Taxation & Estate Planning

WSJ: Decision May Open Floodgates on Deductibility of M.B.A. Expenses

Posted on January 11, 2010
Following up on last month's post, Tax Court Allows Nurse to Deduct Cost of University of Phoenix MBA: the Wall Street Journal reports on the Tax Court's recent decision, Singleton-Clarke v. Commissioner, T.C. Summ. Op. 2009-182 (Dec. 2, 2009), in Nurse Outduels IRS Over M...

July 2009 California Bar Exam Results

Posted on January 11, 2010
The July 2009 California bar passage rates by school are out. For first-time takers, the overall pass rates were 70.4% for all takers and 79.3% for graduates of the twenty California ABA-approved law schools. The results by gender: Female: 70.1% overall, 78...

Glenn Beck as Tim Geithner?

Posted on January 11, 2010
Politico reports that Glenn Beck, who has been on the front lines in criticizing various "tax cheats" nominated for, and serving in, the Obama administration (e.g., Lael Brainard, Greg Craig, Tom Daschle, Tim Geithner, Nancy Killefer, Ron Kirk, Capricia Penavic Marshall, Kathleen Sebelius, Hilda Solis, Sonia Sotomayor), has his own...

Symposium Papers, A Legal Education Prospectus: Law Schools & Emerging Frontiers

Posted on January 11, 2010
The Rutgers Law Review has published Symposium, A Legal Education Prospectus: Law Schools & Emerging Frontiers, 61 Rutgers L. Rev. 867-1144 (2009): Judith Welch Wegner (North Carolina; co-author, The Carnegie Report), Reframing Legal Education's ?Wicked Problems", 61 Rutgers L...

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Posted on January 11, 2010
Saturday: AALS Tax Section Program Today: Taxation for a Successful Economy Court Rejects 26 BOA SILO Tax Shelters Jones: War on Wealth -- Taxing Hedgies UBS Tax Whistleblower Begins Prison Term Sunday: Leadership Changes at AALS Annual Meeting Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads Tax Return Prep: There's an App for...

Mason: Tax Expenditures and Global Labor Mobility

Posted on January 11, 2010
Ruth Mason (UConn) has published Tax Expenditures and Global Labor Mobility, 84 NYU L. Rev. 1542 (2009). Here is the abstract: Governments often deliver social welfare benefits through ?tax expenditures,? which are provisions of the tax code (such as home mortgage deductions) designed to serve social policy objectives...

Chronicle: Law Schools Resist Learning Outcome Measures

Posted on January 11, 2010
Chronicle of Higher Education, Law Schools Resist Proposal to Assess Them Based on What Students Learn, by Katherine Mangan: Law schools would be required to identify key skills and competencies and develop ways to test how well their graduates are learning them under controversial revisions to accreditation standards being proposed...

Laywer is 80th Best Job in America

Posted on January 11, 2010
Career Cast has compiled a list of the Top 200 Jobs for 2010, based on five factors: Physical Demands Work Environment Income Stress Hiring Outlook The #1 job is Actuary; #200 is Roustabout. Lawyer ranked #80, just below Hotel Manager (#75) and Cosmetologist (#78) and just above Janitor (#83) and...

Smart & Bird: Replacing a Retail Sales Tax with a Value-Added Tax

Posted on January 11, 2010
Michael Smart & Richard M. Bird (both of the University of Toronto, Department of Economics) have published The Impact on Investment of Replacing a Retail Sales Tax with a Value-Added Tax: Evidence from Canadian Experience, 62 Nat'l Tax J. 591 (2009)...

Can Goldman Sachs Bankers Deduct "Forced" Charitable Contributions?

Posted on January 11, 2010
New York Times, Goldman Sachs Considers Charity Requirement, by Louise Story: As it prepares to pay out big bonuses to employees, Goldman Sachs is considering expanding a program that would require executives and top managers to give a certain percentage of their earnings to charity...

The All-Decade State Tax Team

Posted on January 11, 2010
David Brunori today announced his 15-person All-Decade State Tax Team (55 State Tax Notes 127 (Jan. 11, 2010)), which includes three Tax Profs: Walter Hellerstein (Georgia) Richard D. Pomp (Connecticut) John A. Swain (Arizona)

Tax Return Prep: There's an App for That

Posted on January 10, 2010
RedOrbit, Let Your iPhone Do Your Taxes: It's a new year, which means that in a few months, taxes will come due yet again. So why not get a head start on them with your iPhone -- there is, it turns out, an app for that. The financial software powerhouse...

Economics Blogger and Blog Rankings by Scholarly Impact

Posted on January 10, 2010
Franklin G. Mixon Jr. (Mercer University, Department of Economics) & Kamal P. Upadhyaya (University of New Haven, Department of Economics and Finance) have published Blogometrics, Eastern Economic Journal (2010), vol. 36, pp. 1?10. Here is the abstract: This study gathers information on a wide array of economics bloggers and blogs...

Leadership Changes at AALS Annual Meeting

Posted on January 10, 2010
Today's conclusion of the AALS Annual Meeting brings several Tax Profs into leadership roles: Dorothy Brown (Emory), Member, AALS Executive Committee Nancy Staudt (Northwestern), Chair; Beverly Moran (Vanderbilt), Chair-Elect; and Leandra Lederman (Indiana-Bloomington), Member (joining Jim Repetti (Boston College) and Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)), AALS Tax Section Paul Caron (Cincinnati), Member,...

Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads

Posted on January 10, 2010
There is a lot of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with new papers debuting on the list at #1, #4, and #5: 1. [233 Downloads] The Regulatory Systems for Employee Benefits, by Brian A. Benko (McDermott Will & Emery, Washington, D...

AALS Tax Section Program Today: Taxation for a Successful Economy

Posted on January 09, 2010
The AALS Section on Taxation hosts a program today on Taxation for a Successful Economy at 10:30 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. at the AALS Annual Meeting: This year?s panelists will explore taxation from various theoretical and applied perspectives. The papers will explore the ways in which tax experts work collaboratively...

Court Rejects 26 BOA SILO Tax Shelters

Posted on January 09, 2010
The U.S. Court of Federal Claims on Friday disallowed 26 SILO tax shelters claimed by Wells Fargo & Co. Wells Fargo & Co. v. United States, No. 06-628T (Fed. Cl. Jan. 8, 2010): The SILO transactions here are offensive to the Court on many levels. A cadre of company executives,...

Jones: War on Wealth -- Taxing Hedgies

Posted on January 09, 2010
Darryll K. Jones (Florida A&M) talks about taxing carried interest on CNBC's Power Lunch:

UBS Whistleblower Begins Prison Term

Posted on January 09, 2010
UBS tax whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld began serving his 40-month prison sentence yesterday. National Whistleblowers Center press release ABC News Bloomberg Financial Times Reuters USA Today Wall Street Journal

Jensen: The

Posted on January 09, 2010
Erik M. Jensen (Case Western) has posted The Receipt of Cash for Losses of Personal Rights, 103 Tax Notes 103 (Jan. 4, 2010), on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Please Stop by Today at AALS Annual Meeting

Posted on January 08, 2010
I will be at the LexisNexis booth in the Exhibit Hall at the AALS Annual Meeting today from 10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. as part of its "Meet the Author" program. Please stop by if you would like to chat about the LexisNexis Graduate Tax Series, the Foundation Press Law...

Galle Presents Award-Winning Paper Today at AALS Annual Meeting

Posted on January 08, 2010
Brian D. Galle (Florida State) will present his paper, Keep Charity Charitable, 88 Tex. L. Rev. ___ (2010), at the Scholarly Paper Presentation at the AALS Annual Meeting today at 4:00 p.m. Here is the abstract: This Article responds to recent claims, most prominently by Malani, Posner, and Henderson, that...

The Need for Back-to-Basics Law Schools

Posted on January 08, 2010
Charles E. Rounds, Jr. (Suffolk), Bad Sociology, Not Law: The Widespread Abandonment of the Traditional Legal Curriculum Argues in Favor of a Back-to-Basics Law School (John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy): Professional schools need to strike a balance between book-learning and real-world experience...

Taxing Google

Posted on January 08, 2010
France is considering a tax on Google to support old media companies: CNET News, France Could Tax Google to Subsidize Music Financial Times, Sarkozy Proposes Advert Tax on Google The Guardian, "Google tax" Proposed on Web Firms' Online Ad Revenue in France Telegraph, France Plans "Google Tax" on Internet Searches...

Technology in the Law School Classroom

Posted on January 08, 2010
The AALS Section on Teaching Methods has published its December 2009 Newsletter with these articles on the use of technology in law school teaching: Small Picture Approach, by William Slomason (Thomas Jefferson) PowerPoint Lectures, by Jiri Toman (Santa Clara) Course Management Websites, by Joan MacCleod Heminway (Tennessee) Use of Clickers...

L.A. Times: Let AALS, Not ABA, Accredit Law Schools

Posted on January 08, 2010
L.A. Times op-ed, No More Room at the Bench, by Mark Greenbaum: The ABA allows unneeded new law schools to open and refuses to regulate them. The government should consider taking steps to stop the flow of attorneys into a saturated marketplace. Remember the old joke about 20,000 lawyers at...

USC Conference on America's Looming Fiscal Crisis

Posted on January 08, 2010
The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics host a conference next Friday, January 15, on Train Wreck: A Conference on America's Looming Fiscal Crisis, at USC: This conference on the long-term fiscal crisis will bring together leading experts from a range of...

NALP Proposes January Kick-Off Day for 2L Summer Associate Offers

Posted on January 08, 2010
The NALP Commission on Recruiting in the Legal Profession yesterday released a 19-page report recommending that law firms not be allowed to extend summer associate offers until mid-January. ABA Journal, NALP Group Recommends Jan. Job Offer Kick-Off Day Above the Law, New NALP Rules Could be on the Way American...

Call for Tax Papers: Athens Institute for Education and Research

Posted on January 08, 2010
The Athens Institute for Education and Research has issued a call for papers in a variety of areas (including tax) for its 7th Annual International Conference on Law on July 19-22, 2010, in Athens, Greece. 300-word abstracts of proposed papers are due via email by January 11, 2010.

List of Tax Provisions That Expired Dec. 31, 2009

Posted on January 08, 2010
From the Journal of Accountancy: Expired Taxes §§ 2001-2209 estate tax. §§ 2601-2663 generation-skipiing tax. Expired Tax Credits § 30B alternative motor vehicle credit for hybrids weighing more than 8,500 pounds; § 40A credit for biodiesel and renewable diesel fuel; § 41 credit for research and experimentation; § 45A Indian...

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