Prologue – Taxation, Fairness And “The Man On The Street”

Something I think is sometimes lost in tax policy debates: public perceptions do not equate fairness to diminishing inequalities. Not all tax inequality decreasing measures will be perceived as fair.

Tax policy is as much about political economy, as efficiency and equity.

— Rita de la Feria (@delaFeriaR) September 24, 2023

Imagine asking an individual (who was not a tax academic, lawyer or accountant) the following two questions:

1. Do you think that people should be forced to pay taxes on income never received?

2. Do you think people should be forced to pay taxes on income from the previous 30 years that they had never received?

The average person would be shocked by the possibility of this.

It may be difficult for the average person to understand Subpart F’s attribution of the income of a corporation to a shareholder. The average person would not doubt the unfairness of attributing 30 years of untaxed earnings of the corporation to the shareholder (especially when the income was never received by the shareholder).

Moore and Retroactivity – The Readers Digest Version

This history of the Moore case is described by Professors Brooks and Gamage as follows:
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