Taxation & Estate Planning

GOOOAAALLL!!!

Posted on October 31, 2010
Fatherly brag: my sophomore son yesterday scored his first collegiate goal with 90 seconds left to win his team's final regular season game, 1-0 (and finish the season tied for second with a 7-2 league record). Now it's on to the post-season conference tournament, where the team last year earned...

Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads

Posted on October 31, 2010
There is a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with a new paper debuting on the list at #2: 1. [293 Downloads] Tax Lawyers, Tax Defiance, and the Ethics of Casual Conversation, by Michael Hatfield (Texas Tech) 2...

CRS: Cost of Extending Bush Tax Cuts = $5 Trillion

Posted on October 30, 2010
BNA has made available a Congressional Research Service report, The Bush Tax Cuts and the Economy (R41393), by Thomas L. Hungerford. The report states that the total cost of extending all of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts would be $5.048 trillion over the next decade, when taking into...

Democratic National Committee Is D.C. Tax Deadbeat

Posted on October 30, 2010
Pajamas Media, DNC and Dems? Private Club Delinquent on Taxes 16 Times in 7 Years: The Democratic National Committee and the party?s private club in the nation?s capitol have been delinquent with tax payments on sixteen separate occasions over the last seven years, Pajamas Media has learned...

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9th Cir. Rejects

Posted on October 30, 2010
The Ninth Circuit yesterday dismissed an appeal of a district court order compelling Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom to turn over documents related to tax shelter opinion letters it authored for the Quellos Group. The Ninth Circuit held that the guilty pleas rendered the issue moot, rejecting the Government's...

Taxation of Contingency Fees

Posted on October 30, 2010
Katherine D. Black (Southern Utah University), Stephen T. Black (Franklin Pierce) & Michael D. Black (Parr Waddoups Brown Gee & Loveless, Salt Lake City) have posted Taxation of Contingency Fees: Deductions for Expenses, 126 Tax Notes 745 (Feb. 8, 2010), on SSRN...

What Halloween

Posted on October 30, 2010
(Hat Tip: Tax Policy Blog.)

Florida Hosts 6th Annual International Tax Symposium

Posted on October 29, 2010
The Florida Graduate Tax Program hosts its Sixth Annual International Taxation Symposium today with these speakers: Edward D. Kleinbard (USC) Charles E. McLure, Jr. (Hoover Institution, Stanford) Bertil Wiman (Uppsala University (Sweden) A live webcast is available here beginning at 8:30 a...

U.S. News Annual Peer Assessment of Law School Tax Programs

Posted on October 29, 2010
I received in the mail yesterday my ballot for the 2012 U.S. News Tax Rankings (for prior U.S. News tax rankings, see 2011 and 2008-2011). As in prior years, the survey is intended "to identify the law schools having the top programs in tax law." The survey is sent "to...

Democrats? Estate Tax Plan Trips Next Secretariat

Posted on October 29, 2010
Bloomberg, Democrats? Estate Tax Plan Trips Next Secretariat, by Amity Shlaes: The estate tax is one topic getting lost in the dust of the midterm races. That?s a pity. This tax, now quiescent, is set to roar back like a stallion in 2011 if lawmakers don?t rein it in with...

How to Eliminate Footnote Glut (and Reader Vertigo) in Legal Writing

Posted on October 29, 2010
Joan Magat (Duke) has published Bottomheavy: Legal Footnotes, 60 J. Legal Edu. 65 (2010). Here is part of the Introduction: This article reviews, as many others have, why and to what extent we footnote in legal academic writing. Unlike most others, it suggests amelioration?that footnotes should follow a rational rule...

Avi-Yonah & Panayi: Rethinking Treaty-Shopping -- Lessons for the European Union

Posted on October 29, 2010
Reuven S. Avi-Yonah (Michigan) & Christiana Hji Panayi (Queen Mary University of London have posted Rethinking Treaty-Shopping: Lessons for the European Union on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In this paper, we reassess the traditional quasi-definitions of treaty-shopping in an attempt to delineate the contours of such practices...

Elizabeth Garrett Named Provost at USC

Posted on October 29, 2010
Tax Prof Elizabeth Garrett has been named Provost at USC: USC Press Release USC President's Memo Daily Trojan L.A. Times Wikipedia

Eyal-Cohen Presents Small Business and the Government Today at Cincinnati

Posted on October 29, 2010
Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Pittsburgh) presents The Small Business and the Government: A Theory of Path Dependence and Cognitive Processes at Cincinnati today as part of our Scholar Exchange Program (Earlier this year, Stephanie McMahon (Cincinnati) presented Tax Filing in the U...

WSJ: GOP Should Just Say No to the FAIR Tax

Posted on October 29, 2010
Wall Street Journal editorial, The FAIR Tax Trap: Democrats Turn a Conservative Fad Against GOP Candidates: Public anxiety over rising taxes is helping Republicans in this midterm election?with one exception. Democrats are trying to turn the tables on the GOP over the so-called FAIR Tax, a tax reform idea that...

The Five Stages of Grading

Posted on October 29, 2010
The Five Stages of Grading: Everyone is familiar with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her stage model of coping with grief popularly known as the five stages of grief. What you may not know is that Kübler-Ross actually developed her theory as a graduate student, basing her conception of the process of...

WSJ: California's Two Tax Initiatives Would Cripple the State

Posted on October 29, 2010
Wall Street Journal editorial, The Tax Me More State: Two Initiatives That Would Further Punish California: The Tax Foundation announced this week that California has the second worst business tax climate of the 50 states, with only New York more hostile to employers...

I Taxes

Posted on October 28, 2010
The Harvard Crimson, Website Asks Americans To Love Taxes: While many political pundits continue to emphasize the public?s frustration with taxation, Vanessa S. Williamson?a graduate student in government and social policy?started a website last August to take the conversation in a new direction...

Lefcoe: The Uses and Abuses of Tax Increment Financing

Posted on October 28, 2010
George Lefcoe (USC) has posted Competing for the Next Hundred Million Americans: The Uses and Abuses of Tax Increment Financing on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Demographers predict that the US population will grow by one hundred million in 2050. Newcomers will settle in suburbia, particularly to the fast growing...

NY Times: Medical Expense Deductions for Acne Cream, Not Breast Pumps

Posted on October 28, 2010
New York Times, Acne Cream? Tax-Sheltered. Breast Pump? No, by David Kocieniewski: Denture wearers will get a tax break on the cost of adhesives to keep their false teeth in place. So will acne sufferers who buy pimple creams. People whose children have severe allergies might even be allowed the...

Fogg: Transparency in Private Collection of Federal Taxes

Posted on October 28, 2010
T. Keith Fogg (Villanova) has posted Transparency in Private Collection of Federal Taxes on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Most federal taxes are collected from taxpayers by business entities, held in a public trust for the United States and then paid over to the Internal Revenue Service (the ?IRS?)...

Brett Favre

Posted on October 28, 2010
For those tired of the Brett Favre sordid saga:

Burman Presents

Posted on October 28, 2010
Leonard E. Burman (Syracuse University, Maxwell School) presents Catastrophic Budget Failure: The Economic Consequences of a U.S. Government Debt Bubble (with Jeffrey Rohaly, Joseph Rosenberg & Katherine C. Lim (all of the Tax Policy Center) at Columbia today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series...

TIGTA: IRS Paid $111m in Erroneous Recovery Act Tax Refunds to 126k Taxpayers

Posted on October 28, 2010
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration today released Verifying Eligibility for Certain New Tax Benefits Was a Challenge for the 2010 Filing Season (2010-41-128): While the IRS received about 132 million individual income tax returns and issued approximately 101 million refunds totaling $291...

Slate: Law Schools Are Manufacturing More Lawyers Than America Needs

Posted on October 28, 2010
Slate: A Case of Supply v. Demand: Law Schools Are Manufacturing More Lawyers Than America Needs, and Law Students Aren't Happy About It, by Annie Lowrey: During the recession, the logic was ubiquitous: The economy is terrible?better to wait it out! It is a three-year fast track to a remunerative,...

Why Do We Tax Recoveries by Prisoners Freed From Wrongful Imprisonment?

Posted on October 28, 2010
Forbes, Tax On Wrongful Imprisonment Needs Reform, by Robert W. Wood (Wood & Porter, San Francisco): It is hard to imagine a more terrifying nightmare than being wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. It is comforting that there?s been a dramatic increase in wrongfully convicted persons gaining their freedom, often after a...

An Empirical Investigation of Law School Grads that Fail the Bar

Posted on October 28, 2010
Jane Yakowitz (UCLA) has published The Marooned Law School Graduates: An Empirical Investigation of Law School Graduates that Fail the Bar Exam, 60 J. Legal Educ. 3 (2010). Here is the abstract: What happens to law school graduates that fail the bar exam? This invisible population makes up a significant...

Crawford: Steinbrenner to Estate Tax -- Who's Boss?

Posted on October 27, 2010
Bridget Crawford (Pace) has published Steinbrenner to Estate Tax: Who's Boss?, 129 Tax Notes 477 (Oct. 25, 2010): In this article, Prof. Crawford describes some of the tax problems that may be facing the estate of George Steinbrenner, the late owner of the New York Yankees...

Kindregan: Tax Consequences of Collaborative Reproduction

Posted on October 27, 2010
Charles P. Kindregan, Jr. (Suffolk) has published Taxing Parenthood: Federal Tax Law and Collaborative Reproduction, 24 Am. J. Fam. L. 134 (2010). Here is the abstract: This article examines the novel issues dealing with the application of the federal tax code to collaborative reproduction, i...

NYU Hosts Forum on The Bush Tax Cuts

Posted on October 27, 2010
NYU hosts a lunchtime forum today on Congress Revisits the Bush Tax Cuts: Who Should Pay Taxes, And How Much?: The United States tax system is on a collision course with reality. Experts on the left and right agree that the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal path, and it...

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