Hold, Please

By Torie Ludwin, communications manager

A case about a $15,000 tax bill could upend the U.S. tax code as we know it. The Moores, who are bringing the case to the Supreme Court, invested in an overseas company and were taxed on their share of the profits, even though the gains weren’t distributed. Can the Moores be taxed on the company’s gains?

What’s Happening: Experts around the country submitted amicus briefs on Monday to weigh in on this international tax case, including Arnold Ventures Executive Vice President of Public Finance George Callas and University of Florida Levin College of Law Professor Mindy Herzfeld. In the brief, Callas, who was senior tax counsel to then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and played a key role in drafting the international tax provisions being challenged, discusses relevant legislative history, function, and rationale behind the changes.

Why It Matters: The Moores’ logic of what is and isn’t taxable income could be applied broadly to eviscerate other areas of the tax code if the Court rules in their favor. With such ambiguity in the definition of taxable income, United States’ long term fiscal stability could be compromised.

What’s Next: The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments in Moore v. United States on December 5.

Read the Callas-Herzfeld amicus brief>

Read our story>

Related: The Tax Law Center at NYU Law, the American College of Tax Counsel, and the American Tax Policy Institute together will host a panel discussion of legal experts and amicus brief authors including George Callas on Wednesday, November 1, at 2-3 p.m. ET.  Register here for this virtual event.  
 

By Evan Mintz, director of communications  

What are the signs that a college is about to go under? New regulations will ensure that students get proper support if schools engage in financially risky behavior.

What’s Happening: The Biden administration finalized rules this week to strengthen oversight of colleges and enhance common-sense protections for student borrowers, such as providing full information about financial aid and subjecting risky institutions to conditions designed to protect students.

Why It Matters: Students and taxpayers suffer when schools abuse the federal financial aid system or operate on the edge of financial collapse. As Education Secretary Miguel Cardona put it: "Too many students have been abandoned by shady colleges that close their doors and leave borrowers with unaffordable debt and little hope of completing their educational journeys and embarking on rewarding careers.”

What’s Next: These rules are an important first step, but there is still work to be done — particularly in raising standards for accrediting agencies and state authorization. And Congress has the opportunity to work on bipartisan legislative protections that will hold educational institutions accountable for student outcomes and consumer protection concerns.

Read our letter>

Related: "No One Was Representing the Students"

Criminal Justice

• Fair and Just Prosecution, an AV grantee, has released a new white paper looking at how prosecutor offices can use data to improve transparency, effectiveness, and trust.
   
• The Washington Post reports on the creation of the Maryland Equitable Justice Collaborative, a partnership between the state’s Attorney General and Public Defender, which will focus on ways to tackle mass incarceration and racial disparities in the justice system. (free link)
   
• A new briefing from the Prison Policy Initiative, an AV grantee, shows that parole grant rates have declined significantly since 2019 and that state parole boards are not only releasing fewer people but also hearing significantly fewer cases.
   
• The Los Angeles Times reports on how murders are dropping rapidly across the country, but this has yet to alter the common public and political perception that crime is out of control.

• Drug manufacturers are basically arguing for “a constitutionally protected right to receive taxpayer dollars” in their litigation to stop Medicare drug price negotiations, explains a Washington Post op-ed authored by AV grantees C. Joseph Ross Daval and Aaron Kesselheim of the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and Law (PORTAL) at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. (free link)
   
• AV grantee Keith Mueller, director of the Rural Policy Research Institute at the University of Iowa College of Public Health, was quoted in a KFF Health News article about the outsize impacts of Medicare Advantage growth on the finances of small, rural hospitals.

Public Finance

• Richard Rubin writes in The Wall Street Journal that the IRS will allow businesses to withdraw their employee retention credit claims without penalties or interest after aggressive marketing schemes led many to improperly claim the credit. (free link)
   
• Daniel Bunn, Alan Cole, and Alex Mengden of AV grantee the Tax Foundation released a report discussing additional policies needed to minimize profit-shifting and tax avoidance after many countries’ enactment of Pillar Two of the OECD’s global minimum tax agreement.
   
• Shuting Pomerleau and Kyle Pomerleau of AV grantees the American Enterprise Institute and the Niskanen Center outline various options for using the revenue from a carbon tax to fund an expansion of the Child Tax Credit for TaxNotes.

• The U.S. Department of Education’s new accountability regulations will help identify “where colleges present the biggest risks to students and taxpayers and how we can mitigate that,” Clare McCann, higher education fellow at Arnold Ventures, said in Politico. She was also quoted in coverage by Inside Higher Ed and MarketWatch. 
   
• Business Insider quoted Kelly McManus, vice president of higher education at Arnold Ventures, in its reporting on the Education Department’s new rules to protect student-loan borrowers.
   
• Commentary from The Century Foundation calls for stronger online student consumer protections rules.
   
• New research published by the Urban Institute found that about 10 percent of law schools take a decade or more to pay off — highlighting the need for accountability in graduate-level programs.

• A new study finds Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system made state elections more competitive, improved representation, and encouraged cooperative governance, writes Richard Barton, a democracy fellow at AV grantee Unite America, in a Governing op-ed.
   
• While early voting kicks off on state and local elections across the country, legislators in Pennsylvania are working on a law to open partisan primaries to independent voters, via the Associated Press. 

• Richard Roundtree, who played who's considered the first Black action movie hero John Shaft, passed away this week at the age of 81. Directed in 1971 by Black photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks and with an Academy and Grammy award-winning theme song by Black musician and actor Isaac Hayes, the movie "Shaft" brought a new Black narrative and focus to the movies. The Criterion Collection narrates the impact of the "Shaft" at the time. BET chronicles five of Roundtree's most memorable performances. 
   
• The U.S. Mint announced the final five fabulous women to grace the back of a quarter, as part of its American Women Quarters Program. (One is a journalist!) If you find yourself in New York, be sure to spend some time at the Brooklyn Museum to see an even larger trove of inspiring women at Judy Chicago's masterpiece "The Dinner Party." 
   
•  A striking Royal Bengal tigress in India tops the ninth annual global Mangrove Photography Awards, part of the environmentally focused Mangrove Action Project.