Taxation & Estate Planning

U.S. News Law School Rankings: Judicial Clerkships

Posted on May 07, 2010
U.S. News & World Report yesterday published its second ranking of law schools by the percentage of the 2008 J.D. graduating class with clerkships with Article III federal judges. Here are the Top 50 law schools by this measure, along with the percentage of all federal and state judicial clerkships...

Marquette Rescinds Deanship Offer to Lesbian Scholar

Posted on May 07, 2010
Chronicle, Marquette U. Professors Criticize Withdrawal of Job Offer to Lesbian Scholar: Marquette University has withdrawn an employment offer it made to a prospective new dean for its College of Arts and Sciences, provoking sharp criticism from several faculty members who see the move as a blow to academic freedom...

Cockfield: Optimal Climate Change Tax Policy

Posted on May 07, 2010
Arthur J. Cockfield (Queen's University, Faculty of Law) has posted Optimal Climate Change Tax Policy for Small Open Economies on SSRN. Here is the abstract: What are the best climate change tax policies for governments with relatively small open economies such as the Canadian one? This chapter assesses recent Canadian...

Death Tax Lives in Estate Repeal for Heir Who Must Sell Assets

Posted on May 07, 2010
Following up on my recent posts (How to Protect Your Family From Estate Tax Uncertainty and The Costs of Estate Tax Dithering): Bloomberg, Death Tax Lives in Estate Repeal for Heir Who Must Sell Assets, by Ryan J. Donmoyer & Margaret Collins: Blanche Christerson, an executive in Deutsche Bank AG?s...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Should Education Tax Credits Be Tied to Community Service?

Posted on May 07, 2010
Inside Higher Ed, Linking Tax Credits to Service: College leaders just about uniformly endorse the idea of community service by students. And college leaders just about uniformly endorse the idea of tax breaks to help pay for college. But combine those two concepts? Higher education isn't excited about that idea...

Tax Court Imposes Mandatory e-Filing, Effective July 1, 2010

Posted on May 07, 2010
The Tax Court announced yesterday that it will make e-filing mandatory for most parties represented by counsel, effective for petitions filed on or after July 1, 2010: After completion of this transition to mandatory eFiling for represented parties, the requirement to eFile in the Tax Court will be substantially in...

IRS Releases Interim Report on 400 Colleges and Universities

Posted on May 07, 2010
The IRS today released (IR-2010-58) an interim report summarizing responses to compliance questionnaires sent to 400 public and private colleges and universities in October 2008: The interim report contains preliminary information on the respondents? organizational structures, demographics, exempt and unrelated business activities, endowments, executive compensation as well as governance practices...

Lawksy: Tax Can Be Just as Emotional as Sports

Posted on May 06, 2010
Sarah B. Lawsky (George Washington; moving to UC-Irvine) offers this video repudiation of yesterday's post, Celebrating Athletes and Tax Lawyers, which included this excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article: One of the major differences between sports and tax law is raw emotion...

Southern Federal Tax Institute Offers to Comp Tax Profs

Posted on May 06, 2010
The Board of Trustees of the Southern Federal Tax Institute invites all full-time tax professors to attend the Forty-Fifth Annual Institute in Atlanta on September 27 - October 1, 2010 as guests of the Trustees (the $895 registration fee will be waived)...

Wiedenbeck: ERISA -- Principles of Employee Benefit Law

Posted on May 06, 2010
Peter J. Wiedenbeck (Washington University) has published ERISA: Principles of Employee Benefit Law (Oxford University Press, 2010): ERISA: Principles of Employee Benefit Law highlights the common themes, central principles, and competing policies of employee benefit law in a compact, accessible work...

Faculty Pensions on the Chopping Block

Posted on May 06, 2010
Inside Higher Ed, Tough Times For Nest Eggs: At a time when tenure track jobs are drying up and faculty pay is mostly stagnant, some fear the latest threat to the professoriate will actually be realized years from now. As budgets tighten in states across the country, a number of...

Brunson: Rethinking Public Charities and Political Speech

Posted on May 06, 2010
Samuel D. Brunson (Loyola-Chicago) has posted Rethinking Public Charities and Political Speech on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In order to maintain their tax-exempt status, public charities are forbidden from campaigning for or against candidates for office...

Boskin: It's Time to Junk the Corporate Tax

Posted on May 06, 2010
Wall Street journal op-ed, Time to Junk the Corporate Tax, by Michael J. Boskin Stanford University, Hoover Institution): Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas says reform would deliver great benefits at little cost, making it "the largest genuinely true free lunch I have seen...

WSJ: Bar-Raised for Law-Grad Jobs

Posted on May 06, 2010
Following up on yesterday's post, 'Right Now Is the Worst Time in History to be Graduating From Law School': in today's Wall Street Journal, Bar Raised for Law-Grad Jobs: Employment Prospects Dim as Firms Retrench, Derailing Career Paths for Many, by Nathan Koppel: 40,000 law-school students [will] graduate this spring...

National Federation of the Blind Sues Law Schools Over Online Application

Posted on May 06, 2010
National Law Journal, Advocate for the Blind Targets Law School Online Application Process: A national advocacy group for the blind on Wednesday accused law schools across the country of violating the rights of blind would-be law students by using the Law School Admission Council's (LSAC) online application process...

CNN: ObamaCare's Massive, Hidden Tax Change

Posted on May 06, 2010
CNN, Health Care Law's Massive, Hidden Tax Change: An all-but-overlooked provision of the health reform law is threatening to swamp U.S. businesses with a flood of new tax paperwork. Section 9006 of the health care bill -- just a few lines buried in the 2,409-page document -- mandates that beginning...

Hotel WiFi Rankings

Posted on May 06, 2010
One of my biggest travel peeves is that the budget hotels I typically use on personal travel (e.g., Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Residence Inn) provide free WiFi access, while pricier hotels I am forced to use on business travel charge for WiFi -- a recent egregious example is the...

Partnership Disguised Sales and G-1 Holdings

Posted on May 05, 2010
Blake D. Rubin, Andrea Macintosh Whiteway & Jon G. Finkelstein (all of McDermott Will & Emery, Washington, D.C.) have published Partnership Disguised Sales: G-1 Holdings Misses the Mark. 127 Tax Notes 553 (May 3, 2010). Here is the abstract: The authors analyze a recent unpublished district court opinion, which, in...

Americans Are Ratting Out Their Neighbors to the IRS at a Record Pace to Reap Cash Whistleblower Rewards

Posted on May 05, 2010
Bloomberg, Americans Seeking Reward Money Inform IRS on Others, by Ryan J. Donmoyer: Americans seeking reward money are turning in neighbors, clients and employers they suspect of cheating on taxes to the IRS at a rate of nearly eight per day, the director of the agency?s whistleblower program said...

NY Times: Museum of Sex Provides Tax Deductions for Erotic Donations

Posted on May 05, 2010
New York Times, Tax Break for Erotica? A Museum Favors It, by Robin Pogrebin: A few years ago, when Ann Marie Coughlin, a New York dominatrix also known as Domina M., donated her brushed-steel bondage machine to be shown at the Museum of Sex, many people benefited...

Segal Posts Tax Papers on SSRN

Posted on May 05, 2010
Terry Segal (Suffolk) has posted two tax papers on SSRN: Advice for Taxpayers with Undeclared UBS Swiss Bank Accounts As IRS Lifts Cloak of Swiss Bank Secrecy, Advice for Americans with Undeclared UBS Accounts

WSJ: Criminal Tax Lawyers Accuse IRS of 'Double-Cross' in Prosecuting Taxpayers Who Voluntarily Disclosed Overseas Accounts

Posted on May 05, 2010
Wall Street Journal, IRS Faulted for Prosecuting Confessed Evaders of Taxes, by Laura Saunders & Arden Dale: An influential group of criminal tax lawyers is sharply criticizing the IRS for its decision to prosecute some people who came forward to confess that they had used foreign bank accounts to evade...

TRAC Accuses Treasury Department of Ignoring FOIA

Posted on May 05, 2010
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University today released a report, Treasury Ignores FOIA Despite Obama Open Government Initiative: The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) has accused the Treasury Department's Disclosure Services ? the department unit that processes Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests ? of secretly withholding government...

'Right Now Is the Worst Time in History to be Graduating From Law School'

Posted on May 05, 2010
Wall Street Journal Law Blog, Were the ?Good Old Days? of BigLaw Better?, by Ashby Jones: If anyone out there had any question that now ? right now ? is just the worst time in history to be graduating from law school, take a look at this article written by...

WSJ: Celebrating Athletes and Tax Lawyers

Posted on May 05, 2010
Wall Street Journal, The Hurt-Yourself Hall of Fame: Why Athletes Who Get Injured While Simply Showing Emotion Deserve Our Praise, Not Scorn, by Reed Albergotti: One of the major differences between sports and tax law is raw emotion. Sports has it. Tax law is sorely lacking in it...

Do Tenure Buyouts Warrant Unique Employment Tax Treatment?

Posted on May 05, 2010
Robert J. Tepper & Craig G. White (both of University of New Mexico, Anderson School of Management) have published Academic Early Retirement: Do Tenure Buyout Payments Warrant Unique Employment Tax Treatment?, 35 Oklahoma City U. L. Rev. 169 (2010). Here is the Conclusion: Generally, severance payments are treated as ?wages?...

Caron: The Costs of Estate Tax Dithering

Posted on May 04, 2010
I have posted 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...

Geistfeld on Taxing Punitive Damages, by Markel & Polsky

Posted on May 04, 2010
I previously blogged the forthcoming article by Dan Markel (Florida State) & Gregg Polsky (Florida State; moving to North Carolina), Taxing Punitive Damages, 96 Va. L. Rev. ___ (2010). Mark Geistfeld (NYU) critiques the article on our sister TortsProf Blog They make the nice point that if punitive damages are...

District Court Rejects FOCus Tax Shelter

Posted on May 04, 2010
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi on Friday rejected a KPMG-marketed ?family office customized? (FOCus) tax shelter used to evade taxes on $18 million in capital gains through foreign currency straddles and a three-tiered partnership structure...

ABA Tax Section Submits Comment Letters

Posted on May 04, 2010
The ABA Tax Section has submitted comment letters on: Corrections of Failures of Nonqualified Deferred Compensation Plans to Comply with § 409A(a) Proposed Regs on Allocation of Consideration and Allocation and Recovery of Basis in Transactions Involving Corporate Stock or Securities Proposed § 509(a)(3) Regs on Type III Supporting Organizations...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.