that the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS" or "Service") was abusing taxpayers during the process of collecting taxes. The resulting distrust of the tax bureaucracy led Congress to create a special adversary proceeding providing for judicial review of IRS collection decisions. The proceeding is beguilingly titled "Collection Due Process" (and commonly referred to as "CDP"). My study of CDP's structure, operation, and of 976 court decisions issued through the end of 2006 demonstrates that it has not fulfilled its promise. It is instead an outstanding regulatory failure. Of the over 15 million collection decisions made since 2000, courts have reviewed at most 3,000 and have reversed only 16. That is a reversal rate of about one in a million. Adversary process is not an effective regulatory mechanism to check government abuses in the modern administrative state.

This article pursues two goals. First, it documents and explains CDP's failure to provide a meaningful external check on tax collection abuses. In fact, CDP most likely hurts those who most need its promised protection from arbitrary agency action: the working poor who risk seeing their Earned Income Tax Credit subsidies snatched away by the over-reaching tax collector. Second, the article links CDP's failure to larger questions of the proper role for adversary process in the administrative state. Some commentators contend there can be no proper "rule of law" without adversarial process. This study of CDP proves the opposite claim: adversarial process, used in the wrong place and the wrong time, becomes a rule of deception rather than a rule of law. CDP is a failure on many levels, but an instructive one for it tells much about the problem of using adversarial process in the administrative state.

This article proceeds in four parts. Because Administrative Law is breathtakingly parochial, the reader needs to understand the particular context of this regulatory program in order to understand the larger point it illustrates. Thus, Part I gives the conceptual overview of tax administration necessary to understand both the evaluation and critique of CDP. Part II then explains the origins and operations of CDP. Part III applies the theory of tax administration developed in Part I to larger administrative law concepts to show how CDP fails to serve its promised purpose, and how it actually harms both taxpayers and the cause of good tax administration. Part IV sketches out some ideas about how tax collection might be structured along the lines of what I term "inquisitorial due process."

adversarial process, inquisitorial process, process, agency oversight, administrative law, bureaucracy, justice, tax administration, tax collection, federal income tax, abuse of discretion, agency power, judicial deference

Abstract:
In tax law and theory, procedure gets short shrift. Yet sometimes, procedure makes all the difference. That seems to me to be particularly true regarding the recent publicity over the tax consequences of foreclosures on taxpayers' principal residences. H.R. 3648, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on October 4, 2007, and pending in Congress as of the date of this article, purports to address the alleged problem with the law. This article examines the pending legislation and, more importantly, examines the overlooked role of procedure in creating the problems faced by taxpayers who are told they have taxable income even when they have just taken a huge financial hit in losing their home.

My thesis is that Congress is amending the wrong statute. H.R. 3648 does little to help those taxpayers who find themselves in foreclosures because it completely ignores procedure. Congress should instead amend the statutes concerning third-party reporting procedure because current statutes force both the IRS and taxpayers into an inefficient process to find the right substantive answer. While I will also make a few observations about its substance, I will focus mostly on the procedural aspects of the bill - or lack thereof. I propose an alternative statutory reform that can fix what is a very real problem for a great many taxpayers, taxpayers who theoretically owe nothing but as a practical matter get stuck with a hefty tax bill. Part I of this article reviews the substantive issue. Part II explains why the issue presented is really a procedural problem. Part III critiques H.R. 3648 and explains how true reform could be accomplished through a simpler amendment.

mortgage crisis, mortgages, home mortgage foreclosure, mortgage foreclosure, foreclosures, cancellation, debt, discharge, indebtedness, COD, DOI, section 108, 1099, tax procedure, third-party reporting, information returns

Abstract:
A very confident, unanimous Tax Court decided, in Allen v. Commissioner, 128 T.C. 4 (Mar. 7, 2007), that the fraud of a tax return preparer keeps the assessment limitation period open against the taxpayer, regardless of the taxpayer's knowledge or intent. The Tax Court opinion, however, skips over the intricate and interesting statutory history of the fraud exception to the assessment limitation period. Read properly, the general limitation period imposed on assessments in section 6501(a) represents a strong public policy choice in favor of closure. The section 6501(c) exception to it for fraudulent returns has a different origin and meaning, although now codified in the same section. It links instead to the origin and meaning of the fraud penalty for understatements, now codified in section 6663.

My thesis is that the section 6501(a) assessment limitation period is far stronger than a typical statute of limitation. Accordingly, I believe the fraud exception in section 6501(c) should be limited to the taxpayer's fraud and not the fraud of a third party such as a return preparer. I save for another day a complete review of the Allen opinion, including the very interesting policy issues it raises. Here I focus on why the assessment limitation period is best interpreted as a statute of repose and what that might mean for interpretive issues such as the one presented by Allen.

Part I reviews the statutory language and current judicial interpretation of section 6501(a) to show how it operates as a statute of repose. Part II reviews its legislative history back to 1866. Part III then reviews the history of the fraud penalties to show how and when the section 6501(c) exception to the normal three-year limitation period for fraudulent returns first arose in 1918. Putting those parts together shows, I think, how the fraud exception historically has referred to fraud committed by the taxpayer liable for the tax.

tax administration, assessment, statutes of limitation, limitation periods, statutes of repose, tax assessment, statutory history, legislative history, history, statutory interpretation

Abstract:
The tax code is a puzzle. Whether one views it as an engaging enigma or a ridiculous riddle, the tax code requires careful and considered attention to fit the statutory pieces together to form a sensible picture. The procedural pieces of the puzzle, however, are often neglected by taxwriters and academics. This Article address that neglect to show how a study of tax administration can add value to the study of both tax law and administrative law.

In this Article, I pursue three goals. The first is to describe and justify the inquisitorial nature of tax administration. I offer the conception of tax administration as two related but distinct functions: tax determination and tax collection, both of which employ inquisitorial processes. I suggest that the justification for the use of these processes lies in the government's need for information to ensure that all taxpayers pay their proper tax and thereby encourage voluntary compliance. My second goal is to show how certain procedural provisions in the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 (RRA 98) reflect Congressional ignorance of the basic inquisitorial process paradigm under which the Internal Revenue Service (the Service) has operated; the new statutes instead link to a conception of tax administration as primarily adversarial. In a fundamental way, the so-called reforms of the RRA 98 are bottomed on a paradigm in significant tension with the paradigm underlying prior law. This tension has already created a practical uncertainty in procedural matters and will likely create more as both the Service and the courts struggle to execute and interpret the new laws. Finally, if nothing else, I hope to convince the reader that discussion of tax administration should not be so much about customer service versus tax enforcement models of administration, but should instead focus on the degree to which tax administration should or should not be inquisitorial.

This Article proceeds in three parts. Part II links the viability of our voluntary system of tax compliance to the Service's ability to acquire the information necessary for a proper determination of tax and explains how this ability, combined with the information asymmetry between taxpayers and government, forms the basis for an inquisitorial system of tax administration.

Part III begins by comparing inquisitorial to adversarial process both descriptively and normatively. First, when the same entity acts simultaneously as both a decisionmaker and evidence-gatherer, the process can be described as inquisitorial. In contrast, adversarial process separates decisionmaking from evidence-gathering. Second, inquisitorial process puts the value of finding truth above the value of preserving individual autonomy so that violations of autonomy may be justified if they result in truth. In contrast, adversarial process compromises truth in order to preserve individual autonomy from state intrusion.

Part III then explores the history of tax administration since the Civil war to demonstrate how both Congress and the courts have adopted an essentially inquisitorial system of tax determination and collection, and how courts police the Service's administration of the tax laws using inquisitorial logic. The structure of tax administration demonstrates that it has long been strongly inquisitorial. First, the IRS acts as decisionmaker and evidence-gatherer, both in making decisions about tax liabilities and in making decisions about how to collect them. Second, both Congress and courts have historically used the IRS's mission of discovering and enforcing Atrue tax liabilities to justify intrusions into citizen autonomy - such as searches for evidence without probable cause - which are not tolerated in adversary systems, such as the criminal justice system.

Part IV demonstrates how, beginning with the dramatic hearings held by the Senate Finance Committee in September 1997, the history of RRA 98 evidences not merely the taxwriters' ignorance and misunderstanding of tax procedure but also of the underlying inquisitorial nature of the process. The RRA 98 taxwriters' investigation of the Service stands in sharp contrast to the Congressional oversight that resulted in the last major reorganization of the Service, in 1952. Then, the reforms were consistent with the inquisitorial paradigm. In contrast, RRA 98 attempts to insert provisions grounded in adversarial logic into a scheme heretofore grounded in inquisitorial logic: a classic case of round pegs inserted into square holes. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that the puzzle pieces do not fit well together.

Abstract:
In FY2005, the IRS refunded about $227.6 billion to individual taxpayers. Given the huge amounts involved, even small error rates add up. For example, even if the IRS had an error rate of just 1% that would mean $2.2 billion erroneous refunds in FY2005. USA Today recently reported that the IRS let slip at least $200 million erroneous refunds from just the failure of one computer program during FY2005. Commissioner Everson agreed there was "little chance IRS will collect the bulk of the erroneously issued checks." As a result, tens of thousands of taxpayers receive the government's unintended largesse and wallow in their windfalls.

Prior law allowed the IRS to collect most erroneous refunds efficiently. Now it must write them off. This article tells the sad story of how the IRS lost its mojo and what must be done to get it back. In so doing it explores some critical concepts in tax administration theory and practice, notably the dual function of a tax assessment.

Part I explains how erroneous refunds occur and relate to the law of tax administration. The critical concept is that of assessment and its dual meaning in the law of tax administration. Part II reviews the legal doctrines governing their recovery and demonstrates how, as result of a contentious legal battle in the 1990's, current law leaves the IRS basically shooting blanks in trying to recover taxpayer windfalls. The TIGTA report focuses on ex-ante solutions precisely because the IRS ability to collect them efficiently ex-post is so compromised. Part III offers a simple legislative provision to help the IRS get its groove back. What is needed is a little statutory power pill to allow the IRS to interact firmly with taxpayers who try to keep money they should not have.

tax administration, erroneous refunds, refunds, tax gap, tax collection, administrative law, bureacracy, tax evasion

Abstract:
This article concerns the history of automation in U.S. tax administration and the challenges automation presents to administering the laws consistent with democratic values. The most under-theorized aspect of tax administration is the expansion of automation and its impact on the current tax system.

Historically, the U.S. system of taxation depended on the self-reporting of relevant financial information by taxpayers. The original design of tax administration was built around that premise and required significant human interaction between government employees and taxpayers.

The rise of what is called Automated Data Processing (ADP) - particularly since WWII - has given the IRS wonderful efficiency in sorting through massive amounts of information. This has allowed it to rely less on the information provided by taxpayers and more on the information provided ABOUT taxpayers by various third parties. ADP has also allowed the IRS to become more efficient at identifying "non-responsive" taxpayers and taking action against them.

At the same time, ADP poses a constant threat to unbalance the Service, to degrade tax administration into an exercise in data manipulation and not an exercise in determining the correct taxes owed. It undermines the American way of taxation, where the IRS strives to administer the tax laws with a realization that the government's interests align with taxpayer interests and not simply with dollars to the fisc.

This article is one of a number of articles commenting on a reprint of Commissioner Mortimer Caplin's thoughts about tax administration, orginially published in 1964. It is to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Virginia Tax Review.

tax history, administration, tax, democracy, automation, tax theory, administrative law, IRS, IRS history

Abstract:
In every era and area of law one finds a never-ending battle between two groups of legal thinkers: formalists and functionalists. Each is connected to long-standing and honorable traditions in Anglo-American jurisprudence. The formalists tend towards the law side of those traditions-the search for order and certainty-and the functionalists tend towards the equity side-the search for justice and meaning. All can agree that there is a time and a place for each mode of analysis, but the devil is in the details. Thus, the never-ending battle. In a prior article I looked at a particularly interesting example of that battle: a dispute between Judges Posner and Easterbrook over what constituted a taxpayer's return in deciding whether a particular tax should be discharged by bankruptcy.

This article focuses on how the never-ending battle plays out in interpreting IRC Section 6020. For 30 years the IRS took a functionalist approach to problem debated by Posner and Easterbrook but has recently shifted into a formalist approach. I argue that the current approach, adopted in Rev. Rul. 2005-59, is an excellent illustration of misplaced formalism, both in analysis and effect. So this article will linger once again in that part of the tax administration forest where grows the tangle of doctrines over what constitutes a "return." Part I starts by putting the issue in its current statutory context. Part II puts the issue into its historical tax administration context. Part III explains the functional approach of Rev. Rul. 74-203. Part IV looks at the formalist foreshadowing of Rev. Rul. 2005-59. I will leave a more detailed analysis of Rev. Rul. 2005-89 to a future paper.

Posner, Easterbrook, tax return, tax administration, definition, functionalism, formalism, substitute for return, 6020

Abstract:
This paper discusses the Tax Court's jurisdiction to hear stand-alone petitions from taxpayers who have been denied equitable relief under § 6015(f), one of the three spousal relief provisions contained in § 6015. Congress enacted § 6015 in the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 ("RRA 98) to replace the old "innocent spouse" provisions in § 6013(e). The jurisdictional controversy over § 6105(f) reveals a problem: how Congress pinned the Tax Court between the rock of sovereign immunity and the hard place of doing equity. Thus caught between the commands of the head and the demands of the heart - to use historian Perry Miller's famous dichotomy - the Tax Court made the wrong choice. This column explains why.

The problem arises from a laudable Congressional effort to make the Tax Code fairer. In 1998 Congress sought to expand how taxpayers who had signed joint returns could be relieved of the resulting joint liability. Congress charged the Tax Court with responsibility to review IRS application of the law, both in § 6015 and, simultaneously, in the Collection Due Process (CDP) provisions of §§ 6320 and 6330. But the taxwriters goofed up § 6015 and failed to make the Tax Court's authority commensurate with its responsibility.

Section 6015 compromises two different visions of joint liability relief: one proposed by the House Ways and Means Committee and the other proposed by the Senate Finance Committee. The unhappy result of the compromise is that literal language of the statute pinches off Tax Court review of § 6015(f) determinations when there is no deficiency at issue. Was it deliberate? No matter. It was done. That it was poorly done is of little use to the Tax Court, which sucks the jurisdictional air it breathes through nozzles of statutory grants of authority. Shut those off and the Tax Court is bereft. The irony here is that in its attempt to expand equity, Congress created inequity. That is, taxpayers who seek their day in court through section 6015(e) are barred, but taxpayers who successfully obtain their CDP hearing and present their claim for spousal relief then can obtain Tax Court review, regardless of whether the IRS is trying to collect a self-reported tax or a deficiency. Substantive equity without procedural equity is no equity at all. That, in a nutshell, is why one can be entirely sympathetic to the Tax Court's creative overreaching in Ewing to inflate its jurisdiction under § 6015. But the Tax Court is wrong on the law and no amount of huffing can make it right.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals is poised to address this subject in Bartman v. Commissioner where the United States is challenging the Tax Court's assertion of jurisdiction to review the agency decision. Part I explains the issue confronting the Eighth Circuit in Bartman. Part II closely examines the structure and history of § 6105. Part III suggests that the proper interpretation of the statute denies the Tax Court jurisdiction to review this particular agency decision.

tax court, jurisdiction, sovereign immunity, tax administration, administrative law, judicial review, marriage, equity, joint returns

Abstract:
Just because the IRS has the legal authority to act does not mean it should. The Tax Court's decision in Allen v. Comm'r, where the Court agreed to let the IRS use old language for a new purpose, is a good illustration. Allen involved the question of whether the ý 6501(c)(1) fraud exception to the normal three year assessment limitation period in ý 6501(a) was triggered, as a matter of law, by the intent of a tax return preparer to create and submit a fraudulent return, even when the taxpayer had no intent to evade tax. The Tax Court said yes, thereby turning on its head the usual presumption that a taxpayer has not committed fraud unless the IRS proves otherwise.

My thesis for this article is that the Tax Court's opinion in Allen was built more on a foundation of presumptions about policy than legal analysis. To the extent it was a sympathetic response to an IRS tax administration problem, the sympathy was misplaced. Congress has spoken to the problem of tax return preparer fraud and has expressed different policy choices than the Allen Court. Accordingly, the Tax Court should have declined to read ý6501(c) as broadly as it did.

Part I sets up the legal issue presented in Allen. Part II presents the facts. Part III examines the legal rationales offered by the Tax Court for its interpretation, to demonstrate that purely as a matter of statutory interpretation the decision is not solidly grounded. In addition, Part III looks at a legal argument based on the law of agency that, curiously enough, the Court did not discuss. Part IV examines the weaknesses in how the Court applied its policy rationale. Finally, Part V critiques the creation of what is, in effect, a new presumption that allows the IRS to shift to the taxpayer the burden of disproving fraud.

tax fraud, fraud, legal presumptions, assessment, statute of limitations, Badaracco, fraud penalty, tax return preparer, returns, tax administration

Abstract:
It is always fun when two of the greatest minds on the current federal bench disagree. It is even more fun when their disagreement provides a terrific opportunity to explore the relative roles of functionalism and formalism in legal analysis. This article looks at the quarrel between Judges Frank Easterbrook and Richard Posner in the case of IN RE PAYNE over the meaning of the term "return" (as in "tax return") in tax and bankruptcy law. One prefers form to function and the other does not. Their disagreement provides a wonderful window into substance and form in tax administration.

This paper explores the function of the formal requirement found in the Tax Code (section 6011) that taxpayers "make a return or statement according ot the forms and regulations prescribed by the Secretary." Part I maps out the borderlands of tax administration and bankruptcy. Part II reviews the facts and opinions in PAYNE, which presents a common interplay of tax and bankruptcy administration. Part III explains why Judge Posner's opinion about applying the tax administration concept of "return" to bankruptcy cases is right and Judge Easterbrook's is wrong. Finally Part V looks at the likely ill effects of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (which I and many others call "BARF," standing for Bankruptcy Abuse Reform Fiasco") on the many cases like PAYNE.

Posner, Easterbrook, tax administration, bankruptcy, nonfiler, discharge, nondischargeable tax, return, formalism, functionalism, substitute for return, 6020, failure, filing

Abstract:
This article explores what happens when Congress attempts to smooth out the "square corners" of the tax code with notions of equity, but does so with an inadequate understanding of, or appreciation for, the problems of tax administration.

In the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 (RRA 98), Congress revised the rules contained in IRC Section 6015 for spouses to obtain relief from joint and several liability reported in a prior jointly filed tax return. In a prior article - titled "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" and also posted on SSRN - I showed how Congress failed to give the Tax Court jurisdiction under 6015(e) to review IRS denials of section 6015(f) equitable relief in nondeficiency cases.

This article takes a broader look at that same jurisdictional problem, to fully examine the full interplay of its substantive provisions with tax procedure. In RRA 98, Congress increased the scope of equitable relief from joint and several liability. But the procedures it provided taxpayers who seek that relief are a conceptual and practical mess. The ironic result: In trying to cure old inequities, Congress created new ones. Because of RRA 98, substantive outcomes depend on choice of process.That is not good tax administration.

Part I of the article explains the history and theory of joint liability, because to understand the need for equity one needs to understand what corners of the law are too sharp and why. Part II explains how and why the concept of ‘‘innocent spouse’’ came into tax, and how that concept - taken from ancient divorce laws - has remained the bedrock idea underlying all forms of joint liability relief enacted since 1971. Part III looks at the mess made by Congress in RRA 98 when it tried to cure the problem of access to court review, but improperly conflated the tax determination process with the tax collection process, creating gaps and traps for taxpayers, no matter how wary they may be. Part III also offers some ideas on what the taxwriters should or could do to fix the mess.

innocent spouse, joint returns, taxation of couples, economic units, joint liability, tax administration, 6015, equity