<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; text-align: justify; mso-pagination: none;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-themecolor: text1;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The absence of governmental oversight and regulation of Not-For-Profit corporations has resulted in these entities performing their stated purposes inadequately and inefficiently and has enabled financial indiscretions which have tarnished their reputations. Enhanced oversight and regulation is needed to prevent recurrences of these failures.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span>

<p>Foreclosures are at a record high, causing families to be displaced, blighted neighborhoods and the reduction of home values. This paper examines a few unusual cases recently determined, whereby the Court exercises its equity powers to find a just result.</p>

Congress reacted quickly to the accounting professions involvement in the Enron/Tyco International financial collapses in 2001. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was enacted and the Securities and Exchange Commission promulgated new reporting regulations aimed at preventing such losses in the future. A more remote effect occurred a year later in 2003 when Congress enacted sweeping reforms affecting the tax shelter industry. Congress targeted accounting firms and related professionals who created, marketed and sold abusive tax shelters. While the culpability of these professionals was clear the resulting criminal prosecutions against some of the accounting professionals were tainted by an overzealous prosecution which relied on unconstitutional tactics to obtain convictions.

The Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution gave the federal government power over foreign trade, trade with the Indian tribes and trade “among several states.”  By lack of further enumeration and the passage of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, it would be reasonable to conclude that commerce that is truly intrastate would, therefore, be within the regulatory province of the states.  In fact, that was the interpretation initially reached and subsequently followed by the United States Supreme Court.  But in 1942, that changed and, over the course of the following 60+ years, to date the Court has concluded, by an expansive interpretation of that federal power granted, that Congress and the federal government have virtually unbridled power to regulate not only those areas that would traditionally be considered “commerce” or “interstate commerce”, but, moreover, in areas that seemingly have nothing to do with commerce, interstate, or otherwise.  This paper will trace the journey that the justices have taken down this judicial interstate highway and the methods that the federal government has employed to achieve its objectives.  Hence, the subtitle of this paper:  From Expansion to Extortion.

Close to three years ago, Congress enacted legislation that overhauls the U.S. health care system and at the same times affects nearly all taxpayers, many employers, and many elements of the health care industry. The sweeping new health reform law embodied in this legislation pays for its cost through tax increases in a number of ways The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 similarly affects many taxpayers with numerous changes in the tax law which either increase or decrease a taxpayers burden depending on income levels.