March 13/Cleveland: Taxes and the Constitution #MCLE

Congress’s power to tax is generally taken for granted, but the Constitution contains important limitations on the taxing power—the power to lay and collect taxes. Some issues:

• What distinguishes a “tax’ from other governmental charges?
• What are direct and indirect taxes and why does it matter whether a tax is one or the other?
• What’s the significance of the Sixteenth Amendment, which permits Congress to enact a “tax on incomes” without having to meet the apportionment rule that otherwise applies to direct taxes?
• Does the taxing power legitimate any exercise of congressional power that is funded by taxation?

These issues are not of only historical interest. Some were implicated in the recent litigation on the legitimacy of the individual mandate in the Obamacare legislation—the requirement, beginning in 2014, that most Americans acquire suitable health insurance or pay a penalty.
Title:
Taxes and the Constitution
When/Where:
March 13, 2013
8:30 AM - 9:30 AM Eastern
The City Club of Cleveland
850 Euclid Ave., 2nd floor
Cleveland, Ohio 44114
Speaker:
Erik Jensen is the Schott-van den Eynden Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, having earlier occupied the David L. Brennan chair. He has been on the Case Western Reserve University School of Law faculty since 1983, teaching courses in federal income taxation, corporate and partnership taxation, business planning, and American Indian law. He has been a visiting professor at the Cornell University Law School.
Professor Jensen has published widely, in generalist journals including the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, and the North Carolina Law Review, and in specialist journals including Tax Notes, the Virginia Tax Review, and Constitutional Commentary. He is author of The Taxing Power, published by Praeger in 2005, and is editor of the Journal of Taxation of Investments, a quarterly publication. He is active in professional organizations and speaks regularly at meetings of the ABA Section of Taxation and the Cleveland Tax Institute. He is a member of the American Law Institute and a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel.
Credit:
1 hr. of CLE credit available, pending approval

By:
Case Downtown Lecture Series
Case Western Reserve School of Law
More:
http://law.case.edu/Lectures.aspx?lec_id=328