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Taxation & Estate Planning

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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

Working hard over the holiday break

Posted on January 01, 2011
I wasn't doing much of a non-vacation nature, but you can judge for yourself whether these guys were working hard.Buddy, on the far left, is bagging himself, as usual. In the middle photo, Seymour and Ursula (left to right) show their keen awareness of hot spots in the house...

A cure for Boxing Day blues?

Posted on December 26, 2010
Day after Christmas got you down, especially as we Americans don?t get to call it Boxing Day?Or, not enough new books in your gift bag that you actually want to read?Or, too much winter lying ahead (this definitely has me down at the moment), or struggling with a surfeit of seasonal family gatherings?If so, have I got a commercial solicitation for you...

Slides for my talk on a corporate tax panel next month

Posted on December 22, 2010
Next month in Boca Raton at the ABA Tax Section's Annual Meeting, I'll be talking for 10 minutes on a corporate tax reform panel (along with Rosanne Altshuler, Reuven Avi-Yonah, and Ed Kleinbard).We only have 10-minute slots so as to leave time for cross-talk and audience participation...

The Caped Crusader

Posted on December 22, 2010
Buddy, the crazy one among our cats, decided not to let the fact that he had stuck his head into a shopping bag (with one of the handles around his neck) discourage him from pursuing his interests. On the far left he's chasing a crunchy treat (which he tries to pretend is alive), while in the other two photos he is petitioning for food...

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Updated NYU Tax Policy Colloquium Schedule

Posted on December 21, 2010
Since last posting the schedule for the Tax Policy Colloquium that Mihir Desai and I will be offering at NYU Law School from January through April 2011, I have learned most of the paper titles. I'm therefore reposting it, with all of the titles that I currently know...

Overheard in the NYC subway today

Posted on December 20, 2010
As I was ascending towards the street from two levels down, I overheard the following:Little child: "Are we underground?"Parent: "Yes."Little child: "But there are stairs! Underground doesn't have stairs!"Not sure I understood this comment either.

Scratch one more "reunion tour" off the list

Posted on December 19, 2010
There aren't that many musical acts that I'd go to see if there weren't seats, though Pavement last summer was one. Ray Davies the other week didn't present this challenge as his (canceled) show was at the Beacon Theater, but if he toured with the Kinks (or even just his brother plus a younger bassist and drummer) I'd consider it...

Earth to Doug Holtz-Eakin

Posted on December 15, 2010
I had thought I was done with the occasional Doug Holtz-Eakin-bashing after the 2008 campaign. I only did it because I felt that he not only should, but did, know better. So in a way it was a compliment. And indeed much of the time during the 2008 he was saying inconvenient but true things, rather than those crazy hack things that a campaign normally assigns to run-of-the-mill politicos, rather than to serious credentialed economists...

Album of the year?

Posted on December 15, 2010
While I haven't really bought enough new albums to pick a best of the year authoritatively, based on what I know I suppose I'll join the bandwagon and say Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid.

Thought experiment

Posted on December 14, 2010
Suppose Romney had won the Republican nomination, and then won the general election by tacking a bit to the center and pledging to go national with his Massachusetts healthcare plan, which he then succeeded in enacting with equal support from Republicans and Democrats (while the rightmost Republicans and leftmost Democrats both voted against it)...

Efficient markets problem

Posted on December 14, 2010
Budget expert Stan Collender's seven main predictions for 2012 fiscal politics are as follows:"1. Gridlock supreme all year long on anything having to do with spending, revenues, deficit, and debt"2. No legislated reductions in the deficit"3. Bowles-Simpson quickly fades into oblivion"4...

Coming soon, but probably not to a town near you

Posted on December 13, 2010
I'll be speaking at a couple of conferences next month. Details are as follows:On Friday, January 14, Loyola Law School in Los Angeles is hosting a conference on tax expenditures, co-sponsored by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. On Panel 2, meeting from 10 to 11:30 am, Linda Sugin will present her paper, "What's the New Normal in Tax Expenditure Analysis?," while Eric Toder and Donal Marron will present "Tax Expenditures and the Size of Government...

Getting It versus Miller Lite Beer

Posted on December 13, 2010
I learned the other day that NYU Law School's Career Services department, in order to keep students interested (for their own good) in reading a weekly newsletter, sometimes offers drawings for free prizes. They recently offered free copies of Getting It, and within a few hours 15 students had signed up...

Derivatives pirates

Posted on December 12, 2010
Two good analogies for the folks at big banks discussed in this NYT story. The first is OPEC or any other cartel, and the second is pirates with guns extracting rents at a river crossing.

NYU Tax Policy Colloquium, spring 2011 schedule

Posted on December 10, 2010
I know I've already posted this, but as it's closer to the time I thought I'd re-post our speaker schedule for the NYU Tax Policy Colloquium in spring 2011.All sessions meet on Thursdays from 4-5:50 pm in Vanderbilt 208, NYU Law School, and I'll be co-leading it with Mihir Desai...

Should Obama consider proposing a progressive consumption tax?

Posted on December 10, 2010
Today's New York Times reports on trial balloons from the Obama Administration concerning the possibility that he might propose fundamental tax reform, presumably in his State of the Union address.Needless to say, as a professional matter I'd be delighted if he did this...

Continued progress on international tax book

Posted on December 09, 2010
I was going to say that writing a book is like running a marathon. But at least with book-writing you can stop at any time and just resume later where you left off (not sound practice in marathons). On the other hand, the sum total for this multi-year project (as it has turned out, although I generally I write pretty fast) feels a lot longer than 26...

Further pivoting towards (partial) optimism

Posted on December 09, 2010
Contemplating next year's likely showdown over raising the debt ceiling, I once again discern a slightly more optimistic feeling about Obama - though not necessarily about the prospects for limiting collateral damage - than I have typically had lately...

Semantic (?) quibble and a word of praise for a WSJ reporter

Posted on December 08, 2010
One thing the tax cut deal between Obama and the Republican Congressional leadership has done is bring the estate tax back into the news. They propose a permanent resolution (35 percent tax rate on wealth over $5 million) in lieu of jumping back on New Year's Day to pre-2001 law that no one really expects to last longer than legislative deadlock dictates...

The tax cut deal: too soon to tell who really won?

Posted on December 07, 2010
As Yogi Berra once said, "it's very hard to predict things, especially the future." And this poses a key problem in deciding how to assess the tax cut extension deal between Obama and the Republicans.While the deal still strikes me as better than expected, a key question is what happens down the road...

The deal on extending the tax cuts

Posted on December 06, 2010
The NYT is reporting that Obama and the Congressional Republicans have made the following deal regarding the tax cuts. On the whole, it's better than I expected. Herewith some comments on the reported details:1) Extend all the expiring individual income tax rate cuts for 2 years - Well, we knew this was going to happen...

Unilateral Presidentially declared payroll tax holiday??

Posted on December 06, 2010
Jack Balkin has a very interesting post today (h/t to Tax Prof Blog for bringing it to my attention) in which he offers Obama the following advice:"1. Let the Bush tax cuts expire."2. Declare a payroll tax holiday for Tax Years 2011 and 2012, featuring cuts in the amount of payroll tax the federal government will correct...

Two perspectives on tax reform

Posted on December 03, 2010
Bruce Bartlett notes today that the Simpson-Bowles tax reform proposal, by reducing statutory tax rates in exchange for repealing tax expenditures as defined from a Haig-Simons income tax perspective, might actually end up increasing effective tax rates on saving and investment...

Marketing Getting It one reader at a time

Posted on December 02, 2010
A few minutes ago I ran into a senior (emeritus) NYU colleague in the faculty library, and he asked me how Getting It (although he didn't know it by name) is doing.A few hundred copies sold and some on-line or local newspaper reviews, I said.Ah, he replied, that's better than 33,000 of the 35,000 books published each year (numbers that he knew as of a few years back for family reasons), which get no reviews and sell next to no copies...

Why does the White House keep making preemptive concessions?

Posted on December 02, 2010
My critique from an earlier post that President Obama "makes a concession, then another one, then another one, because that's his negotiating style ... [although] he isn't going to get anything back," is not exactly unique to me. See, for example, here and here...

Postponed book talk

Posted on December 01, 2010
I was scheduled to give a lunch talk today at Pace University Law School on Getting It. Unfortunately, due to a couple of mishaps in the travel arrangements, the session didn't happen, and I hope to do it next semester.

Radio appearance on WNYC, All Things Considered

Posted on November 30, 2010
It appears that I'll be discussing the Bowles-Simpson debt commission live on radio for a few minutes this afternoon, on NPR's "All Things Considered," shortly after 4:30 pm EST.In addition to discussing what I think of the plan (and the phrase "compared to what" is crucial in answering this), I imagine the word "chicken game" may come up in terms of why I don't expect anything significant to come of the commission's work...

Expiring tax cut for millionaires only?

Posted on November 29, 2010
"Millionaire," for this purpose, is defined in terms of annual taxable income.I agree that it's politically deft, not that this will necessarily matter. And I do look forward to reading the Todd Henderson remake in which someone writes a column or post insisting that, despite his million-dollar income, he is barely scraping by and certainly isn't rich...

Book talk on Getting It?

Posted on November 24, 2010
It looks like I'll be doing a faculty lunch talk on Getting It at Pace University Law School next Wednesday, December 1. More fun for the tax-uninitiated and at the end of a long semester, I suppose, than a reprise of my papers and past talks concerning Taxing Financial Institutions, The Rising Tax-Electivity of U...

$400 billion of easy deficit reduction!!

Posted on November 22, 2010
In today's Wall Street Journal, an op-ed by Stephen Moore and Richard Vedder claims that they have done econometric research credibly establishing that, for every dollar of new federal revenues, federal spending increases by $1.17. Hence, it supposedly is a fallacy to think that tax increases can play any role whatsoever in long-term deficit reduction...

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