Taxation & Estate Planning

U.S. News to Publish More Law School Employment Data

Posted on December 17, 2010
Following up on last week's post, Law School Transparency Gets U.S. News to Disclose More Employment Data (Dec. 10, 2010): Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News, U.S. News Pledges to Publish More Law School Employment Data: U.S. News wants to set the record straight about our decision...

Christmas Gifts for that Special Tax Person

Posted on December 17, 2010
Tax bumper stickers: eBay amazon zazzle cafe press cafe press cafe press

New Methods Replace Citation Counts in Measuring Scholarly Influence

Posted on December 17, 2010
Inside Higher Ed, New Measures of Scholarly Impact: Higher education might be a high-end marketplace of ideas, but its mechanisms for taking inventory for that marketplace have been, until recently, relatively basic. The method for measuring the influence of journals and authors by counting the number of times their articles...

Starbuck: The 2010-2011 Gift Tax Regime

Posted on December 17, 2010
David L. Starbuck (Baker Hostetler, Denver) has published Buyer Beware: Test-Driving the 2010-2011 Gift Tax Regime,129 Tax Notes 1231 (Dec. 13, 2010). Here is the abstract: Existing 2010 and 2011 estate, gift, and generationskipping transfer tax law has created an uncertain environment in which estate planning professionals must advise their...

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President Obama Signs Tax Package Into Law

Posted on December 17, 2010
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Legislative Documents: Legislative Text Summary (3 pages) Summary (12 pages) Joint Committee on Taxation, Technical Explanation Joint Committee on Taxation, Revenue Estimate White House, Remarks at Signing Ceremony White House, Fact Sheet White House, Framework on Tax Cuts,...

Beverly Moran Is Albany Dean Finalist

Posted on December 17, 2010
Tax Prof Beverly Moran (Vanderbilt; formerly of Cincinnati) is one of five finalists for the Albany deanship. The other finalists are: Roger Abrams (Professor, Northeastern; former Dean, Northeastern, Nova, & Rutgers-Newark) James Chen (Dean, Louisville; former Associate Dean, Minnesota) Michael Madison (Associate Dean, Pittsburgh) Lawrence Solan (Professor, Brooklyn) The faculty...

Campbell: Why Progressives Should Love a VAT

Posted on December 17, 2010
Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, The 10 Percent Solution: How Progressives Can Stop Worrying and Love a Value-Added Tax, by Andrea Louise Campbell (MIT, Department of Political Science): The nation?s fiscal situation is bleak. Although current deficits have garnered the most attention, of greater concern is the long-term mismatch between...

Schmalbeck: With Tax Vote, Congress Will Have Blood on its Hands

Posted on December 16, 2010
Richard Schmalbeck (Duke), Protecting the Rich from Themselves: Unless Congress acts very quickly, there will be blood as the accidental estate tax ?holiday? slouches toward expiration on December 31. Tax ?holidays,? during which a tax is temporarily suspended, are questionable tax policy at best...

2011 Princeton Review Law School Rankings: Most (and Least) Accessible Professors

Posted on December 16, 2010
I previously blogged the lists of the Top 10 law schools in eleven categories posted on Princeton Review's web site in connection with its publication of the 2011 edition of Best 172 Law Schools (with the University of Cincinnati College of Law again on the cover)...

Christmas Gifts for that Special Tax Person

Posted on December 16, 2010
For Counsel (Products and Gifts for Lawyers) sells an exact reproduction of the original 1913 Form 1040: Four pages long, including one page of instructions. Impressively framed in classic mahogany with beaded edge and segmented mat of ivory. Brass plate mounted on the mat states: "1913 Inaugural Form 1040...

IRS Enforcement Actions Disproportionately Hit Minority Areas

Posted on December 16, 2010
IRS Enforcement?s Impact on Minority Communities, by Thomas M. Evans: Areas with large African-American and Hispanic populations are subjected to IRS enforcement actions at double the rate of the general population, according to a new analysis. ...Although African-Americans comprised 12...

What Are Taxes For?

Posted on December 16, 2010
Wall Street Journal op-ed, What Are Taxes For?, by Daniel Henninger (Deputy Editor, Wall Street Journal's editorial page): Should the primary purpose of taxation be to support the government or maximize economic growth? Sarah, Mitt and several tea party groups say the tax compromise with Barack Obama is a bad...

More Estate Tax Commentary

Posted on December 16, 2010
Bloomberg, Tax-Cut Vote in House Hinges on Estate-Tax Dispute (Ryan J. Donmoyer) Forbes, Tax Deal Trust Fund Loophole Could Save Billions For Rich (Janet Novack) Huffington Post, What's the Estate Tax Supposed to Do, Anyway? (Joseph J. Thorndike) National Journal, No Matter Who Wins, Estate Tax Is All but Dead...

IRS Releases Fall 2010 SOI Bulletin

Posted on December 16, 2010
The IRS's Statistics of Income Division has released the Fall 2010 SOI Bulletin with these three articles: Individual Income Tax Returns, 2008, by Justin Bryan Partnership Returns, 2008, by Tim Wheeler & Nina Shumofsky Charities, Social Clubs, and Other Tax- Exempt Organizations, 2007, by Paul Arnsberger & Mike Graham In...

Kaye: The Regulation of Corporate Tax Shelters in the U.S.

Posted on December 16, 2010
Tracy A. Kaye (Seton Hall) has published The Regulation of Corporate Tax Shelters in the United States, 58 Am. J. Comp. L. 585 (2010). Here is the abstract: No other topic in the tax realm has sparked more controversy and commentary than the subject of corporate tax shelters...

Coordinating Law School Loan Forgiveness Programs With Federal Law

Posted on December 16, 2010
Philip G. Schrag (Georgetown) & Charles Pruett (Georgetown) have posted Coordinating Law School Loan Repayment Assistance Programs with New Federal Loan Repayment and Forgiveness Legislation, 61 J. Legal Educ. ___ (2011), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: For decades, law school administrators, faculty members, students and graduates have worried about...

New Issue of Atax's eJournal of Tax Research

Posted on December 16, 2010
Volume 8, Issue 1 (June 2010) of the eJournal of Tax Research, published by Atax (Australian Taxation Studies Program), University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and edited by Binh Tran-Nam & Michael Walpole, is available on its web site: Adrian Sawyer, Financial Institutions? Tax Disclosures and Discourse: Analysing Recent...

Bell: Z-scores in

Posted on December 16, 2010
Tom Bell (Chapman) has published his wonderful annual listing of the z-scores of each school in the Top 50 of the U.S. News law school rankings. The z-scores measure how well each school performed relative to its peers. Tom's rankings are especially important in those categories in which U...

Divided Tax Court Allows Parsonage Allowance for Minister's Two Homes

Posted on December 15, 2010
A sharply divided Tax Court (5-2-6) yesterday held that Christian singer Phil Driscoll and his wife could exclude from income parsonage allowances on both their principal residence and a vacation home in these amounts: Principal Residence Vacation Home 1996 $78,469 $25,843 1997 $42,708 $70,708 1998 $71,704 $116,309 1999 $87,254 $195,779...

Trial Begins in Law Prof Authors' Suit v. West

Posted on December 15, 2010
I previously blogged (links below) the lawsuit by David Rudovsky (Penn) and Leonard N. Sosnov (Widener) against West, claiming that they were falsely identified as the authors of a poorly researched ?sham? supplement to their treatise, Pennsylvania Practice: Criminal Procedure Law, Commentary and Forms...

Estate Tax Commentary

Posted on December 15, 2010
The Atlantic, 2010's Final Tax Debate: The Future of the Estate Tax Bloomberg, Estate Measure Creates Window to Give Children Up To $10 Million Tax-Free Bloomberg, Estate Tax Gulf Deeper Than Dispute Over Rates, Exclusions Frobes (The Tax Lawyer), Dying to Know About Estate Tax (Robert W...

Women and Minority Law Profs Think Tenure Is Less Fair, More Difficult

Posted on December 15, 2010
Katherine Y. Barnes (Arizona) & Elizabeth Mertz (Wisconsin) have posted Is It Fair? Law Professors? Perceptions of Tenure, 61 J. Legal Educ. ___ (2011), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This paper presents initial data from a major empirical study of U...

IRS Whistleblower Office Issues Annual Report

Posted on December 15, 2010
The IRS's Whistleblower Office has released its FY 2009 annual report to Congress: During FY 2009, the IRS received 460 whistleblower submissions relating to 1,941 taxpayers that appeared to meet the $2 million of tax, penalties, interest, and additions to tax threshold in § 7623(b)...

Christmas Gifts for that Special Tax Person

Posted on December 15, 2010
Form 1040 Toilet Paper ($3.49 per roll): Does it pain you to fill out a tax form each year? Does knowing that the IRS takes a large chunk of your salary give you the runs? This product isn't deductible, but it'll sure make you feel better. A collage of the...

Thorndike: Why Liberals Should Like Tax Reform

Posted on December 15, 2010
Joseph J. Thorndike (Tax Analysts) has published Why Liberals Should Like Tax Reform (Dec. 14, 2010): The smart money bets against tax reform -- always and everywhere. But every once in a while -- usually a long while -- the smart money is wrong. In recent weeks, we've seen a...

2011 Princeton Review Law School Rankings: Best (and Worst) Career Preparation

Posted on December 15, 2010
I previously blogged the lists of the Top 10 law schools in eleven categories posted on Princeton Review's web site in connection with its publication of the 2011 edition of Best 172 Law Schools (with the University of Cincinnati College of Law again on the cover)...

O.J. Simpson and Other Felons Enjoy Property Tax Break While in Prison

Posted on December 15, 2010
Orlando Sentinel, In Nevada Prison O.J Simpson Keeps Tax Break on South Florida Home: O.J. Simpson may not be coming back to South Florida for a good long while, but he's still entitled to a homestead exemption on his Kendall home. So ruled the Miami-Dade County property appraiser's office after...

Borden: The Prince and the Paupers -- A Tax Fable

Posted on December 15, 2010
Bradley T. Borden (Brooklyn), The Prince and the Paupers: A Tax Fable: The recent tax deal brings to mind a fable that I've told my young daughter to explain the current tax system.

Zelinsky: Tax Considerations of Cliff Lee's Deal with the Phillies

Posted on December 14, 2010
Edward Zelinsky (Cardozo), Tax Considerations and Cliff Lee's Deal with the Phillies: [T]houghts on Cliff Lee's decision to sign with the Phillies for 5-year, guaranteed $120 million (instead of signing with the Yankees for 6-years, guaranteed $132 million, or the Rangers for 6-years, guaranteed $138 million -- both the Yankees...

UC Regents Vote to Raise Faculty Retirement Age From 50 to 55

Posted on December 14, 2010
The Regents of the University of California yesterday approved the budget cuts proposed by UC President Mark Yudof. From my prior post, UC President Proposes Raising Faculty Retirement Age From 50 to 55: Under his proposals, employees hired by UC after July 1, 2013 would be eligible for retirement at...

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