The New Section 1202 Tax-Free Business Sale: Congress Rewards Small Businesses That Survived the Great Recession

On September 27, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Creating Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 (“SBJA”) that contains a temporary amendment to Internal Revenue Code (“IRC”) § 1202. The amendment permits original shareholders of eligible corporation stock to sell the stock without being taxed on the sale. The temporary amendment initially only applied to certain stock acquired after the enactment of the SBJA and before January 1, 2011, but the amendment was extended on December 17, 2010 for another year ending January 1, 2012. With the impending sunset of the 15% capital gains rate at the end of 2012, this 100% exclusion from both capital gains taxes and the alternative minimum tax (“AMT”), would be a very big financial windfall to business owners with qualified small business stock (“QSBS”). A qualified small business (“QSB”) is a C corporation with assets of $50 million or less where at least 80$10 million or 10 times the adjusted basis in the corporation. Victor Fleischer stated that the main purpose for enhancing the IRC § 1202 exclusion is to encourage investment in certain new C corporation ventures and small businesses. Manufacturing, construction, and retail wholesaling industries appear to be some of the main areas promoted by the expanded exclusion, since the definition of “qualified trade or business” excludes many other major areas of industry. This Article provides an overview of the IRC Section § 1202 tax-free business sale provision, the history behind the development of the IRC amendments, the apparent intent for enactment, the likelihood the Act will achieve its purposes, the statute’s ambiguities, and some policy implications of creating a tax-free business sale provision

The Scale of Ethylene Plants: Backgrounds and Issues

Questions of scale have been the subject of research at IIASA since January 1978. Following the publication in September 1978 of the IIASA Research Memorandum "'Problems of Scale' -- The Case for IIASA Research" (M.F. Cantley and V.N. Glagolev; RM-78-47), plans were made for a workshop to be held in June 1979 on the topic "Size and Productive Efficiency -- The Wider Implications". This workshop is planned around a selected list of "Key Topics" and specific industries -- the latter including initially electricity generation, ethylene plants, and coal liquefaction. Since not all workshop participants can be familiar with all topics and industries, it was felt that it would be useful to provide background material where necessary. This paper is intended to provide sufficient up-to-date factual information on the petrochemical industry to enable participants to understand and contribute to discussions about questions of size in ethylene plants, and to relate these to the more general issues raised at the workshop. The information presented here is based on the published articles listed in the references, and on correspondence and conversation with experts in the industry; but the author, while wishing to acknowledge the extensive help received from these sources, accepts responsibility for any inaccuracies or over-simplifications he has introduced

Radial honeycomb core

Core alleviates many limitations of conventional nacelle construction methods. Radical core, made of metals or nonmetals, is fabricated either by joining nodes and then expanding, or by performing each layer and then joining nodes. Core may also be produced from ribbons or strips with joined nodes or ribbons oriented in longitudinal planes

Mid-Project Observations from a Study of Strategic Monitoring in Health Care

Within the research program of IIASA's Management and Technology Area, the subject of Program Management has been defined as "the general problem of translating ideal, multidimensional goals into achievable goals, and devising the necessary mechanisms for achieving this in a complex organizational situation". Strategic planning and control for health care is an example of such a problem. Since early 1978, research has been conducted in co-operation with the U.K. authorities into some aspects of the implementation of the systematic strategic planning system initiated in 1976 by the ministry responsible, the Department of Health and Social Security. The research has concentrated on the subject of strategic control, or "monitoring". The study is still in progress, but this paper describing "mid-project observations" illustrates the need for monitoring, describes some research and ideas contributing towards more effective monitoring, and suggests some of the difficulties facing its further development. The work is set in the specific terms of a particular service in one country; but the issues involved are of universal significance, for the development of systems by which large-scale public programs can "learn", gradually but systematically, in a long cyclic progress

Strategic Control for a U.K. Regional Health Authority: A Conceptual Framework

After a brief review of the nature of strategic planning, and the problems of defining health service objectives, the paper concentrates on the question of "strategic control", in the context of a regional health authority. The purpose of monitoring is defined in detail. A critical review of concepts of control in various disciplines considers their suitability to the health authority context. An integration of feedforward and feedback control loops is developed, in order to meet the specific characteristics of a system in which "environment" can be viewed as the "input", and to provide the adaptive, learning capability which is required by the situation of insufficient data, ignorance of underlying mechanisms, and continuing change

Collaborative cognitive-activation strategies as an emancipatory force in promoting girls’ interest in and enjoyment of mathematics: A cross-national case study

The results of international large-scale assessments have revealed the emergence of gender disparities in attitudes to mathematics, with girls generally demonstrating lower levels of interest in and enjoyment of mathematics than boys. Given that attitudes to mathematics are key determinants of future STEM participation, collaborative cognitive-activation teaching strategies, which harmonise with the core tenets of feminist mathematical pedagogy, are proposed as a possible approach to improving girls’ relationships with mathematics. The results of a small-scale cross-national case study that incorporated this approach through a six week intervention are reported. The findings show a significant increase in girls’ enjoyment of mathematics but there was no significant change in boys’ attitudes. Potential implications for mathematics education policy and practice are elucidated

Who Learns What? A Conceptual Description of Capability and Learning in Technological Systems

In terms both of individual units and of groups or organizations, the evolution of technological systems has structural similarities to the evolution of biological systems. This paper thus makes use of Bonner's description of biological development: the law of growth of the constructive processes, the internal and external constraints on this growth, the resulting changes of form, differentiation, specialization of function, and increased complexity are all features common to developments in the biological and technological fields. Examples from several industries illustrate technological developments. The pursuit of economies of scale exemplifies the parallelism with biological development. The evolution of technological capability is seen as a learning process in which information is acquired, stored, and transmitted. Information can be stored in people, stored on paper (or its equivalent), or embodied in physical plant. These specifically human capabilities differentiate learning in technological fields from biological evolution by natural selection and open up more rapid and efficient means of information or technology transfer; in fact, the shift is from Darwinian to Lamarckian evolution. However, theoretical knowledge is important only when translated into practice, and learning itself originates in and depends on practice: there are limits to the effective "storability" of know-how, and similarly to its transmission. A distinction is drawn between "primary" (direct) and "secondary" (derivative, indirectly transmitted) learning. The terms introduced underlie the phenomenon known as cumulative experience, manifest in the "learning curve." Learning, however, is a multilevel process, and levels are described as a basis for distinguishing the type of learning or information transfer characteristic of each level, answering the question "Who learns what?" The intrinsically discrete nature of the learning process -- a step-function rather than a curve -- is illustrated by Waddington's data on aircraft-submarine attack performance. An organization's capability is described in terms of a network of capabilities. The final section discusses policy implications of the conceptual framework developed in the report