Taxation & Estate Planning

Mullane: Regulation of Executive Compensation Through the Tax Code

Posted on October 13, 2010
Joy Sabino Mullane (Villanova) has published Incidence and Accidents: Regulation of Executive Compensation Through the Tax Code, 13 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 485 (2009). Here is the abstract: Congress has enacted a number of tax provisions that aim to penalize companies and their executives when the executive is paid...

The Estate Tax Nail-Biter

Posted on October 13, 2010
The Hill, Estate Tax May Become Another Nail-Biter Debate When Lawmakers Return: Interest groups on both sides of the estate tax debate are unsure how the issue will play out when lawmakers return to Washington for the post-election lame-duck session...

Prospective Overruling of T&E Decisions

Posted on October 13, 2010
Gil J. Ghatan (Tax LL.M. 2010, NYU) has published The Incentive Problem with Prospective Overruling: A Critique of the Practice, 45 Real Prop. Tr. & Est. L.J. 179-211 (2010). Here is the abstract: This article critiques the practice of prospective overruling-where a court overturns prior case law but limits the...

Arizona State Law School to Go Private

Posted on October 13, 2010
National Law Journal, Arizona Law School Striving for Financial Self-Reliance: Many public law schools are struggling with declining state support, but the Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law is taking a dramatic step in response to the financial uncertainty...

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Johnston: American Attitudes Toward Taxes and Wealth Distribution

Posted on October 12, 2010
David Cay Johnston has published United in Our Delusion, 129 Tax Notes 251 (Oct. 11, 2010): A clever survey of 5,522 Americans by two behavioral scientists reveals remarkable, near-unanimous agreement on an issue central to our tax debate. [Building a Better America ? One Wealth Quintile at a Time, by...

Death of Meade Emory

Posted on October 12, 2010
Meade Emory, founding director of the Graduate Tax Program and Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Washington School of Law, died over the weekend. From his bio: Mr. Emory spent his entire professional career in the field of federal taxation--in government, private practice and law teaching...

Hoffer: Germany's Church Tax and Non-Geographically Bounded Taxing Jurisdiction

Posted on October 12, 2010
Stephanie R. Hoffer (Ohio State) has posted Caesar as God's Banker: Using Germany's Church Tax as an Example of Non-Geographically Bounded Taxing Jurisdiction on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This Article compares the modern-day German church tax to church taxes levied by the American colonies and early states and concludes...

Court: Defendant Must Take Stand to Disprove 'Willfull' Tax Evasion

Posted on October 12, 2010
Can an Accused Tax Evader Submit Evidence of a Good-Faith Belief Without Taking the Stand to Testify to It?: Willfully evading federal income taxes is a felony. 26 U.S.C. § 7203. In the context of the tax laws, a ?willful? violation is the ?voluntary, intentional violation of a known legal...

Mankiw: I Can Afford Higher Taxes. But They?ll Make Me Work Less

Posted on October 12, 2010
New York Times op-ed, I Can Afford Higher Taxes. But They?ll Make Me Work Less, by N. Gregory Mankiw (Harvard University, Department of Economics): An important issue dividing the political parties is whether to raise taxes on those earning more than $250,000 a year...

Princeton Review's Best 172 Law Schools (2011 Edition)

Posted on October 12, 2010
The Princeton Review has published the 2011 edition of The Best 172 Law Schools (with the University of Cincinnati College of Law again on the cover): We surveyed more than 18,000 students at 172 law schools, in addition to collecting data from school administrators, to create 11 ranking lists: Best...

NY Times Calls on Justice Thomas's Wife to Disclose Donors to § 501(c)(4) Group

Posted on October 12, 2010
A New York Times editorial today calls on Liberty Central, a tax-exempt § 501(c)(4) organization formed in November 2009 by Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to disclose its donors (even though § 501(c)(4) does not require such disclosure)...

NY Times: Have College Freshmen Changed?

Posted on October 12, 2010
New York Times Room for Debate, Have College Freshmen Changed?: For many parents, the first few weeks of college are filled with worry about how their children will handle the shift from high school to the first stage of adult life. (The suicide of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers freshman, added...

Joe Biden Invites Nation's Women to Tax Code Discussion at Mountain Chalet

Posted on October 12, 2010
Biden Invites Nation's Women To Tax Code Discussion At Private Mountain Chalet

Wood & Hollingworth: SILOs and LILOs Demystified

Posted on October 11, 2010
Robert W. Wood & Steven E. Hollingworth (both of Wood & Porter, San Francisco) have published DSILOs and LILOs Demystified, 129 Tax Notes 195 (Oct. 12, 2010): SILOs and LILOs are large and complicated leveraged lease transactions, often involving domestic and foreign infrastructure, in which U...

Ferrara: Obama's

Posted on October 11, 2010
Peter Ferrara (Senior Policy Advisor, Institute for Policy Innovation) has published President Obama?s Tax Piracy (Encounter Books, 2011): Starting on Jan. 1, 2011, President Obama?s economic recovery policy will begin the implementation of comprehensive, across-the-board tax rate increases for every major federal tax, along with some completely new taxes...

Afield: Dining With Tax Collectors -- Reducing the Tax Gap Through Church-Government Partnerships

Posted on October 11, 2010
W. Edward Afield (Ave Maria) has published Dining With Tax Collectors: Reducing the Tax Gap Through Church-Government Partnerships, 7 Rutgers Bus. L. J. 53 (2010). Here is the abstract: This article explores an untapped resource in improving tax compliance: partnerships between the government and Judeo-Christian religious organizations...

TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Posted on October 11, 2010
Saturday: Zero COLA Increase in Social Security Checks in 2011; Democrats Propose $250 Payments to Seniors Tax Presentations at Today's Midwestern Law & Economics Association Conference at Colorado Gustafson Presents The Role of International Law in International Tax Today at Villanova Coercion, Taxation, and Voluntary Association Sunday: IRS: Tax Fix...

Lederman Presents Deference to Rulings & Regs Today at Loyola-L.A.

Posted on October 11, 2010
Leandra Lederman (Indiana-Bloomington) presents IRS Opportunism: What Respect Should Courts Accord Rulings and Regulations Issued During Litigation? at Loyola-L.A. today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series. The commentator is Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L...

WSJ: Democrats Unleash IRS & DOJ on Donors to Their Political Opponents

Posted on October 11, 2010
Wall Street Journal editorial, Shutting Up Business: Democrats Unleash the IRS and Justice on Donors to Their Political Opponents: If at first you don't succeed, get some friends in high places to shut your opponents up. That's the latest Washington power play, as Democrats and liberals attack the Chamber of...

NPR: Nobel Prize Winner Whines About Tax Burden

Posted on October 11, 2010
NPR, Life After Winning a Nobel Prize: [ROBERT] SIEGEL [host]: [T]he money -- what did you do with the money, the prize? Prof. [MARTIN] CHALFIE [2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry]: Well, the money [$1.4 million] is a funny thing. I think people hear about this massive amount of money that...

FactCheck.org: Democrats Repeat False Tax Attack Ads

Posted on October 11, 2010
FactCheck.org, A New Twist on an Old Tax Attack: Democrats continue misusing tax pledge, but this time against a gubernatorial candidate. Democrats and their allies can?t get enough of the Americans for Tax Reform tax pledge ? which, as we?ve reported, they?ve falsely equated in a number of ads with...

Peter Thiel on the Higher Ed Bubble

Posted on October 11, 2010
Wall Street Journal, Technology = Salvation: [Peter Thiel, an] early investor in Facebook and the founder of Clarium Capital [,] on the subprime crisis and why American ingenuity has hit a dead end. Liberals, he says, blame our education system, but liberals are the last ones to fix it, just...

Georgia Governor's Race: How Did Candidate Pay 2% Tax on $400k Income?

Posted on October 11, 2010
Atlanta Journal Constitution, Deal?s Federal Taxes Baffling: Nathan Deal paid federal income taxes equal to just 2 percent of his income in 2006 and 2007, but he won?t explain how he did it. Deal, now the Republican nominee for Georgia governor, reported earning nearly $400,000 in those two years...

The Tax Code as a Vehicle for Third-Party Enforcement of Conservation Easements

Posted on October 10, 2010
Douglas M. Humphrey (J.D. 2010, Boston College) has published Note, The "Interior" Revenue Service: The Tax Code as a Vehicle for Third-Party Enforcement of Conservation Easements, 37 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 425 (2010). Here is the abstract: Conservation easements are increasingly popular...

IRS: Tax Fix for 'Flash Crash' Gains Must Come From Congress

Posted on October 10, 2010
Forbes, IRS Won?t Defer Your ?Flash Crash? Gains, by Robert W. Wood (Wood & Porter, San Francisco): If you don?t know what a Flash Crash gain is, consider yourself lucky. Remember May 6, 2010? That was the nutty day the market dropped precipitously. ...

Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads

Posted on October 10, 2010
There is quite a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with new papers debuting on the list at #3, #4, and #5: 1. [349 Downloads] The Ethics of Tax Lawyering: An Introduction, by Michael Hatfield (Texas Tech) 2. [218 Downloads] Tax...

IRS Prefers Snot-Nosed Harvard Law Grads Over Experienced Tax Return Pros

Posted on October 10, 2010
Dan Alban (Staff Attorney, Institute for Justice; J.D. 2006, Harvard), The IRS and the Latest Licensing Outrage (The Daily Caller): Who would you rather prepare your taxes? A professional tax return preparer with over a dozen years experience in preparing tax returns for taxpayers without incident...

Tax Masters

Posted on October 10, 2010

Zero COLA Increase in Social Security Checks in 2011; Democrats Propose $250 Payments to Seniors

Posted on October 09, 2010
For the second year in a row, social security recipients will not receive a cost of living increase in 2011 because of an absence of inflation in the consumer price index (calculation here). 128 House Democrats have sponsored a bill (H.R. 5987) to provide all social security recipients with a...

Tax Presentations at Today's Midwestern Law & Economics Association Conference at Colorado

Posted on October 09, 2010
Tax presentations and papers at today's Ninth Annual Midwestern Law and Economics Association Conference at Colorado: Ted Sichelman (San Diego), Fuzzy Taxes (with Leandra Lederman (Indiana-Bloomington)): If the government enacts a tax designed to raise a given amount of revenue, traditional economic models of tax compliance typically assume that it...

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