Taxation & Estate Planning

Death of Judge (and Former Tax Prof) Joseph Sneed

Posted on February 18, 2008
Senior Ninth Circuit Judge Joseph T. Sneed, III, died on February 9 at the age of 87. Before his appointment to the Ninth Circuit in 1973, Judge Sneed was a Tax Prof at Texas (1947-57), Cornell (1957-62), and Stanford (1962-71),...

Logue Presents Overlapping Sanctions Today at Northwestern

Posted on February 18, 2008
Kyle D. Logue (Michigna) presents Overlapping Sanctions at Northwestern today as part of its Law & Economics Workshop Series. Here is the abstract: Legal sanctions are often used to deter behavior. Economists sometimes refer to this function of law as...

Heim on The Effect of Tax Rebates on Consumption Expenditures

Posted on February 18, 2008
Bradley T. Heim (Office of Tax Analysis, Treasury Department) has published The Effect of Tax Rebates on Consumption Expenditures: Evidence from State Tax Rebates, 60 Nat'l Tax J. 685 (2007). Here is the abstract: This paper uses Consumer Expenditure Survey...

Students Prefer Easy Courses and "Hot" Professors

Posted on February 18, 2008
James Felton (Central Michigan University, Department of Finance & Law), Peter T. Koper (Central Michigan University, Department of English Language & Literature), John Mitchell (Central Michigan University, Department of Finance & Law) & Michael Stinson (Central Michigan University, Department of...

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Harvard Publishes Online Bluebook

Posted on February 18, 2008
The Harvard Law Review has launched an online version of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. From the press release: The citation guide for American law, The Bluebook is a tool of the daily practice of law, and it...

Changing of the Tax Prof Guard

Posted on February 18, 2008
I previously blogged Sarah Lawsky's colloquium at NYU last Thursday on her paper, Probably? Understanding Tax Law?s Uncertainty. Dan Shaviro, the co-convenor of the colloquium, reports: One thing I'll say for Sarah, she definitely came in with some flair...

Using a TA to Track Student Performance in Class

Posted on February 18, 2008
Interesting article in this week's Harvard Law Record: Q&A with Professor Warren's TA: Record editors were intrigued when we stumbled upon this job announcement in mid-December: Professor Elizabeth Warren needs a student to attend each Bankruptcy class in the spring...

Tax Linguistics

Posted on February 18, 2008
Menahem Pasternak & Christophe Rico have published Tax Interpretation, Planning, and Avoidance: Some Linguistic Analysis, 23 Akron Tax J. 33 (2008). Here is the abstract: This paper ties together tax-interpretation and tax-avoidance. The paper uses linguistic analysis (within the framework...

Opposition Grows to NY "Crack Tax"

Posted on February 17, 2008
From Sunday's Washington Post: New York "Crack Tax" Proposal Is Derided, by Keith B. Richburg: If you can't beat it, tax it. That seems to be the axiom in New York these days, where Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer (D), struggling...

Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads

Posted on February 17, 2008
This week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads is the same as last week's: 1. [200 Downloads] Taxation of US Tax-Exempt Entities' Offshore Hedge Fund Investments -- Application of the Section 514 Debt-Financed Rules to Leveraged Hedge...

IRS Provides Guidance on Like-Kind Exchanges of Vacation Homes

Posted on February 17, 2008
The IRS on Friday released an advance copy of Rev. Proc. 2008-16, 2008-10 I.R.B. ___ (3/10/08), which provides a safe harbor for the like-kind exchange treatment of vacation homes primarilty rented out to third parties but also used occasionally for....

The Constitutionality of Tax Felon Disenfranchisement

Posted on February 17, 2008
Sloan G. Speck (J.D. 2007, Chicago) has published "Failure to Pay Any Poll Tax or Other Tax?: The Constitutionality of Tax Felon Disenfranchisement, 74 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1549 (2007). Here is the Conclusion: The text, structure, and drafting history...

The AMT and the Bush Tax Cuts

Posted on February 17, 2008
Gabriel Aitsebaomo (Thurgood Marshall) has published The Individual Alternative Minimum Tax and the Intersection of the Bush Tax Cuts: A Proposal for Permanent Reform, 23 Akron Tax J. 109 (2008). Here is the Conclusion: This article reveals that the AMT...

Zelinsky on Employer Mandates and ERISA Preemption

Posted on February 16, 2008
Edward A. Zelinsky (Cardozo) has posted Golden Gate Restaurant Association: Employer Mandates and ERISA Preemption in the Ninth Circuit, 47 State Tax Notes ___ (2008) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This Article focuses on two significant questions in the...

Alstott on Equal Opportunity and Inheritance Taxation

Posted on February 16, 2008
Anne L. Alstott (Yale) has published Equal Opportunity and Inheritance Taxation, 121 Harv. L. Rev. 469 (2007). Here is the abstract: Equality of opportunity is understood to be one of the bedrock principles supporting the taxation of inheritance. The familiar...

Death of Dean Weiner

Posted on February 16, 2008
I am sorry to bring you the news of the death of Dean Weiner, a former tax partner at O'Melveny & Myers and a long-time adjunct in the Loyola-L.A. Graduate Tax Program. In 2006, Dean accepted early retirement from O'Melveny...

The Law of Deferred Income Recognition for the Members of Agricultural Cooperatives

Posted on February 16, 2008
Kathryn J. Sedo (Minnesota) & Mychal S. Brenden (J.D. 2007, Minnesota) have published Fairness and Taxation: The Law of Deferred Income Recognition for the Members of Agricultural Cooperatives, 23 Akron Tax J. 81 (2008). Here is the Conclusion: The issue...

Bill Would Liberalize Tax Treatment of Employer-Provided Cell Phones

Posted on February 15, 2008
It is no secret that in many ways the Tax Code is ill-suited to the 21st Century American economy. One small example is the tax treatment of employer-provided cell phones. Because cell phones are treated as "listed property" under §...

Taxation as a Global Socio-Legal Phenomenon

Posted on February 15, 2008
Allison Christians (Wisconsin), Steven Dean (Brooklyn), Diane M. Ring (Boston College) & Adam H. Rosenzweig (Washington University) have posted Taxation as a Global Socio-Legal Phenomenon, 14 ILSA J. of Int'l & Comp. L. ___ (2008). Here is the abstract: This...

Citation Count Rankings and the Presidential Campaign

Posted on February 15, 2008
In a comment on David Bernstein's post on Barack Obama's tenure as President of the Harvard Law Review for Volume 104, LawStatMan reports that the volume "has been cited [by law reviews] at the lowest rate of any volume published...

Evaluating the Statutory Responses to Business Activities by Charities in the U.S. and Canada

Posted on February 15, 2008
Andrew Moin (J.D. 2008, Harvard) has posted Red Herrings and Misguided Approaches: Evaluating the Statutory Responses to Business Activities by Charities in the United States and Canada on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Most countries place various limitations on the...

Nasty Probate Battle Over Estate of James Beasley, Benefactor of Temple Law School

Posted on February 15, 2008
The Legal Intelligencer reports on a nasty probate battle involving the $55 million estate of Philadelphia trial lawyer James E. Beasley Sr., whose $20 million gift to Temple University's law school in 1999 resulted in the renaming of the school...

President Bush Nominates Two New Tax Court Judges

Posted on February 15, 2008
President Bush yesterday nominated two new Tax Court Judges: David Gustafson, to replace Judge Carolyn P. Chiechi (see bio here), whose term expired. Mr. Gustafson is a graduate of Duke Law School who worked at the Department of Justice's Tax...

Students Eschew Rankings

Posted on February 15, 2008
The recently released report by the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, The American Freshman: National Norms For Fall 2007, based on the responses of 272,036 first-time, full-time students at 356 colleges and universities in 2007 (out of 1.4 million such...

Open-Access Law Libraries

Posted on February 15, 2008
AltLaw, by the Columbia Law School (Program on Law and Technology) and University of Colorado Law School (Silicon Flatirons Program), which provides U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Court of Appeals cases for the past several decades. PreCYdent, by Tom Smith...

OCC Publishes Report on the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit

Posted on February 15, 2008
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has published Low-Income Housing Tax Credits: Affordable Housing Investment Opportunities for Banks. Here is the abstract: Over the past two decades, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program has addressed the nation?s...

Online Tax Rebate Calculator

Posted on February 14, 2008
Kiplinger has released this online tax rebate calculator.

Schwartz Presents The Future of Tax Privacy Today at Minnesota

Posted on February 14, 2008
Paul M. Schwartz (UC-Berkeley) presents The Future of Tax Privacy at Minnesota today as part of its Works-in-Progress Series. Here is the abstract: This essay considers the past, present, and future of tax privacy. Regarding the past, it is surprising...

Lawsky Presents Understanding Tax Law?s Uncertainty Today at NYU

Posted on February 14, 2008
Sarah B. Lawsky (George Washington) presents Probably? Understanding Tax Law?s Uncertainty at NYU today as part of its Colloquium Series on Tax Policy and Public Finance. Here is the Conclusion: This article has interrogated one definition that underlies many economic...

Lederman on Taxing Virtual Worlds

Posted on February 14, 2008
Leandra Lederman (Indiana) has published Taxing Virtual Worlds, 82 NYU L. Rev. 1620 (2007). Here is the abstract: Virtual worlds, including massive multi-player on-line role-playing games (game worlds), such as City of Heroes, Everquest, and World of Warcraft, have become...

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