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Taxation & Estate Planning

Start Making Sense

Unfair but balanced commentary on tax and budget policy, contemporary U.S. politics and culture.

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Last Entry: November 04, 2020 at 16:18:00

Shadow, 1991(?)-2009

Posted on June 27, 2009
Today, with a bit of heart-wrenching assistance on the home front, Shadow met his end. At age 18, his body was breaking down on several fronts, with multiple severe conditions that required a very high level of active daily care - seemingly inadequate, however, so far as we could tell, to give him a decent quality of life...

Finally, a reason to live in Washington!

Posted on June 19, 2009
... So as NOT to subscribe to the Washington Post, now that it has fired its only good print or on-line political columnist, Dan Froomkin, for political incorrectness as defined from a neoconservative perspective.I already don't and wouldn't subscribe to the Post, but living in Washington would make it more pointed...

Recent diversions

Posted on June 15, 2009
Mark Maxwell's novel Nixoncarver; Lily Allen (both albums but especially It's Not Me, It's You). The first is mainly for hardcore Nixon (and to a lesser extent Carver) fans; the latter should be (and is) for lots of people.Not sure I like my new green background on the top, but it's for Iranian solidarity.

Battle of the revenue estimates

Posted on June 12, 2009
As noted in several news articles with links at the TaxProf blog, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that President Obama's international tax proposals will bring in about $50 billion less than the Administration had estimated, over the period from 2011 (when the proposals would take effect) through 2019...

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Remiss?

Posted on June 10, 2009
Not many blog entries lately, because in summer my engagements reduce sufficiently that I'm not distracted and running from one thing to another. Instead, I can focus at work on my writing, and my energy goes into that. I'm nearly done with chapter 2 (not counting a short intro chapter) of a book on U...

Fool me once, shame on you ...

Posted on June 02, 2009
... but needless to say, fool me twice and it's shame on me. By these lights, our cat Buddy (a.k.a. the Wascally Wabbit) succeeded in shaming us the other day.Perhaps 3 years ago, we had a period when we would occasionally let him go out into our small, fence-surrounded backyard...

Latest publication

Posted on May 28, 2009
A short article of mine, "Internationalization of Income Measures and the U.S. Book?Tax Relationship," just came out in the National Tax Journal. Not available on-line (other than the abstract), and I don't seem to have posted it on SSRN, but the cite is 62 N...

Doug Holtz-Eakin talks up new conservative think tank

Posted on May 27, 2009
I admit to having been hard occasionally on Doug Holtz-Eakin during the 2008 presidential campaign. I had three reasons for this: (1) at times he deserved it, (2) I expected better from him, and (3) he risked harming his entire profession's public reputation through egregious flacking that should have been left to others in the McCain campaign...

Summer's here and ...

Posted on May 17, 2009
So far I've written a 1,000 word piece on tax reform ideas for a U.S. publication, another of 5,000 words on the Administration's international tax proposals for a U.K. publication (the U.K. is preparing international tax changes in the opposite direction), and better nailed down my plans for an as yet untitled but perhaps 15% written book on U...

Cheney

Posted on May 13, 2009
I've been following the man's antics with amazement. He's obviously a very disturbed individual. I've heard privately from people who worked in national security in the Bush Administration that he had a fascination with torture and would keep after it even when begged by his associates to give it a rest...

Charming show

Posted on May 11, 2009
Yesterday, to celebrate Mother's Day plus certain household members' birthdays, a close fambly group of us went to see Coraline at the Lucille Lortel Theater - this being the stage musical version, with songs by Magnetic Fields / 69 Love Songs genius (if I may say so) Stephin Merritt, rather than the movie that I have thus far avoided (based on my perhaps unjustly suspecting it of being Disneyesquely cloying)...

Radio appearance off the usual circuit for me

Posted on May 06, 2009
Today I discussed the Obama Administration's international tax plan on a Jamaican radio show, Evening Edition Newstalk 93 FM. I assume the interest over there lies in concern that Jamaica is one of the tax-friendly locations being targeted by the plan...

The Obama Administration's new international tax proposals

Posted on May 04, 2009
I'm still trying to get a preliminary handle on the Obama Administration's international tax proposals. The fullest description I've yet been able to find, from a White House fact sheet, is available here.The fact sheet opens by stating that the White House's key concern is about jobs fleeing the U...

The New York Mets

Posted on May 01, 2009
I'm a Mets fan, not by choice, but because I have no choice. The affliction first struck me before my 7th birthday, and there's really nothing I can do about it now.Queue here the Macbeth quote:MACBETH: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd;Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;Raze out the written troubles of the brain;And with some sweet oblivious antidote,Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuffWhich weighs upon the heart?DOCTOR: Therein the patientMust minister to himself...

Virtually there

Posted on April 30, 2009
As I noted in my last post, today I was supposed to be in Milan, Italy, participating in a panel at a conference entitled "Tax Policy and the Financial Crisis," held by Econpubblica, the Center for Research on the Economics of the Public Sector at Milan's Universita Bocconi...

Ouch

Posted on April 28, 2009
The semester is now over, and I was supposed to be (at this very hour) headed to JFK Airport to fly to Milan, where I'm scheduled to appear on Thursday, April 30 at an Econpubblica, Universita Bocconi conference entitled "Tax Policy and the Financial Crisis...

Final NYU Tax Policy Colloquium of 2009

Posted on April 24, 2009
Yesterday we had our final session, featuring Tom Brennan's Certainty and Uncertainty in the Taxation of Risky Returns.Tom's article, still in early draft form, is a contribution to the extensive Domar-Musgrave literature on the treatment of risk in an income or consumption tax...

Torture revelations

Posted on April 22, 2009
I've been staying away from the Bush Administration torture controversy as it really isn't anywhere near my area of expertise, but I must say, the new revelations that one motivation for torture may have been to generate "evidence" of al Qaeda-Saddam ties truly takes it to a new level.

Interesting new development

Posted on April 21, 2009
According to the Daily Tax Report (subscribers only, so this link may not work for all users):"Edward Kleinbard is leaving the Joint Committee on Taxation after nearly 20 months as its chief of staff, lobbyists and congressional staffers said April 21...

It's Curry Time!!

Posted on April 21, 2009
My basketball-playing, basketball-fan son and I had been watching some Knicks games during the season, are now watching the NBA playoffs, and have developed a new phrase: "It's Curry Time!" Trademark pending.(Based on the overweight, unmotivated, perpetually injured and indifferent Knicks player, Eddie Curry, who has about an $18 million annual salary but who played only about 5 minutes this year, during which time the Knicks were badly outscored...

Chicken game

Posted on April 21, 2009
Considering the shape that Chrysler is in, it would be amusing, if it weren't so contemptible, that the company opted for expensive private financing in lieu of cheaper bailout financing, in order to avoid limits on executive compensation.I read some speculation that this was to make it easier for Chrysler to conclude the Fiat deal - although Fiat presumably doesn't care about current Chrysler executives' compensation levels (so the argument would have to be about people it brings in)...

NYU Tax Policy Colloquium on Mitchell Kane's Taxation and Global Cap and Trade

Posted on April 17, 2009
Neither I personally nor the colloquium have focused as much in the past as we are likely to in the future on the carbon taxes/cap and trade set of issues. (I've never written about these issues because I don't as yet see the angle or intellectual arbitrage opportunities using my skill set...

Tomorrow may rain so, I'll follow the sun

Posted on April 14, 2009
As you can perhaps see, Shadow (left) and Ursula (center) are doing a lot better these days, though Shadow remains a bit creaky. He's been scoring Passover gefilte fish lately. Buddy (right) spends his days proving that there's nothing like high spirits (and limited calories, despite his best efforts) to keep the mind clear and the body healthy.

Tax Policy Colloquium on Desai & Dharmapala, Investor Taxation in Open Economies

Posted on April 11, 2009
This past Thursday we discussed the above paper proposing "global portfolio neutrality," or GPN, as a new entry in the alphabet soup of proposed international tax norms (joining CEN, CIN, CON, NN, and NON). GPN holds that national as well as worldwide efficiency is maximized by causing individuals to face the same tax rate on their portfolio holdings no matter where they invest...

Dismaying encounter

Posted on April 10, 2009
Earlier this week I had coffee with a former colleague, now eminent outside the legal academy, who was in town for a few days. He's very much to the right of me politically, but someone I've always respected as intelligent, thoughtful, and intellectually honest...

2010 NYU Tax Policy Colloquium - great news

Posted on April 09, 2009
I'm pleased to be able to announce that my co-teacher for the 2010 Tax Policy Colloquium will be Mihir Desai.

Sessions at U Va and NYU

Posted on April 07, 2009
I'll often blog about my talks or conference appearances and such, but have lately been too busy and backed up at work to spare the time. But at a certain point it gets so bad that it really doesn't matter any more at the margin if you ignore your main responsibilities for a bit...

Tax policy colloquium on Lily Batchelder's Savings Incentives with Insurance Objectives: A Bankrupt Approach?

Posted on April 05, 2009
Last Thursday we discussed Lily Batchelder's new draft paper (still a work in progress), which argues that savings incentives in the tax code are poorly designed to advance insurance objectives for poorer individuals. She notes low responsiveness to the rules in present law, and their generally providing larger incentives to higher-income individuals who arguably are saving enough already...

Act now while supplies last

Posted on April 05, 2009
My new book, Decoding the Corporate Tax, is now available directly from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble (albeit with the wrong title).

Fraud and cheating synergies

Posted on March 31, 2009
From an ABC News story on AIG renegade executive Joseph Cassano, the infamous head of their Financial Products Division:"Cassano set up some dozens of separate companies, some off-shore, to handle the transactions, effectively keeping them off the books of AIG and out of sight of regulators in the U...

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