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Taxation & Estate Planning

Start Making Sense

Unfair but balanced commentary on tax and budget policy, contemporary U.S. politics and culture.

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Last Entry: November 04, 2020 at 16:18:00

Whistling on the edge of the graveyard

Posted on February 25, 2011
Between the preoccupation of one's own busy life and all the astonishing things that are currently happening around the world from Wisconsin to Tripoli, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that we apparently are on the verge of a U.S. government shutdown next Friday...

NYU Tax Policy Colloquia - Kenneth Scheve, Allison Christians

Posted on February 25, 2011
Last week (Feb. 17) our colloquium guest was Yale political scientist Kenneth Scheve, with his paper Envy and Altruism in Hard Times. The paper reports U.S. survey evidence (the next draft will also have French survey evidence that for the moment remains "in the field") showing that respondents' views about hypothetical policy changes, such as protectionism for a particular industry, a tax on bankers, or raising income tax rates to reduce the deficit, depends on the income ascribed in the question to the group that would be hit by the tax...

Timeout for a quick basketball comment

Posted on February 22, 2011
As a Knick fan (albeit one who loathes both Dolan and Isiah), I'm skeptical about the Melo trade. Perhaps the most interesting feature was Melo's deliberately playing his hand so the Knicks would have to pay more. To me, this signals that he is either not bold enough (to risk free agency), not shrewd enough, or (most likely) not sufficiently interested in winning to be the player the Knicks need.

Rocket J. Squirrel

Posted on February 22, 2011
Teasing though affectionately meant new nicknames are OK, I figure, when you give them to a cat. A person's feelings might be hurt, but the cat doesn't know.In this spirit, we've long, for obscure historical reasons relating to my first-ever cat, the fondly remembered Puddin', referred to all of our cats as "bunnies...

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Be careful what I wish for?

Posted on February 17, 2011
The Michigan Law Review, which publishes an Annual Survey of Books "related to the law," (i.e., a special issue that is book reviews only), is welcoming unsolicited submissions. Reviews must be 8,500 words or less, and the proposal guidelines are available here...

Video appearance

Posted on February 16, 2011
In honor of tax filing season, I discuss the marriage penalty in a video for Smart Money Magazine here.

Yale Law School talk on "Tax Cuts and the Impending Budget Crisis"

Posted on February 14, 2011
St. Augustine famously remarked: ?Give me chastity & continence, but not yet.?Our current U.S. budget problems verge on being exactly the same. We need ?laxity? now to address an ongoing down economy & almost 10% unemployment as Americans go through painful deleveraging...

Returning to old haunts

Posted on February 14, 2011
Today I went to Yale Law School (a simple day trip from NYC) for a lunch talk on tax cuts and the impending budget crisis. It was sponsored by a student organization, the American Constitution Society, and I'm pretty sure was my first-ever appearance at another law school by invitation of a student group, rather than someone on the faculty...

February 10 NYU Tax Policy Colloquium (with Mick Keen), part 3

Posted on February 11, 2011
Before reading this, you may want to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this multi-part post.Okay, I've described some settings where the taxes versus regulation choice may arise for addressing the problems with financial institutions that triggered the 2008 financial collapse...

February 10 NYU Tax Policy Colloquium (with Mick Keen), part 2

Posted on February 11, 2011
Before reading this, you may want to check out Part 1 of this multi-part post.Part 1 left the damsel on the railroad tracks (so to speak) in the sense that I had mentioned Weitzman's "prices versus quantities" framework as giving us a potential handle on how to address the problems with financial institutions that led to their unleashing devastating harm on the world economy in 2008...

February 10 NYU Tax Policy Colloquium (with Mick Keen), part 1

Posted on February 11, 2011
Yesterday, Michael (Mick) Keen of the International Monetary Fund appeared at our colloquium to present his paper, The Taxation and Regulation of Financial Institutions.An initial word about my blogging about these sessions may be in order. IMF staff and officials, along with others who sometimes appear at the colloquium either as speakers or in the audience, sometimes have to be mindful of what they are quoted publicly as having said...

February 3 NYU Tax Policy Colloquium (with David Miller)

Posted on February 11, 2011
Just over a week ago, David Miller of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP appeared at our colloquium to present his paper, Unintended Consequences: How U.S. Tax Law Encourages Investment in Offshore Tax Havens. I didn't post on it earlier because I was off at the crack of dawn the next morning to give an international tax policy talk in Washington, and then this week was pretty full...

On the road again

Posted on February 11, 2011
This coming Monday, on Valentine's Day, I'll be heading to New Haven for a few hours in order to speak at a lunchtime session sponsored by a Yale Law School student organization, the American Constitution Society, entitled "Tax Cuts and the Impending Budget Crisis...

Metaphorical truth that will soon become literal truth

Posted on February 09, 2011
According to this Bloomberg article, about 27 percent of U.S. homeowners are currently "underwater" - that is, their mortgage debt exceeds their home value.That's a bad choice of word for me, as I have just started reading a scary book that ought to be in the horror section, Peter Ward's The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Icecaps...

Traveling road show

Posted on February 05, 2011
Yesterday I spent 6-1/2 hours on the Acela (including one hour of train delay) in order to round-trip to Washington and spend 2 hours at a conference, including a 40 minute stretch when I was the speaker. (Rising corporate residence electivity paper on international tax, which also rethinks the broader basic issues a bit; paper is available here and the slides for the talk are here...

Corporate tax distortions

Posted on February 02, 2011
Today's New York Times had an article by David Leonhardt on corporate tax reform, of interest even though the chance that such reform will be seriously addressed in the next two years strikes me as close to zero. (The one thing that I could see happening is an unfinanced corporate rate cut and/or shift to exempting foreign source income, which would happen immediately if President Obama agreed to it and Congressional Democrats were willing to go along...

NYU Tax Policy Colloquium: 2012 heads-up for those who are interested

Posted on February 01, 2011
After 16 years of doing the NYU Tax Policy Colloquium on Thursdays, we've switched for next year (2012) to Tuesdays. Those who come from outside NYU to attend our little sessions should take note and, if motivated, can rely and plan accordingly. The public sessions will still run from 4 to 6 pm, as they always have, albeit now earlier in the week...

Upcoming international tax policy talk in Washington

Posted on February 01, 2011
This Friday, I'll be presenting my paper on rising corporate residence electivity at a meeting of the International Tax Policy Forum in Washington.The slides, greatly shortened from when I presented the same paper (per these slides) as the 2010 NYU Tillinghast Lecture because my time slot is much shorter, are available here...

Article revisions

Posted on January 28, 2011
One certainly wants one's articles published, even though a lot of the readership derives from simply posting them on SSRN. But with the way editing and publishing take time, this means that things out of the dead past (from a writer's perspective) keep coming back and clawing at your sleeve, demanding fresh attention...

Winter weather blues (make me wanna holler)

Posted on January 27, 2011
Today, for the first time in the 16-year history of the NYU Tax Policy Colloquium, we had to cancel a session for weather reasons. Yair Listoken was scheduled to present his paper Taxation and Liquidity, but the storm shut down NYU for the day and all classes were canceled...

Radio days

Posted on January 26, 2011
Just did a live (7:15 am EST) radio interview on NPR's Marketplace Morning Report, regarding corporate tax reform. I confirmed that our statutory corporate rate is unusually high, but noted that a rate cut without base-broadening would lose revenue, and that finding pay-fors is unlikely to be easy politically.

Tax discussion in the State of the Union Address

Posted on January 25, 2011
Based on the prepared text of the SOTU, President Obama mentioned taxes seven times in the address (leaving aside a reference to "how and where your tax dollars are being spent"). Herewith some quick reactions to each mention:1) ?Thanks to the tax cuts we passed, Americans' paychecks are a little bigger today...

Quasi-talk at ABA Tax Section meeting on tax policy and the long-term fiscal crisis

Posted on January 24, 2011
This past Friday in Boca Raton, I was scheduled to appear on a panel at the ABA Tax Section's Annual Meeting as a discussant for the topic "Tax Policy, the Current Economic Climate, and the Long-Term Fiscal Crisis."I prepared what I thought were at least moderately amusing slides, setting forth some of my views on this topic, and was looking forward to the session, which I gather was well-attended...

Corporate tax reform

Posted on January 23, 2011
The newspapers are full of public statements as well as trial balloons concerning the Administration's possible plans on corporate tax reform.Judging from the public statements and reported musings that I've seen (e.g., Obama's address from Schenectady lauding GE investment in low-tax countries abroad that created complementary jobs in the U...

Cats revisited

Posted on January 17, 2011
As long as I am offering corrections (see prior post), I guess I owe one to my cats as well. Having noted their distressing failure to kill an invading mouse a couple of weeks ago, I should note the more recent evidence that they, no less than the New York Jets, know how to vindicate themselves when offered a rematch...

Bowles-Simpson revisited

Posted on January 17, 2011
If you examine the comment thread from my previous post, you will see that a reader argued I had overstated my critique of Bowles-Simpson, and that I largely conceded his point. My main pleading here is that, because I was focusing on my critique of 1986-style reform, I ended up using Bowles-Simpson as a straw man and thus, e...

Tax expenditures conference in Loyola (LA)

Posted on January 15, 2011
Yesterday?s conference was reasonably lively. Four panels over 7-1/2 hours went pretty fast. There was widespread consensus among the attendees concerning:(1) The basic validity or at least value of the tax expenditure concept, so long as one is not overly reductive and broad-brush about it...

Slides for my talk at Loyola (LA) Law School conference on tax expenditures

Posted on January 12, 2011
My slides commenting on papers by (1) Linda Sugin and (2) Donald Marron / Eric Toder, but also touching on the Bowles-Simpson report and 1986-style tax reform, at a session to take place this Friday, January 14, in Los Angeles, are available here.

A deafening silence?

Posted on January 12, 2011
Light posting lately reflects not just the early-January slows, but my working on the article concerning 1986-style tax reform that I mentioned in the prior post, along with my preparations for the conferences I am attending in Los Angeles later this week and Boca Raton next week, on which more in due course.

New Tax Notes article that I hope to write soon

Posted on January 04, 2011
I am hoping that I can somehow find the time in the next couple of months to write a piece I would plan to place in Tax Notes, entitled "1986-Style Tax Reform: A Good Idea Whose Time Has Passed."By 1986-style tax reform, I refer to broadening the tax base while reducing the rates, so that the change is revenue-neutral (an incoherent concept since the "taxes versus spending" distinction is economically nonsense; a better term would be "budget-neutral") and perhaps also distribution-neutral...

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