Taxation & Estate Planning

Fellowships for Aspiring Law Professors (2011 Edition)

Posted on February 16, 2011
For practitioners and others contemplating joining the law professor ranks, many law schools offer wonderful opportunities to transition into the legal academy with one- or two-year fellowships which allow you to enter the AALS Faculty Recruitment Conference (the "meat market") with published scholarship (and in many cases teaching experience) under...

2010: Time to Start Repaying Your 2008 First-Time Homebuyer's Tax Credit

Posted on February 16, 2011
MSNBC, Uncle Sam Wants You ... To Repay the Home Tax Credit: Payback Is Due for Those Who Took Advantage in '08, Not in '09 or '10: Uncle Sam has a reminder for some people who took advantage of the first-time homebuyer tax credit three years ago: He wants his...

Call for Papers: Global Conference on Environmental Taxation

Posted on February 16, 2011
The 12th Global Conference on Environmental Taxation to be held in Madrid on October 20-21, 2011 has issued a Call for Papers. The deadline for submitting abstracts is March 1.

Should Faculty be Required to Fill Out Time Sheets?

Posted on February 16, 2011
Inside Higher Ed, Punching In at Kean U.: Kean University's administration is not exactly beloved by its professors. ... Now the university has once again angered faculty members -- requiring them to fill out time sheets reporting how many hours they have worked each day, to demonstrate that they are...

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UNLV to Fire Tenured Faculty, Close Schools in Face of 'Fiscal Collapse'

Posted on February 16, 2011
Las Vegas Sun, UNLV President Plans for ?State of Fiscal Collapse?: UNLV President Neal Smatresk told a somber Faculty Senate on Tuesday that the administration was planning a kind of bankruptcy to deal with its budget crunch. Under the "financial exigency" plan, tenured professors could be fired and whole departments...

Lawsky: Charitable Donations of Partial Interests

Posted on February 16, 2011
Sarah B. Lawsky (UC-Irvine) has posted The Sum of its Parts: Reforming Charitable Donations of Partial Interests, 64 Tax L. Rev. 37 (2010), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This essay analyzes the tax rule that permits a deduction for donating property to a charity, but denies a deduction for...

State-by-State Ranking of Prisoner Tax Fraud

Posted on February 16, 2011
Following up on recent posts (here, here, here): USA Today, Prisoners Stole Millions From the IRS in 2009: Prisoners in Florida, Georgia and California lead the nation's inmate population in scamming payments from an unlikely benefactor: the IRS. Seemingly proving the adage that crime pays, even behind bars, prisoners in...

Chodorow Presents Donating FSA Account Balances to Charity at Boston College

Posted on February 16, 2011
Adam Chodorow (Arizona State) presented Doing Good While Staying Well: A Proposal to Combine Healthcare and Charitable Giving Tax Provision at Boston College yesterday as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Diane Ring and Jim Repetti. Here is the abstract: Healthcare Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) permit eligible...

Law Prof May Lose Tenure For Classroom Hypos on Shooting His Dean

Posted on February 15, 2011
Chronicle of Higher Education, Widener Professor Could Lose Job for Hypothetical Talk of Dean?s Shooting: A tenured professor at the Widener University School of Law has been placed on administrative leave and is fighting to keep his job after students complained about his frequent hypothetical references in class to the...

Sullivan: Winners and Losers in Corporate Tax Reform

Posted on February 15, 2011
Martin A. Sullivan (Tax Analysts) has published Winners and Losers in Corporate Tax Reform, 130 Tax Notes 731 (Feb. 14, 2011): Martin A. Sullivan looks at which industries would benefit the most from corporate tax reform if rates were cut but tax expenditures were curtailed...

Kysar: Lasting Legislation

Posted on February 15, 2011
Rebecca Kysar (Brooklyn) has posted Lasting Legislation, 159 U. Pa. L. Rev. ___ (2011), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This Article argues that, due to certain pathologies in the legislative process, legislation enacted with sunset provisions lacks benefits hailed in recent scholarship, while also harming the political process and...

Crystal Cathedral CFO Resigns Following Questions Over His $132k Housing Allowance

Posted on February 15, 2011
Following up on my prior post, Bankruptcy Trustee Questions Crystal Cathedral CFO's $132k Housing Allowance (Nov. 10, 2010): the Crystal Cathedral's CFO has retired after 33 years working for the megachurch, following revelations that he drew a $132,000 annual housing allowance and a $12,000 annual salary...

Lawsky: Declining Marginal Utility and Tax Policy

Posted on February 15, 2011
Sarah B. Lawsky (UC-Irvine) has published On the Edge: Declining Marginal Utility and Tax Policy, 95 Minn. L. Rev. 904 (2011). Here is the abstract: Tax policy and scholarship generally assume that income has declining marginal utility (that is, that the next dollar is worth less to a wealthier person...

NLJ Interview With New Pepperdine Dean Judge Tacha

Posted on February 15, 2011
Following up on last week's post, Deanell Reece Tacha Named Dean at Pepperdine: National Law Journal, Judge Tacha Discusses Plans For Her Deanship at Pepperdine Law: [Judge] Tacha will assume the deanship on June 1 and plans to retire from the bench. She comes to the law school at a...

ABA Division Adopts 'Truth in Legal Education' Resolution

Posted on February 15, 2011
National Law Journal, ABA Division Adopts Resolution for Truth in Law School Education: The Young Lawyers Division of the ABA has joined the chorus of voices calling for more accurate job data for would-be law students. The division on Saturday adopted the Truth in Law School Education resolution: a six-point...

WSJ: 5,100 More IRS Agents Won't Close the 'Tax Gap'

Posted on February 15, 2011
WSJ editorial, 5,100 More IRS Agents: The White House Plan to Close the Mythical "Tax Gap": The White House is requesting that the most beloved of all government agencies get an additional 5,100 agents next year, no doubt to wring further tax revenue from Americans...

Publication Study of Faculty at Non-Top 50 Law Schools

Posted on February 15, 2011
Roger Williams University School of Law has updated its per capita publication study of the faculties at law schools ranked outside the U.S. News Top 50. The study covers the 1993-2010 period and uses methodology developed by Brian Leiter, with one change: although Brian focused exclusively on the Top 20...

Feldstein: Boost the Economy by Lowering Corporate Tax Rates

Posted on February 15, 2011
Wall Street Journal op-ed, Want to Boost the Economy? Lower Corporate Tax Rates, by Martin Feldstein (Harvard University, Department of Economics): President Obama has reached out to the business community with talk of lowering the corporate tax rate and improving the tax treatment of profits earned abroad by American companies...

Johnston: Obama/GOP Tax Policy Stiffs the Working Poor

Posted on February 14, 2011
David Cay Johnston has published Obama and the GOP: United Against the Working Poor,130 Tax Notes 837 (Feb. 14, 2011): In this article, Johnston asks what the December tax cut bill, which raised taxes on the working poor and cut them for high-income workers, tells us about the ??no tax...

Maule: The Tax Consequences of Congressional Sleepovers

Posted on February 14, 2011
Jim Maule (Villanova), Sleeping in An Office Might Be Taxable But Perhaps It?s Not: So, Do Congressmen Who Sleep in Their Offices Receive a Taxable Fringe Benefit?. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington thinks so. In a press release summarizing a letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics, CREW...

Spring 2011 Law Review Article Submission Guide

Posted on February 14, 2011
Nancy Levit (UMKC) & Allen Rostron (UMKC) have updated their incredibly useful document, which contains two charts for the Spring 2011 submission season covering 202 law reviews. The first chart (pp. 1-72) contains information gathered from the journals? websites on: Methods for submitting an article (such as by e-mail, ExpressO,...

Taxing Twitter

Posted on February 14, 2011
Twitter is demanding huge tax incentives to remain in San Francisco. Accounting Today, Twitter Wants Big Tax Breaks Just Means, Twitter's San Francisco Shenanigans San Francisco Chronicle, Tax Break to Twitter Makes Sense San Francisco Examiner, Legislation Offers Tax Break to Keep Twitter in San Francisco TG Daily, Extortionist Twitter...

TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Posted on February 14, 2011
Saturday: Do Estate Planners Need to Find New Jobs? Do Congressmen Who Sleep in Their Offices Receive a Taxable Fringe Benefit? Critiquing the 3d & 7th Circuits' Approval of the 2-Year SOL Innocent Spouse Reg ABA Tax Section Submits Comment Letters Sunday: NY Times: Could Your Senator Conquer the 1040?...

Rasmussen Presents The Lawlessness of the GM NOL Ruling

Posted on February 14, 2011
Eric B. Rasmusen (Indiana University, Kelley School of Business) presents Can the Treasury Exempt Companies It Owns from Taxes? The $45 Billion General Motors Loss Carryforward Rule in an invitation-only virtual workshop today. Here is the abstract: A corporation that buys property does not thereby acquire the right to reduce...

Graetz: The Politics and Policy of the Estate Tax

Posted on February 14, 2011
Michael J. Graetz (Columbia) has posted The Politics and Policy of the Estate Tax - Past, Present, and Future on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This paper is an edited transcript of the Lloyd Leva Plaine Distinguished Lecture, delivered at the University of Miami?s Heckerling Estate Planning Institute on January...

NY Times Special Tax Section

Posted on February 14, 2011
Seeking the Path to a Simpler Tax Code, by David M. Herszenhorn: "Amid worry about long-term fiscal woes, momentum may be building for bipartisan talks to overhaul the nation?s labyrinthine tax system." Those Disappearing Tax Breaks, by Jan M. Rosen: "As a result of changes enacted last December, taxpayers should...

Celebrity Tax Scofflaws: A Pictorial Guide

Posted on February 14, 2011
Boston Globe, Tax Scandals of the Rich and Famous: Tax season is right around the corner, and you may be thinking about extra ways to shave down your tax bill. Take a look back at some high-profile examples of how trying to cheat the tax man is usually not a...

Treasury Releases Green Book on Tax Portions of Obama's 2012 Budget

Posted on February 14, 2011
President Obama today released his administration's Fiscal Year 2012 Budget (tax receipts and expenditures (chapters 15-17) here). The Treasury Department released its 151-page Green Book, General Explanations of the Administration?s Fiscal Year 2011 Revenue Proposals: Associated Press, Obama Budget Resurrects Rejected Tax Increases Bloomberg, Rejected Tax Increases for High Earners...

CBO: Projecting Individual Income Tax Revenues

Posted on February 13, 2011
CBO, Improving CBO's Methodology for Projecting Individual Income Tax Revenues: In preparing its annual report on the budget outlook, and updates to that report during the course of the year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects revenues from the federal individual income tax...

Corporate Tax Report Card: U.S. Gets an F

Posted on February 13, 2011
American Enterprise Institute, Report Card on Effective Corporate Tax Rates: United States Gets an F, by Kevin Hassett & Aparna Mathur: At 35%, the U.S. statutory corporate tax rate is the highest among all the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)...

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