Andy2

What I meant was that an academic article is an analysis of the law from a disinterested point of view - here is what the law says and here is how it should be applied by the different parties. Since the disinterested writer is only interested in the proper application of the law, he does not passionately advocate for more taxation or openly criticize those (the IRS) who enforce the law for occasionally choosing to subjectively ignore the letter of the law to make the overall system easier to comply with. A disinterested writer is a careful student of the underlying facts when discussing the law, which is why I was so blown away by what he said about Citi's decision to stop issuing 1099s with respect to AA miles. You can tell he did little study of Citi's program. I re-read the article after my initial post and was interested in his analysis of the timing of taxation when "taxable" miles are earned versus redeemed. The hardest thing to reconcile with Citi is the fact that they issued a 1099 for banking Thank You Points when redeemed but issued 1099s for AA miles when earned. Since he so loved dissing Citi for not continuing to issue 1099s for AA miles earned from bank deposit activity, he should have studied that fact so he could diss them some more.

I also questioned his lack of "back of the envelope" calculations regarding miles constituting interest income. He says that miles from opening a bank account are the equivalent of interest income as though that is a given fact. But something is amiss. If the AA miles were worth what Citi valued them at (or even what the author suggests valuing them at), it would make that bank account the highest yielding safe bank account of the decade. I am surprised that any of us could even log on, or get to a branch, to open the bank account since the demand should have been so high amongst yield-starved investors. But we all managed to do so quite easily. Perhaps that says something about the value (if any) of these miles.

That is why I did not think of if as an academic article, but more of a policy change suggestion article. It is an opinion piece that more miles are taxable than are actually taxed, and that more miles should be taxed for policy reasons, with some good citations but with a lot of bias on the author's part as to how the law should be interpreted to support his opinions.

This is what I think of as a great academic paper from a law school person. It is a little bit old, but there is a lot of frequent flier mile discussion and overlap with the one that nsx just posted. Note the well-reasoned thoughts, consideration of a sound workable tax system, lack of calling other people's positions (such as the working condition fringe benefit argument) weak, and the absence of over the top comments.

http://pymnts.com/assets/Uploads/Doi...rd-Rewards.pdf