Suits a stealth tax on corporations.(Commentary)(taxation without representation)(Column)

Business Insurance, December, 2003 by Hofmann, Mark A.

Byline: Mark A. Hofmann If there's one thing Americans don't like, it's taxation without representation. The antipathy runs so deep that we fought a war of independence over it. And while we haven't perfectly adhered to the idea-some residents of the District of Columbia have license plates that read "Taxation Without Representation''-we've done a pretty good job of standing by that founding principle.

But, as an Alabama jury recently demonstrated, there are still ways to get around that. Although you won't find the term in any state constitution that I know of, the way to do it is what amounts to taxation through litigation. It's the revenue enhancer that dares not speak its name. What began as a dispute over natural gas royalties could turn into...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.