Taxation & Estate Planning

Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads

Posted on October 24, 2010
There is a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with a new #1 paper and a new paper debuting on the list at #5: 1. [248 Downloads] Tax Lawyers, Tax Defiance, and the Ethics of Casual Conversation, by Michael Hatfield (Texas...

Drive-Thru Tax Advice?

Posted on October 23, 2010
The Kocian Law Group has opened a drive-through in its office building that once housed a Kenny Rogers Roasters fast-food restaurant. Attorney Nick Kocian explained that clients can use the drive-through to drop off and pick up documents. Above the Law Associated Press NBC Connecticut NPR

Single-Funder Groups Skirt Campaign Finance Laws

Posted on October 23, 2010
Huffington Post, The One-Person Funded Super PAC: How Wealthy Donors Can Skirt Campaign Finance Restrictions: With many outside political groups able to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision, a new type of independent expenditure has popped up: ones bankrolled...

Mad Men Tax Planning

Posted on October 23, 2010
Tax Policy Blog, Mad Men and Taxes (No Spoilers!), by Joseph Henchman: If you haven't watched last night's season four finale of Mad Men, I won't give anything away other than something you already knew: Don Draper is selling his Ossining, NY house where he's been letting his ex-wife and...

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

Cuba Announces New 'Small Business Friendly' Tax Code

Posted on October 23, 2010
Cuba yesterday announced a new tax code that it claimed was friendlier for small business, as the government struggles to build a larger private sector within the state-run economy. BBC Bloomberg Reuters Voice of America

UC-Irvine to Give 33% Scholarships to Third Entering Class

Posted on October 22, 2010
After giving 100% scholarships to its inaugural Class of 2012 (which yielded a Top 20 entering class of 63 students with 167 LSAT and 3.61 GPA medians, and the nation's best 4% acceptance rate) and 50% to the Class of 2013 (which yielded another Top 20 entering class of 83...

57th Annual Montana Tax Institute

Posted on October 22, 2010
Tax Profs speaking at the two-day 58th Annual University of Montana School of Law Tax Institute: J. Martin Burke (Montana) & Gary Randall (Gonzaga), Involuntary Conversion: What About Gain When All a Client Sees Is Loss? James Delaney (Wyomng), Passive Activity Losses: Update, Planning and Structuring Samuel A...

Rasmussen: Only 25% Prefer a Government With More Services, Higher Taxes

Posted on October 22, 2010
Rasmussen Reports: Most voters (65%) say they prefer a government with fewer services and lower taxes rather than one with more services and higher taxes. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that only 25% of Likely U.S. Voters favor a government with more services and higher taxes instead...

Freakonomics: What Would be the Biggest Tax Mistake This Year?

Posted on October 22, 2010
Freakonomics, What?s the Biggest Tax Mistake That Might Be Made This Year?: Consider the ingredients: a frail economy, a toxic political environment, looming hard deadlines and massive uncertainty in the business community ? the perfect circumstances under which to write some great federal tax policy! But tax-code writing will be...

CBPP: Concentration of Wealth Accelerated in 2008

Posted on October 22, 2010
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities yesterday released Tax Data Show Richest 1% Took a Hit in 2008, But Income Remained Highly Concentrated at the Top; Recent Gains of Bottom 90% Wiped Out, by Hannah Shaw & Chad Stone: An analysis of recently released IRS data on pre-tax income...

Kaplan: Financing Long-Term Care after Health Care Reform

Posted on October 22, 2010
Richard L. Kaplan (Illinois) has posted Financing Long-Term Care after Health Care Reform on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Among the many features of the 2010 health care legislation is a new entitlement program to fund long-term care called Community Living Assistance Services and Supports, or CLASS...

Lawsky: Things You Oughta Know If You Teach Tax

Posted on October 22, 2010
Sarah Lawsky (UC-Irvine), Things You Oughta Know If You Teach Tax: As a new tax professor, you have joined an active and friendly community. Tax law professors are a diverse bunch, but because we are bound together by a love incomprehensible to many others--love of the tax code, of course--we...

Bank Presents Anglo-American Corporate Taxation Today at San Diego

Posted on October 22, 2010
Steven Bank (UCLA) presents Anglo-American Corporate Taxation: Tracing the Common Roots of Divergent British and American Approaches, 1799-Present at San Diego today as part of its Tax Speakers Series. Here is the abstract: This paper, a chapter in a forthcoming book to be published by Cambridge University Press, addresses the...

DOJ Dismisses UBS Tax Evasion Case

Posted on October 22, 2010
The Justice Department today dismissed its criminal tax evasion case against UBS. ABC News Bloomberg Reuters USA Today Wall Street Journal

NLJ: Law School Hopefuls Undaunted by Dim Prospects

Posted on October 22, 2010
National Law Journal, Law School Hopefuls Undaunted by Dim Prospects, by Karen Sloan: Advocates for more transparency about law school cost and employment prospects welcomed recent news that the ABA is examining the issue. However, a new survey of prospective law students indicates that better information would do little to...

Georgia Candidate for Governor Admits He Claimed Depreciation Deductions on Home He Gave to His Daughter

Posted on October 22, 2010
Following up on my prior post, Georgia Governor's Race: How Did Candidate Pay 2% Tax on $400k Income? (Oct. 11, 2010): Augusta Chronicle, Tax Errors Mean Barnes Owes $7,500: Roy Barnes claimed federal and state income tax breaks in 2008 and 2009 for depreciation on a house he doesn't own,...

Google Reduced its Tax Rate to 2.4% With Aggressive Tax Strategies

Posted on October 21, 2010
Bloomberg, Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes, by Jesse Drucker: Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda...

Democrats Cut Taxes by $509 Billion, Putting Taxes at Lowest Level Since 1950

Posted on October 21, 2010
The Democratic Policy Committee yesterday released Democrats Cut Taxes by $509 Billion, Putting Taxes at Lowest Level Since 1950: Since President Obama took office, Democrats successfully passed a total of $509 billion in tax cuts for American families and small businesses...

Duff: A Comparative Evaluation of Tax Treaty Shopping

Posted on October 21, 2010
David G. Duff (University of British Columbia) has posted Responses to Tax Treaty Shopping: A Comparative Evaluation on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Over the last 40 years, the world has experienced exponential growth in international trade and investment, as well as the number of bilateral tax treaties which now...

A Therapist's Take on Life at BigLaw

Posted on October 21, 2010
The People's Therapist offers a particularly depressing take on life as a lawyer at BigLaw: There?s one thing every lawyer, no matter how miserable, seems to agree on: law school wasn?t that bad. In fact, it was kind of fun. Things take a nosedive when you get to a firm...

Afield: The IRS's Limited Issue Focused Examination (LIFE) Hinders Audits

Posted on October 21, 2010
W. Edward Afield (Ave Maria) has posted Agency Activism as New Way of Life: Adminsitrative Modification of the Internal Revenue Code Through Limited Issue Focused Examinations, 7 Fla. Tax Rev. 455 (2006), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In the name of increasing efficiency and better utilizing limited resources, the...

Senators Complain IRS Is Stonewalling Inspector General

Posted on October 21, 2010
Web CPA, Senators Complain IRS is Stonewalling Inspector General: A pair of U.S. senators has written to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman and the heads of a dozen other federal agencies asking why they have erected roadblocks to investigative efforts of their agencies? watchdogs, their inspectors general...

NY Times: Expand the Tax Cut Debate

Posted on October 21, 2010
New York Times editorial, One-Note Tax Debate: Several tax cuts are slated to expire at the end of the year, which means that the lame-duck Congress will face several tough decisions come November. To hear campaigning lawmakers tell it, however, the only tax issue out there is whether to extend...

IRS Releases Historical Tax Data, Back to 1863

Posted on October 21, 2010
The IRS's Statistics of Income Division yesterday announced the availability of historical tax data from 1863 through 1999: In 2009, SOI began digitizing nearly 500 print publications (and more than 50,000 pages) from its library. As a result of this effort, a wealth of historical tax data is now easily...

Consensus Emerging That Law School Model 'Is Not Sustainable'

Posted on October 21, 2010
National Law Journal, Consensus Emerging That Law School Model 'Is Not Sustainable', by Karen Sloan: What will legal education look like in five or 10 years? It will be more internationally focused, rely more heavily on technology and will incorporate more leadership and businesses skills, if the influential group of...

NY Times: Tax Issues in Mortgage Foreclosure Battle

Posted on October 21, 2010
New York Times, Battle Lines Forming in Clash Over Foreclosures, by Gretchen Morgenson & Andrew Martin: Now those missing and possibly fraudulent documents are at the center of a potentially seismic legal clash that pits big lenders against homeowners and their advocates concerned that the lenders? rush to foreclose flouts...

Former Jenkens & Gilchrist Partner Pleads Guilty in Tax Shelter Fraud

Posted on October 20, 2010
Bloomberg, Chicago Lawyer Pleads Guilty in Tax-Shelter Fraud That Brought Down Firm: A Chicago attorney pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion charges for his role in a billion- dollar phony tax-shelter scheme that brought down his law firm in 2007...

Moral Arguments for Soaking the Rich

Posted on October 20, 2010
The New Republic, Moral Arguments for Soaking the Rich, by Jonathan Cohn: According to the Republicans and many of their supporters, allowing tax rates on upper incomes to rise would punish the rich for their success, taking away money that the rich have earned...

Forbes: Ameriprise Caught In Stephen Yagman Tax Mess

Posted on October 20, 2010
Forbes, Ameriprise Caught In Stephen Yagman Tax Mess, by Janet Novack: The IRS is still looking to collect back taxes owed since the 1990s by controversial Los Angeles civil rights lawyer Stephen Yagman. He?s now a resident of the Metropolitan Detention Center in LA, serving three years for his 2007...

The Constitutionality of a Retroactive Estate Tax Fix

Posted on October 20, 2010
Fox News op-ed, Will Congress Take a Pass on the Estate Tax and Send Us Back to 2001?, by Rodney P. Mock (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo -- Orfalea College of Business) & Jeffrey E. Quijano (Fox Rothschild, Las Vegas): Reaching into the graves of wealthy, dead taxpayers...

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