Taxation & Estate Planning

Johnston: Call the Republicans' Tax Bluff, Mr. President

Posted on November 22, 2010
David Cay Johnston has published Call Their Bluff, Mr. President,129 Tax Notes 933 (Nov. 22, 2010): President Obama should call the Republicans on their bluff that they will force income tax increases on everyone unless top-income Americans continue to benefit from Bush-era tax cuts...

Warren Buffett: Rich Should Pay 'A Lot More' in Taxes

Posted on November 22, 2010
ABC News, Warren Buffett: Read My Lips, Raise My Taxes Bloomberg, Buffett Tells ABC Rich Americans Should Be Paying `A Lot' More in Taxes Daily Mail, We Should be Paying More in Tax Says Billionaire Warren Buffett Huffington Post, Warren Buffett: I 'Should Be Paying A Lot More In Taxes'...

Sullivan: Tax Reform Fantasy

Posted on November 22, 2010
Martin A. Sullivan (Tax Analysts) has published Tax Reform Fantasy, 129 Tax Notes 859 (Nov. 22, 2010): Martin A. Sullivan criticizes the proposal by President Obama's fiscal reform commission and recommends that tax reform and deficit reduction be considered separate issues...

The Economist: The Trouble With American Law Schools

Posted on November 22, 2010
The Economist, Trouble With the Law: Graduates of American Law Schools Are Finding That Their Chosen Career Is Less Lucrative Than They Had Hoped: This year The Apprentice, a television show in which contestants compete for the privilege of working for Donald Trump, features 16 who are down on their...

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Posted on November 22, 2010
Saturday: The 10 Highest State Income Tax Rates For 2011 Wesley Snipes Begins Serving 3-Year Sentence for Failure to File Tax Returns Do You Know Who Wrote Your Student's Paper? Tax Gross-Ups in Discrimination Suits Sunday: Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads Consumption Taxes and Redistribution Has the IRS Usurped the...

Ainsworth Presents VAT Fraud -- Technology Solutions Today at Loyola-L.A.

Posted on November 22, 2010
Richard T. Ainsworth (Boston University) presents VAT Fraud -- Technology Solutions at Loyola-L.A. today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series. The commentators are Leslie Allen (DLA Piper, London) & Susan C. Morse (UC-Hastings). Here is the abstract: Every VAT/GST allows missing trader fraud...

WSJ: A Sucker's Play -- Each $1 in Higher Taxes Results in $1.17 of New Spending

Posted on November 22, 2010
Wall Street Journal op-ed, Higher Taxes Won't Reduce the Deficit, by Stephen Moore (Wall Street Journal) & Richard Vedder (Ohio University, Department of Economics): The draft recommendations of the president's commission on deficit reduction call for closing popular tax deductions, higher gas taxes and other revenue raisers to drive tax...

NY Times: Deficit Hawks, Tax Chickens

Posted on November 22, 2010
New York Times, Deficit Hawks, Tax Chickens, by Nancy Folbre (UMass, Department of Economics) I?m not sure who invented the term ?deficit hawk,? but it seems an odd name for a creature too chicken to raise taxes. The bird is strange in color, too ? in Republican red, Democratic blue...

State Winners and Losers If the Bush Tax Cuts Expire

Posted on November 22, 2010
Tax Foundation, How Would Expiration of Bush-Era Tax Cuts Affect State and Local Budgets?: We highlight four main areas of interac­tion between state finances and the expiring tax cuts. First we discuss how potential changes in federal tax law would change state and local income tax revenue, both directly and...

Happy Thanksgiving From TSA

Posted on November 22, 2010

Consumption Taxes and Redistribution

Posted on November 21, 2010
Isabel Correia (Banco de Portugal) has published Consumption Taxes and Redistribution, 100 Am. Econ. Rev. 1468 (2010). Here is the abstract: It is relatively well known that the introduction of consumption taxation as an alternative in the tax code, and as the main source of government revenues, leads to a...

Has the IRS Usurped the Business Judgment of Tax-Exempt Organizations?

Posted on November 21, 2010
Karen Donnelly (J.D. 2011, UMKC) has published Comment, Good Governance: Has the IRS Usurped the Business Judgment of Tax-Exempt Organizations in the Name of Transparency and Accountability?, 79 UMKC 163 (2010). Here is the Conclusion: The negative implications of the IRS' new Form 990 far outweigh the benefits...

Eat, Pray, Love (Canine Edition)

Posted on November 21, 2010

Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads

Posted on November 21, 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 #4: 1. [335 Downloads] Unintended Consequences: How U.S. Tax Law Encourages Investment in Offshore Tax Havens, by David S...

The Shadow Scholar

Posted on November 20, 2010
Chronicle of Higher Education, The Shadow Scholar: The Man Who Writes Your Students' Papers Tells His Story: You've never heard of me, but there's a good chance that you've read some of my work. I'm a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary...

Tax Gross-Ups in Discrimination Suits

Posted on November 20, 2010
Tim Canney (J.D. 2011, Catholic) has published Tax Gross-Ups: A Practical Guide to Arguing and Calculating Awards for Negative Tax Consequences in Discrimination Suits, 59 Cath. U. L. Rev. 1111 (2010). Here is the abstract: Congress passed the American Disabilities Act (ADA) to combat discrimination in areas such as employment...

The 10 Highest State Income Tax Rates For 2011

Posted on November 20, 2010
Forbes, The 10 Highest State Income Tax Rates For 2011: Hawaii: 11% ($200,000 single/$400,000 married) Oregon: 11% ($250,000 single/$500,000 married) California: 10.3% ($1,000,000 single & married) Iowa: 8.98% ($64,755 single & married) New Jersey: 8...

Wesley Snipes Begins Serving 3-Year Sentence for Failure to File Tax Returns

Posted on November 20, 2010
The district court on Friday ordered Wesley Snipes to jail to begin serving his three-year sentence following his unsuccesful appeal of his conviction on three counts of willful failure to file tax returns under § 7203. United States v. Snipes, No. 5:06-cr-22-Oc-10 (M...

NTA Annual Tax Conference

Posted on November 19, 2010
The National Tax Association's 103rd Annual Conference on Taxation continues today in Chicago. Tax Profs with speaking roles today include: Tax Compliance and Evasion Leandra Lederman (Indiana) (Organizer) Howard Chernick (CUNY) & David Merriman (Illinois), Using Littered Pack Data to Estimate Cigarette Tax Avoidance in NYC Karen Masken (IRS) &...

Alan Grayson: What Republicans Can Do With Their Tax Cuts For The Rich

Posted on November 19, 2010
(Hat Tip: Ann Murphy.)

ABA Tax Section Publishes Fall 2010 Issue of News Quarterly

Posted on November 19, 2010
The ABA Tax Section has published 30 News Quarterly No. 1 (Fall 2010): Special Report: The Internal Revenue Code: Looking Ahead to 2010 Three Once and Future Issues, by Charlene Luke (Florida), pp. 1, 20 Wish-List for the Federal Tax System in the Year 2020, by Joseph M...

Call for T&E Papers: Michigan Symposium on the UPC

Posted on November 19, 2010
The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel has issued a call for papers for a symposium, The Uniform Probate Code: Remaking of American Succession Law, to be held at Michigan on October 21, 2011: The symposium will examine law reform in trusts and estates that has occurred over the...

McMahon: Taxing Tax Expenditures?

Posted on November 19, 2010
Martin J. McMahon, Jr. (Florida) has posted Taxing Tax Expenditures? on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This essay, Taxing Tax Expenditures?, is a chapter from a forthcoming book, The Proper Tax Base; Structural Fairness From and International and Comparative Perspective: Essays in Honor of Paul McDaniel (Yariv Brauner & Martin...

The Value of Collegiality Among Law Professors

Posted on November 19, 2010
Michael L. Seigel (Florida) & Kathi Miner-Rubino (Texas A&M University, Department of Pyschology) have published Measuring the Value of Collegiality Among Law Professors, 1 Faulkner L. Rev. 257 (2010). Here is part of the Introduction: This article is the last in a trilogy addressing the issue of collegiality among law...

Cockfield: A Multilateral Taxpayer Bill of Rights

Posted on November 19, 2010
Arthur J. Cockfield (Queen's University, Faculty of Law) has published Protecting Taxpayer Privacy Rights Under Enhanced Cross-Border Tax Information Exchange: Toward a Multilateral Taxpayer Bill of Rights, 42 U. British Col. L. Rev. 420 (2010). Here is the abstract: For a number of important policy reasons, tax authorities share information...

GAO: Compliance Costs of ObamaCare's 1099 Reporting Requirement Are Low

Posted on November 19, 2010
At yesterday's hearing of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship on Assessing the Regulatory and Administrative Burdens on America?s Small Businesses, James R. White, Director of Tax Issues at the Government Accountability Office, testified on Small Businesses: Tax Compliance Benefits and Opportunities to Mitigate Costs on Third Parties...

Kysar Presents Penalty Default Interpretative Canons Today at Brooklyn

Posted on November 19, 2010
Tax Prof Rebecca Kysar (Brooklyn) presents Penalty Default Interpretative Canons at Brooklyn today as part of the symposium on Statutory Interpretation: How Much Work Does Language Do? Here is the abstract: A preference for a particular method of statutory interpretation over another often relates to one?s view of the legislative...

Wood: Family Tax Law

Posted on November 19, 2010
Richard J. Wood (Capital) has published Family Tax Law (Vanderplas Publishing, 2010): Family Tax Law is organized around family law topics that also raise serious tax law issues. Its goal is to serve both the family law and tax law academic communities by providing a text book that links family...

9th Circuit Rejects

Posted on November 18, 2010
On remand from the Supreme Court (Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, No. 08-1371 (June 28, 2010)), the Ninth Circuit yesterday refused to consider the Christian Legal Society's claim that UC-Hastings had selectively enforced its nondiscrimination policy on the ground that CLS had not raised the argument early enough in the...

Bankruptcy Trustee Questions Crystal Cathedral CFO's $132k Housing Allowance

Posted on November 18, 2010
Los Angeles Times, Federal Bankruptcy Officials Question Crystal Cathedral Compensation: Crystal Cathedral, the Orange County mega-church that filed for bankruptcy last month, allowed its chief financial officer to skirt federal income taxes by paying the bulk of his salary in the form of a housing allowance, a benefit reserved under...

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