Taxation & Estate Planning

TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Posted on March 07, 2011
Saturday: Median Property Tax by County NY Times: Software Is Replacing Lawyers, Accountants ITEP Guide to Fair State and Local Taxes IRS Releases 2011 Filing Season Statistics Sunday: WSJ: Obama's Budget Targets 'Dynasty Trusts' Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads Tax Foundation: Who Benefits from Corporate Tax 'Loopholes'? Zelinsky: The Siren...

Hacker Presents The New Economic Landscape for Older Americans Today at Illinois

Posted on March 07, 2011
Jacob S. Hacker (Yale) delivers the 2011 Ann F. Baum Memorial Elder Law Lecture at Illinois today on Health Care, Retirement, and the New Economic Landscape for Older Americans: The recent economic downturn has cast in stark relief the risks associated with retirement and health care for older Americans...

Faculty Salaries Rose 1.1% in 2010-11

Posted on March 07, 2011
The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources today released its annual salary report on 214,155 faculty at 812 four-year colleges in the 2010-11 academic year: the overall median base faculty salary increase was 1.1% -- 0.0% at public colleges and 2...

Pasquale: Tax Havens and the Wisconsin Budget Impasse

Posted on March 07, 2011
Frank Pasquale (Seton Hall), Neo-Feudalism: Shaxson on Tax Havens: Parag Khanna has frequently discussed the rise of a neo-feudal age, with power devolving from nation-states to cities. Why are nation-states losing relevance? One important reason is that tax havens are diverting ever more revenue away from social needs...

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Global Tax Governance

Posted on March 07, 2011
Jan Wouters & Katrien Meuwissen (both of the University Leuven, Centre for Global Governance Studies) have posted Global Tax Governance: Work in Progress? on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The international financial crisis which broke out in 2008 has had a major impact on fiscal sustainability of countries all over...

Kwon Presents Four Difficult Ethical Questions for IRS Lawyers Today at SMU

Posted on March 07, 2011
Michelle Kwon (Texas Tech) presents The Tax Man?s Ethics: Four of the Hardest Ethical Questions for an IRS Lawyer, 10 Cardozo Pub. L. Pol?y & Ethics J. ___ (2011), at SMU today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series. Here is the abstract: The article explores the disagreement, particularly...

Tax Foundation: Who Benefits from Corporate 'Loopholes'?

Posted on March 06, 2011
Tax Foundation, Who Benefits from Corporate ?Loopholes??: President Obama has been critical of so-called tax loopholes because, he maintains, they unfairly reward some industries?such as the oil and gas industry?and incentivize others to expand overseas rather than domestically...

Zelinsky: The Siren Song of State Amazon Laws

Posted on March 06, 2011
Edward Zelinsky (Cardozo) has posted The Siren Song of State Amazon Laws: The Colorado Example, 59 State Tax Notes ___ (2011), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In Direct Marketing Association v. Huber, Judge Robert E. Blackburn of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado preliminarily enjoined the...

WSJ: Obama's Budget Targets 'Dynasty Trusts'

Posted on March 06, 2011
Wall Street Journal, Dynasty Trusts Under Attack, by Laura Saunders: It's official: A type of trust used by the wealthy to shelter assets from estate taxes for hundreds of years, or even forever, is under fire. The proposal, which first appeared a few weeks ago on a hit list of...

Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads

Posted on March 06, 2011
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 #5: 1. [646 Downloads] The Fundamentals of Wealth Transfer Tax Planning: 2011 and Beyond, by John A. Milller (Idaho) & Jeffrey A...

IRS Releases

Posted on March 05, 2011
The IRS announced (IR-2011-24) yesterday that More Taxpayers Are Filing From Home in 2011, Free File Options Abound: Almost 19 million tax returns have been filed with the IRS from home computers so far this year, an increase of almost 6 percent compared to the number of returns from the...

Median Property Tax by County

Posted on March 05, 2011
Check out your county's median property tax here.

NY Times: Software Is Replacing Lawyers, Accountants

Posted on March 05, 2011
New York Times, Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software: When five television studios became entangled in a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against CBS, the cost was immense. As part of the obscure task of ?discovery? ? providing documents relevant to a lawsuit ? the studios examined six million...

ITEP Guide to Fair State and Local Taxes

Posted on March 05, 2011
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has released Guide to Fair State and Local Taxes: The guide explains the differences between progressive, flat, and regressive taxes ? and why you should care. It covers the full range of taxes that states and localities can impose, including personal and corporate...

The Coming Showdown Over Law Faculty Tenure

Posted on March 04, 2011
The Standards Review Committee of the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar will hold an open forum in Chicago on April 2, 2011 to hear comments on these topics under consideration: Student Learning Outcomes Security of Position, Academic Freedom, Governance, Attracting and Retaining Competent Faculty Valid...

2011 National Tax Moot Court Competition Results

Posted on March 04, 2011
Here are the results of the 2011 National Tax Moot Court Competition sponsored by the Florida Bar Tax Section: Florida (right) Ohio Northern New England Quinnipiac Best Brief: New England (runner-up: Suffolk) Best Oralist: James Bailey (Florida)

Murray: Debunking Myths About Laptops in the Classroom

Posted on March 04, 2011
Kristen E. Murray (Temple) has posted Let Them Use Laptops: Debunking the Assumptions Underlying the Debate Over Laptops in the Classroom, 36 Okla. City U. L. Rev. ___ (2011), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Law professors have struggled with the issue of laptops in the classroom since students started...

WSJ: Whirlpool Parlays Green Credits Into Zero Tax Liability

Posted on March 04, 2011
Wall Street Journal editorial, Tax Reform Exhibit A: How Whirlpool Parlays Green Credits Into Zero Tax Liability: Whirlpool Corporation recorded $18 billion in global sales and $619 million of earnings in 2010 but won't pay anywhere near the U.S. statutory tax rate of 35% on those profits...

Schenkel: Exposing the Hocus Pocus of Trusts

Posted on March 04, 2011
Kent D. Schenkel (New England) has posted Exposing the Hocus Pocus of Trusts on SSRN. Here is the abstract: A trust beneficiary may receive substantial benefits to property, and perhaps even virtual control over that property, yet the trust shields that property from costs associated with beneficiary?s commission of a...

Death of Former Tax Court Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall

Posted on March 04, 2011
Cynthia Holcomb Hall, Senior Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, died on February 26 at the age of 82: In addition to her judicial service in the Ninth Circuit, Judge Hall served as a judge of the U.S. Tax Court from 1972 to 1981...

Markle: Tax-Motivated Income Shifting of Multinationals

Posted on March 04, 2011
Kevin S. Markle (Dartmouth College, Tuck School of Business) has posted A Comparison of the Tax-Motivated Income Shifting of Multinationals in Territorial and Worldwide Countries on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This paper tests for differences in the tax-motivated income shifting behaviors of multinationals subject to different systems of taxing...

Senators Introduce Taxpayer Receipt Act

Posted on March 04, 2011
Senators Scott Brown (R-MA) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) have introduced The Taxpayer Receipt Act of 2011 Under this bipartisan legislation, every taxpayer who files an income tax return would receive an itemized receipt ? similar to a grocery store receipt ? from the IRS that lists where their payroll and...

IRS Debunks Tax Protester Arguments

Posted on March 04, 2011
The IRS today released (IR-2011-23) its annual update of The Truth about Frivolous Tax Arguments: This responds to some of the more common frivolous ?legal? arguments made by individuals and groups who oppose compliance with the federal tax laws. The first section groups these arguments under six general categories, with...

WSJ: The Incredible Shrinking Law School

Posted on March 04, 2011
Wall Street Journal Law Blog, The Incredible Shrinking Law School? It?s the Vision of Two NY Deans: A current school of thought about legal education in the U.S. goes like this: Despite being in the business of education, law schools are entrepreneurial ? some might say ?greedy? ? institutions...

Listokin: Tax Inclusive, Tax Exclusive, and Tax Bases

Posted on March 03, 2011
Yair Listokin (Yale) has published Tax Inclusive, Tax Exclusive, and Tax Bases, 130 Tax Notes 1065 (Feb. 28, 2011): Some taxes, most notably FICA, use a base that is neither tax inclusive nor tax exclusive. This article provides formulas for expressing tax rates on hybrid tax bases in tax-inclusive and...

Most and Least Expensive BigLaw Feeder Schools

Posted on March 03, 2011
Following up on Monday's post, Law School Rankings by BigLaw Jobs: National Law Journal, Chicago, Howard Are the Best Buy 'Go-To' Law Schools: The University of Chicago Law School and Howard University School of Law gave their 2010 graduates the most big-firm bang for their tuition buck...

NY Times: Through the Tax Looking Glass With Ambac

Posted on March 03, 2011
New York Times DealBook, Through the Looking Glass With Ambac, by Stephen J. Lubben (Seton Hall): If the claims by the IRS are true, Ambac has managed to pull off something that Lehman Brothers could not: force the government to provide a bailout. Ambac got its bailout by receiving more...

House Holds Hearing Today on Corporate Tax Reform and Small Businesses

Posted on March 03, 2011
The Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures of the House Ways & Means Committee holds a hearing today on Corporate Tax Reform and Small Businesses. From the hearing announcement: ]Subcommittee Chairman] Pat Tiberi (R-OH) ... announced that the Subcommittee will hold a hearing on the special burdens that the tax code...

Professor Kingsfield as Teacher and Scholar

Posted on March 03, 2011
Chicago Faculty Blog, Co-authorship, Empiricism and Changes in Legal Scholarship, by Tom Ginsburg & Tom Miles: In the 1973 movie The Paper Chase, there is a well-known scene in which the protagonist law student Hart goes with trepidation to the office of the stern Professor Kingsfield...

Mugel National Tax Moot Court Competition Kicks Off Today

Posted on March 03, 2011
The 2011 Albert R. Mugel National Tax Moot Court Competition kicks off today at Buffalo: The Buffalo Moot Court Board proudly announces the annual Albert R. Mugel National Tax Moot Court Competition for 2011. Hosted by the University at Buffalo Law School for more than thirty years, the Mugel Competition...

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