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INTRODUCTION 1160 I. BACKGROUND 1170 A. Legislative History of Opportunity Zones 1170 B. Opportunity Zones and Opportunity Funds Generally 1173 C. The Aftermath of Opportunity Zone Legislation 1176 II. INCORPORATING [...], Opportunity Zones are low-income areas or economically distressed communities in the United States. The Opportunity Zone program encourages investment in low-income areas or economically distressed communities by offering investors tax benefits. Scholars have found little evidence that Opportunity Zones positively impact zone residents' lives, concluding that Opportunity Zone legislation mostly benefits wealthy investors and should be reformed to benefit community members better. Investors are currently not required to finance projects geared toward the needs of local communities; they are instead funding developments they would have already invested in, whether located in an Opportunity Zone or not. This Article argues that current reform efforts and related scholarship do not give adequate weight to active and direct participation by community members and investors as it relates to economic development tax incentives. It argues for a comprehensive framework that focuses on active, direct, and transformative participation by community members and investors. This Article uses the Opportunity Zone program as an example of how two novel policy reforms for economic development tax incentives could be implemented. First, Opportunity Zone investors should be required to buy into the community financially. Buy-in would entail a one-time lump sum payment to a community Opportunity Fund to ensure actualized commitment to community development. Second, a portion of each Opportunity Zone should be reserved for current community members to invest in. The buy-in will provide community members--often members of historically disadvantaged groups--with resources, allowing them to benefit irrespective of an investor's intent. The funds collected from the buy-in will be allocated to community members, allowing them to invest in and benefit from Opportunity Zones, which are otherwise prohibitively expensive for average residents.

TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION 258 II. THE PRELUDE 262 III. A SURFEIT OF LITIGATION VEHICLES 266 IV. A MOST PECULIAR QUESTION OF STATUTORY INTERPRETATION 271 V. THE SUPREME COURT [...], The Supreme Court recently granted certiorari in Moore v. United States, for the purpose of deciding whether the realization doctrine remains a constitutional limitation on Congress's ability to impose an unapportioned income tax, as the Supreme Court held in its famous 1920 decision in Eisner v. Macomber. For most of the past hundred-plus years, Macomber has languished somewhere between life and death--never overruled by the Court, but never again applied by the Court to invalidate a provision of the income tax (including some provisions that the 1920 Court would surely have considered impermissible). Should the Court now declare Macomber fully alive, the impact on the present and future of the federal income tax would be far reaching. Existing provisions of major revenue significance would be invalidated (including the 2017 redesign of cross-border taxation at issue in Moore,), and a number of intriguing reform proposals would be constitutional nonstarters (including the so-called billionaires' tax proposed by the Biden administration). Although it is natural to look to 1920 and Macomber as the cause of today's uncertain scope of the congressional power to tax income, what did not happen in the Court's 1943 decision in Helvering v. Griffiths is as significant as what did happen in 1920. Despite Griffiths being of comparable importance to Macomber, it has faded into obscurity, even as Macomber remains the most famous tax case of them all. The presence o/Moore on the Court's docket today depends on Macomber's wildly improbable survival in 1943. That survival was the product of a perfect storm of unlikely circumstances. This article tells the story of Griffiths, and how Congress and the Roosevelt administration snatched defeat from the jaws of victory (with a crucial assist from Justice Jackson). The story is offered here both for its own sake--it is fascinating and little known--and because of its timeliness as Moore awaits the Court's consideration. Although the article's focus is on Griffiths, not Moore, the story may offer lessons for today's Supreme Court, for Congress, and for the Biden administration.

INTRODUCTION 860 I. BUDGETS, BONDS, AND A MASTER CLASS IN AVOIDING RESPONSIBILITY 862 A. BUDGETS AND MUNICIPAL BONDS 862 B. WHAT IS SCOOP AND TOSS AND WHY IS IT A [...], In the face of budgetary crises, state and local governments traditionally have two options--raise taxes to generate revenue or cut spending. However, some municipal governments choose another route. Instead of paying the immediate political price associated with higher taxes or cuts to government aid, these municipalities issue bonds, using debt to fill gaps in the budget. The officials creating this debt are typically not the ones responsible for its repayment. Often, a municipal bond is not due for twenty to thirty years after it is issued. For state and local officials, the obligation to repay bonds issued under a predecessor can be a difficult pill to swallow, leading some to engage in "scoop and toss" refinancing. Scoop and tossing allows officials to scoop up a municipality's expiring bonds and toss the burden of repayment into the future, preferably onto the shoulders of a successor. The maneuver involves issuing new bonds to pay off expiring bonds--using new debt to pay off old debt--akin to using a new credit card to pay off an old credit card. In doing so, the government can create short-term flexibility by taking the money originally set aside to pay off the debt and using it elsewhere in the budget. However, all debt must be repaid, and scoop and tossing only delays the inevitable while adding to a municipality's tab. The rise of COVID-19 has also brought an increase in scoop and tossing. Facing repayment deadlines and the demands of a pandemic, municipal governments across the country have chosen to toss the burden of repayment into the future. What effect these decisions will have on state and local budgets going forward is unclear. This Comment asserts that changes to the current state and federal regulatory frameworks are needed to limit scoop and tossing, as any short-term flexibility afforded by the maneuver is outweighed by the need for long-term budgetary stability. In addition, this Comment advocates for greater public involvement in municipal budgets as a way to increase political accountability and decrease the use of short-sighted measures like scoop and tossing.

Introduction 1204 I. Some Opportunity Zone Basics 1206 A. Basics of the Program 1206 B. Concerns with OZs 1208 C. The Complexities of OZs 1210 II. Agency Coordination for Opportunity [...], The Opportunity Zone (OZ) program, which is designed to provide place-based equity investments into certain low-income communities, has potential upsides and pitfalls. The program is complicated, and it implicates numerous spheres of policy expertise. But currently, it is mostly administered by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a tax program. This Essay seeks to find a technical-managerial solution to some of the problems of the OZ program, and that is agency coordination. It would have the IRS and the Office of Tax Policy (OTP) work with other agencies with expertise in place-based investment programs to administer the OZ program. It outlines the benefits and potential problems of coordination and discusses what tools could help improve this endea vor. It also proposes that the coordinated effort attempt to engage communities that live in OZs further in guiding the program.