Taxation & Estate Planning

IRS Oversight Board Releases 2009 Annual Report to Congress

Posted on May 12, 2010
The IRS Oversight Board today released its 2009 Annual Report to Congress: The report evaluates the IRS? performance during fiscal year 2009, describes the strategic challenges facing tax administration, and provides a series of ?scorecards? that measure the IRS? performance during FY2009.

Did 16 Law Schools Commit Rankings Malpractice?

Posted on May 11, 2010
As U.S. News rankings aficionados know, the methodology used in the 2011 U.S. News Law School Rankings gives 18% weight to employment statistics: 14% to the percentage of the Class of 2008 employed nine months after graduation (which is reported to the ABA as well), and 4% to the percentage...

Art Imitates Life: The Estate Tax on Last Night's Law & Order

Posted on May 11, 2010
Last week, I blogged my Creighton lecture on The Costs of Estate Tax DIthering -- in which I showed a clip from Throw Momma from the Train (originally coined by Paul Krugman to refer to the 2001 passage of the one-year repeal of the estate tax in 2010), discussed two...

Real World Tax Consequences of Property Transactions in Virtual Worlds

Posted on May 11, 2010
Following up on recent posts on the tax consequences of online virtual worlds: Adam Chodorow (Arizona State), Tracing Basis Through Virtual Spaces, 95 Cornell L. Rev. 283 (2010) Leandra Lederman (Indiana-Bloomington), EBay?s Second Life: When Should Virtual Earnings Bear Real Taxes?, 118 Yale L...

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

VanderWolk: The New World of Tax Information Exchange

Posted on May 11, 2010
Jefferson P. VanderWolk (Faculty of Law, Chinese University of Hong Kong) has posted The New World of Tax Information Exchange, 13 Asia-Pacific J. Tax'n ___ (2009), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The smaller financial centers such as Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong and other low-tax jurisdictions have no realistic choice...

Bainbridge: A Memo to Casebook Authors

Posted on May 11, 2010
Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA), A Memo to Law School Casebook Authors: Change is coming. The major law school casebook publishers are working on game changers like eBooks and textbook rentals, while trying to do so unilaterally within the confines of standard form contracts designed for the 19th Century...

USA Today: 2009 Tax Bills Are Lowest in 60 years

Posted on May 11, 2010
USA Today, Tax Bills in 2009 at Lowest Level Since 1950: Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman's presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found...

Accounting Program Rankings

Posted on May 11, 2010
Brigham Young University has released a new Accounting Research Rankings website based on the paper by Joshua G. Coyne, Scott L. Summers, Brady Williams & David A. Wood (all of BYU, School of Accountancy), Accounting Program Research Rankings by Topical Area and Methodology (blogged here)...

TIGTA: IRS Releases Confidential Information to Callers Without Proper Authentication in 16% of Cases, Subjecting Taxpayers to Risk of Identity Theft

Posted on May 11, 2010
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration today released Telephone Authentication Practices Need Improvements to Better Prevent Unauthorized Disclosures (2010-40-045): In February 2009, the Federal Trade Commission reported that for the ninth year in a row identity theft was the number one consumer complaint nationwide...

State & Local Tax Burden as a Percentage of State Income

Posted on May 10, 2010
The Tax Foundation has published this downloadable 50-state map of State and Local Tax Burden as a Percentage of State Income Ranking [click on chart to enlarge]:

Bartlett: Tax Cuts And 'Starving The Beast'

Posted on May 10, 2010
Bruce Bartlett (Forbes), Tax Cuts And "Starving The Beast": The Most Pernicious Fiscal Doctrine in History: I believe that to a large extent our current budgetary problems stem from the widespread adoption of an idea by Republicans in the 1970s called "starve the beast...

Survey of CFOs: Majority See State Taxes Increasing

Posted on May 10, 2010
Grant Thornton has released a survey of 496 CFOs and senior comptrollers of U.S. companies. Among the findings: In the coming year, do you believe your aggregate state effective tax rate will: All CA IL MI NY Increase 64% 68% 72% 64% 78% Remain the Same 24% 17% 11% 29%...

TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Posted on May 10, 2010
Saturday: Goodbye, Class of 2010 ABA Tax Section May Meeting TIGTA Identifies Widespread Noncompliance With IRA Rules Accounting for Taxes in Valuing S Corporations The Tax-Exempt Status of Elite Law Schools Sunday: "The Kingdom of God Is Not Run on GAAP" -- But This World Is Top 5 Tax Paper...

Party Law School Rankings

Posted on May 10, 2010
SubtleDig has released the second annual Party Law School Rankings, which attempt to measure the "quality of life" of the Top 100 (102 with ties) law schools in the 2011 U.S. News Rankings. Here are the Top 10 and Bottom 10 ("where fun goes to die") party law schools: Party...

Will Ferrell Pitches in a Minor League Baseball Game

Posted on May 10, 2010
CNN Huffington Post L.A. Times MLB.com

Johnston: Anschutz and a 21st Century Tax System

Posted on May 10, 2010
David Cay Johnston has published Anschutz and a 21st Century Tax System, 127 Tax Notes 699 (May 10, 2010): Johnston looks at a major Tax Court case [Anschutz Co. v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2006-40 (Mar. 13, 2006), T.C. Memo. 2006-124 (June 14, 2006)] and its implications for developing a new...

Ph.D. Program Rankings to Use Range, Not Single Number

Posted on May 10, 2010
Inside Higher Ed, Methodology Change for Doctoral Rankings: The National Research Council -- responding to criticism it received in the internal peer review of its forthcoming doctoral program rankings -- is changing the methodology in a few key places for the long-awaited project...

Treasury & IRS Seek Public Comment on 2010-11 Guidance Priority List

Posted on May 10, 2010
The Treasury Department and IRS on Friday issued an advance copy of Notice 2010-43, inviting public comment on recommendations for items that should be included on the 2010-11 Guidance Priority List: The Treasury Department's Office of Tax Policy and the Service use the Guidance Priority List each year to identify...

More on the IRS's Interim Report on 400 Colleges and Universities

Posted on May 10, 2010
Following up on Friday's post, IRS Releases Interim Report on 400 Colleges and Universities: Chronicle of Higher Education, IRS Finds Possible Problems With How Colleges Set Salaries and Report Business Income Inside Higher Ed, Colleges as Potential Tax Targets

Davis and the Civic Responsibility Exception to the Negative Commerce Clause

Posted on May 09, 2010
Ryan D. Wheeler (J.D. 2009, Pepperdine) has published Note, The Court Lends States a Break: Department of Revenue of Kentucky v. Davis and the Civic Responsibility Exception to the Negative Commerce Clause, 37 Pepp. L. Rev. 375 (2010). Here is part of the Conclusion: Davis, in tandem with United Haulers,...

The Tax Injunction Act and Federal Jurisdiction

Posted on May 09, 2010
David Fautsch (J.D. 2010, Michigan) has published The Tax Injunction Act and Federal Jurisdiction: Reasoning from the Underlying Goals of Federalism and Comity, 108 Mich. L. Rev. 795 (2010). Here is the abstract: States routinely contest federal jurisdiction when a state tax is challenged in federal district court on federal...

"The Kingdom of God Is Not Run on GAAP" -- But This World Is

Posted on May 09, 2010
A federal jury last week convicted co-pastors Anthony and Harriet Jinwright of multiple counts of tax evasion and fraud. From the Charlotte Observer: [C]hurch finance expert Dan Busby, who heads the national Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, reviewed the trial and called it "one of the most egregious cases" of...

Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads

Posted on May 09, 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 #3 (which I highly recommend): 1. [1268 Downloads] Pursuing a Tax LLM Degree: Why and When?, by Paul L. Caron (Cincinnati), Jennifer M...

Faisal Shahzad's Tax Problem

Posted on May 09, 2010
Faisal Shahzad, the attempted Times Square bomber, purchased his home at 119 Long Hill Avenue, Shelton, CT in July 2004 for $273,000 -- he put down 20% ($54,600) and took out a conventional 30-year mortgage loan from Chase for $218,400. In February 2009, he took out a $65,000 equity line...

Accounting for Taxes in Valuing S Corporations

Posted on May 08, 2010
Courtney Sparks White (J.D. 2009, Capital) has published Comment, S Corporations: A Taxing Analysis of Proper Valuation, 37 Cap. U. L. Rev. 1117 (2009). Here is part of the Introduction: This comment will focus on the appropriate way to account for taxes in valuing S corporations...

The Tax-Exempt Status of Elite Law Schools

Posted on May 08, 2010
Oksana Koltko (J.D. 2010, John Marshall) has published Comment, Chasing Profits?Disregarding Values: Legal Persona of Elite Schools and Their Destructive Tax-Exempt Status, 42 J. Marshall L. Rev. 1073 (2009). Here is part of the Conclusion: [O]nce undercapitalized higher education has undergone a dramatic transformation into lavishly lucrative enterprises...

ABA Tax Section May Meeting

Posted on May 08, 2010
The ABA Tax Section May Meeting concludes today in Washington, D.C. The full program is here. Highlights of the meeting were: The Laurence Neal Woodworth Memorial Lecture in United States Tax Law and Policy on Tax Policy in the 21st Century: Challenges and Changes from the Time of Larry Woodworth...

TIGTA Identifies Widespread Noncompliance With IRA Rules

Posted on May 08, 2010
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration yesterday released a report finding widespread noncompliance with IRA rules: The Federal Government is losing millions of dollars each year due to increasing taxpayer noncompliance with IRA requirements...

Goodbye, Class of 2010

Posted on May 08, 2010
The University of Cincinnati College of Law sent off the Class of 2010 into the world today at our graduation ceremony at venerable Music Hall They are our 177th graduating class, making us the fourth-oldest continuously operating law school in the country...

Forbes: How to Protect Your Family From Estate Tax Uncertainty

Posted on May 07, 2010
Following up on Tuesday's post, The Costs of Estate Tax Dithering: Forbes, How to Protect Your Family From Estate Tax Uncertainty, by Ashlea Ebeling: An Illinois woman inherited not quite $100 million this year. Estate taxes could consume 53%, 45%, 16% or none of it, depending on whether the federal...

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