Lewis & Clark Law Review
First Page
333
Abstract
Rarely in modern tax jurisprudence does the common adage “nothing is certain except death and taxes” receive a challenge in the highest court in the land. This year, the Supreme Court is considering the most existential question concerning the federal income tax in over a century: what is “income”? The definition of “income” has gone through several developments and adjustments since the enactment of the Sixteenth Amendment. Two taxpayers have reached the Supreme Court to challenge one such aspect of the definition of “income”— whether realization is a constitutional requirement as required by the Sixteenth Amendment. When an accession to wealth over which the taxpayer has complete dominion is not yet clearly realized, should the taxpayers be able to indefinitely defer their gains? Will this new challenge to the federal income tax change the way taxes are treated in the United States? What are the constitutional limits of Congress’s taxing power? What would happen to the Internal Revenue Code, and Congress’s ability to create new taxes and to fund the government? This Note examines the constitutionality of the Mandatory Repatriation Tax, an alleged direct wealth tax, ongoing litigation in Moore v. United States, what a possible disposition of this case would mean for other pending “wealth taxes” in Congress, and the future of the federal income tax generally.
Recommended Citation
Loren Naldoza,
Moore v. United States: The Constitutionality of The Taxation of Unrealized Gains,
28
Lewis & Clark L. Rev.
333
(2024).
Available at:
https://lawcommons.lclark.edu/lclr/vol28/iss2/5
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