SOME LATTER DAY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE TAXATION OF LIQUIDATING DISTRIBUTIONS: IS THE COP STILL ON THE BEAT?

Authors

Willard H. Pedrick, Northwestern UniversityFollow

Abstract

Redemption and salvation are doctrinal terms suggestive of the enthusiasm of the camp meeting. It is altogether fitting that these terms be used in connection with the taxation of corporate liquidating distributions. Through redemption of his stock the shareholder may find this world's nearest approach to fiscal salvation-taxation of his receipts on a capital-gains basis. To say the shareholder's enthusiasm for capital-gains treatment approaches a religious zeal is to underestimate the matter. Nor is it difficult to understand his attitude. If corporate earnings and profits, subjected at the outset to a relatively Hat but heavy corporate income tax, are paid out as dividends they will then be subject to the same graduated income tax paid by the other members of the corporate family-the wage earners and the corporate executives. This, of course, is a fate almost more than stockholder Hesh can bear and happily Congress has provided an escape route.

Recommended Citation

Willard H. Pedrick, SOME LATTER DAY DEVELOPMENTS IN THE TAXATION OF LIQUIDATING DISTRIBUTIONS: IS THE COP STILL ON THE BEAT?, 50 Mich. L. Rev. 529 (1952).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol50/iss4/3