Taxation & Estate Planning

Clicker Fee Causes Student Rebellion at Johns Hopkins

Posted on September 24, 2010
Inside Higher Ed, Take Your Fee and Click It!: Anyone who doubts that rising tuition is making students especially thrifty when it comes to the ancillary costs of going to college might consider Johns Hopkins University, where nearly 200 students are protesting a new fee that works out to about...

Anti-BCS Group Files IRS Complaint Challenging Tax-Exempt Status of Bowl Games

Posted on September 24, 2010
Playoff PAC has filed this complaint with the IRS, alleging that the three organizations behind the Fiesta, Orange, and Sugar Bowls have abused their tax-exempt status by using charitable contributions to (i) pay excessive compensation to their executives, (ii) make undisclosed lobbyist contributions, (iii) intervene in political campaigns, and (iv)...

Democrats Punt on Taxes

Posted on September 24, 2010
Wall Street Journal, Congress Punts on Taxes: Democrats Put Off Showdown on Bush Cuts Until After November Election: Democrats abandoned plans to vote before Election Day on extending Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class while eliminating them for better-off Americans, spooked by protests from vulnerable incumbents and bleak prospects...

Tamanaha: Doubts About the New 'Scholarly Impact' Rankings

Posted on September 24, 2010
Following up on my recent posts: The Top 70 Law Faculties by Citations in Law Reviews (Sept. 13, 2010) Which Law Reviews Are Better Than Their School's Faculty (And Vice Versa)? (Sept. 23, 2010) In our article, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind...

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College Employees

Posted on September 23, 2010
A new study by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group, reports on political giving to federal candidates by college employees in the run up to the November's 2010 midterm elections. As in previous studies, the report documents that college employees overhwlemingly contribute to democratic candidates...

Senate Holds Hearing Today on Lessons from the Tax Reform Act of 1986

Posted on September 23, 2010
The Senate Finance Committee holds a hearing on Tax Reform: Lessons from the Tax Reform Act of 1986 today at 10:00 a.m. EST: Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) will convene a hearing [today] to examine the lessons from the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and look at ideas...

ABA Tax Section Fall Meeting

Posted on September 23, 2010
The three-day fall meeting of the ABA Tax Section kicks off today in Toronto. Tax Profs with speaking roles include: Court Procedure & Practice: Litigating The Application of Anti-Tax Avoidance Statutes ? Learning From The Canada Experience -- Martin J...

Forbes: How A $200k UBS Account Grew Into a $21m Penalty

Posted on September 23, 2010
Forbes, How A $200,000 UBS Account Grew Into A $21 Million Penalty, by Janet Novack: Another former holder of a secret UBS AG account got off with probation Tuesday, when federal sentencing guidelines suggested a sentence of six months to a year. But it?s hard to argue that 84-year-old Jules...

Tax Court Refuses to Follow 7th Circuit, Again Invalidates Innocent Spouse Reg

Posted on September 23, 2010
Following up on my prior posts: Divided Tax Court Invalidates Innocent Spouse Reg (Apr. 8, 2009) 7th Cir. Reverses Tax Court, Upholds 2-Year Deadline on Innocent Spouse Claims (June 8, 2010) A divided (8-5) Tax Court yesterday (in a case in which Tax Prof Ljubomir Nacev (Northern Kentucky) represented the...

A Pledge to America: Tax Provisions

Posted on September 23, 2010
Here are the tax provisions in A Pledge to America released today by the Republican Party: Permanently Stop All Job-Killing Tax Hikes. We will help the economy by permanently stopping all tax increases, currently scheduled to take effect January 1, 2011...

UBC & Simon Fraser Host Tax Compliance Workshop Today in Vancouver

Posted on September 23, 2010
The National Centre for Business Law at the UBC Faculty of Law and the School of Public Policy at Simon Fraser University co-host a workshop today on tax compliance at the Wosk Centre for Dialogue in downtown Vancouver: The workshop will bring together researchers from different disciplines (economics, law, politics,...

Parker: Federal Income Tax Policy and Abortion

Posted on September 23, 2010
Frederick R. Parker, Jr. (LSU) has published Federal Income Tax Policy and Abortion in the United States, 13 Mich. St. U. J. Med. & L. 335 (2009). Here is the abstract: Drawing from the definition of "medical care" set forth in § 213, as well as fundamental principles of income...

Which Law Reviews Are Better Than Their School's Faculty (And Vice Versa)?

Posted on September 23, 2010
Following up on my post, The Top 70 Law Faculties by Citations in Law Reviews (Sept. 13, 2010): Al Brophy (North Carolina) blogs Law Review Citations versus Faculty Citations: [T]here are some schools whose faculty citation rank is substantially higher than its law review citation rank (and vice versa)...

100 Most Influential People in Tax and Accounting

Posted on September 22, 2010
I am honored to be included on the list of Accounting Today's 100 Most Influential People for the fifth year in a row. The magazine contains one-sentence explanations of why each of the folks made the list; here is mine: Probably the most prolific blogger in the tax field, Caron...

Baltimore Seeks to Hire Tax Clinician

Posted on September 22, 2010
The University of Baltimore School of Law seeks to hire a tenure-track or tenured clinician to direct and teach in its tax clinic beginning in the 2011-12 academic year. For more information or to apply for the position, email Christopher J. Peters, Chair, Faculty Appointments Committee.

Indiana Law Grad Asks President Obama: 'Is the American Dream Dead for Me?'

Posted on September 22, 2010
National Law Journal, Young Attorney: Obama Didn't Answer His Question: A growing number of disgruntled law school graduates have taken the to Internet to anonymously vent their frustrations about high debt and poor job prospects. Not Ted Brassfield. The recent Indiana University Maurer School of Law?Bloomington graduate took his concerns...

Senate Holds Hearing Today on Tax Policy and the Military and Veterans

Posted on September 22, 2010
The Senate Finance Committee holds a hearing on Tax and Fiscal Policy: Effects on the Military and Veterans Community today at 10:00 a.m. EST. Here are the witnesses scheduled to testify: Captain Marshall Hanson USNR (Retired) (Director of Legislative and Military Policy, Reserve Officers Association of the United States) Staff...

Digital Casebooks

Posted on September 22, 2010
The Atlantic, Reimagining the Stodgy Law School Casebook for the Digital Age: The venerable law school casebook has held sway in American law schools since Christopher Langdell created and popularized them at Harvard Law School in the decades around the turn of the century...

Kaplow: Taxes, Permits, and Climate Change

Posted on September 22, 2010
Louis Kaplow (Harvard) has posted Taxes, Permits, and Climate Change on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This essay revisits the question of instrument choice for the regulation of externalities in the context of climate change. The central point is that the Pigouvian prescription to equate marginal control costs with the...

Tax: The Only LL.M. That's 'Worth It'?

Posted on September 22, 2010
In our new article, Pursuing a Tax LLM Degree: Why and When?, Jennifer M. Kowal (Loyola-L.A.), Katherine Pratt (Loyola-L.A.) and I provide information and advice to American law students and JD graduates who are considering pursuing a Tax LLM degree: This Article (1) discusses the costs and benefits of pursuing...

New York Law School Seeks to Fill International Tax Chair

Posted on September 22, 2010
New York Law School is seeking to fill the Otto L. Walter Distinguished Faculty Chair: The chair honors Otto Walter, one of New York Law School?s most renowned alumni, authority on international and tax law, and founder of Walter, Conston, Alexander & Green, the predecessor firm in New York of...

UC Law Prof Retires From Blogging After Tax Post Spawns 'Electronic Lynch Mob,' Threatening His Family

Posted on September 22, 2010
Forbes, ?Super Rich? Law Professor Retires From Blogging After ?Electronic Lynch Mob? Attacks His Position on Taxes, by Kashmir Hill: A law professor at the University of Chicago saw his post, We Are The Super Rich, on the corporate law blog ?Truth on the Market? go viral last week...

Markel: Overcoming Tradeoffs in the Taxation of Punitive Damages

Posted on September 22, 2010
Dan Markel (Florida State) has posted Overcoming Tradeoffs in the Taxation of Punitive Damages, 88 Wash. U. L. Rev. ___ (2011), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: As explained in a companion piece [Taxing Punitive Damages, 97 Va. L. Rev. ___ (2010) (with Gregg Polsky (North Carolina)], there is a...

SSRN Tax

Posted on September 22, 2010
SSRN has updated its monthly rankings of 663 American and international law school faculties and 1,500 law professors by (among other things) the number of paper downloads from the SSRN data base. Here is the new list (through September 18, 2010) of the Top 25 U...

Caron: The Costs of Estate Tax Dithering

Posted on September 21, 2010
My article, The Costs of Estate Tax Dithering (the TePoel Lecture and Keynote Address that I gave at Creighton University School of Law on April 16, 2010 as part of the Creighton Law Review symposium on Estate Planning: Moral, Ethical and Religious Perspectives), is now in print at 43 Creighton...

Barack Milhous Obama -- Did White House Reveal Confidential Tax Information About Political Enemy?

Posted on September 21, 2010
The Weekly Standard, Koch Industries Lawyer to White House: How Did You Get Our Tax Information?, by John McCormack: Lately, the White House and its allies have been drawing attention to the political activities of libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch...

Forbes: Federal Judges Go Easy on Tax Cheats (and Pornographers and Prostitutes)

Posted on September 21, 2010
Forbes, Federal Judges Go Easy On Tax Cheats, Pornographers And Prostitutes, by Janet Novack: The latest numbers from the U.S. Sentencing Commission provide new evidence that at least some Federal judges don?t like handing out stiff jail sentences to tax cheats...

ABA to Revise Foreign Study Criteria

Posted on September 21, 2010
The Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education has proposed revisions to its Criteria for Foreign Summer Programs and Semester Abroad Programs: Criteria for Approval of Foreign Summer and Intersession Programs Criteria for Student Study at a Foreign Institution Criteria for Approval of Semester and Year-Long Study Abroad Programs...

Tax Preparer Who Threatened Prosecutor Is Sentenced to 3 to 6 Years

Posted on September 21, 2010
New York Law Journal, Tax Preparer Who Threatened Prosecutor Is Sentenced to 3 to 6 Years: A tax preparer who sent threatening letters to a Manhattan assistant district attorney who had twice prosecuted him was sentenced Friday to three to six years behind bars...

Tax Law Review Publishes Symposium on Designing a Federal VAT

Posted on September 21, 2010
The Tax Law Review has published a new issue (Vol. 63, No. 2), Symposium on Designing a Federal VAT (Part I): Reuven S. Avi-Yonah (Michigan), Summary and Recommendations, 63 Tax L. Rev. 285 (2010) Rudolph G. Penner (Urban Institute), Do We Need a VAT to Solve Our Long-Run Budget Problems?,...

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