Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-2-1998
ISSN
1048-3306
Publisher
Tax Analysts
Language
en-US
Abstract
Simplification of current income tax provisions always runs an uphill course. As a proper standard for evaluating a provision of existing law we should ask whether, if it did not exist, we would need to invent it. Unfortunately, when we move to the task of crafting and altering the details of current law, the blandishments of equity, revenue yield, and special-interest gain easily outshine the sober virtue of simplification; we forget this potentially embarrassing question.
As a modest step toward simplification, I propose the repeal of one section of the code, a section famed among tax cognoscenti for its opaque quality and as the locus of the longest single sentence in the code. I refer to section 341, the collapsible corporations provision. If it did not already exist, I do not think we would feel its lack.
Recommended Citation
Alan L. Feld,
Collapse Section 341
,
78
Tax Notes
1187
(1998).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/2965
