Taxation & Estate Planning

'I Don't Know Any Tax Lawyer Who Does Their Own Tax Returns'

Posted on October 27, 2010
Time, Why $1,700 Means Joel Stein Is Rich, by Joel Stein: I've always believed the rich were different from you and me, but it turns out they're different only from you. When I listened to the nuanced economic debate over whether the Bush tax cuts should be kept for rich...

Newman: Panning for Gold

Posted on October 27, 2010
Joel S. Newman (Wake Forest) has posted Panning for Gold on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Most tourists who engage in gold panning find gold which is worth less than their price of admission to the gold mine. From a tax standpoint, they have nondeductible, personal losses...

Mundstock Presents Sourcing the Sourceless Today at San Diego

Posted on October 27, 2010
George Mundstock (Miami; visiting at San Diego) presents Sourcing the Sourceless at San Diego today as part of its Tax Speakers Series. Here is the Conclusion: This discussion hopefully demonstrated how difficult it is to locate business profits for purposes of international business income taxation...

Mason Presents What is Tax Discrimination? Today at Georgetown

Posted on October 27, 2010
Ruth Mason (Connecticut) presents What is Tax Discrimination? The European Interpretation (with Michael S. Knoll (Pennsylvania)) at Georgetown today as part of its Faculty Workshop Series. Here is the abstract: Prohibitions of tax discrimination have long appeared in constitutions, tax treaties, trade treaties and other sources, but despite their ubiquity...

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Hasen: An Economic and Tax Analysis of Financial Options

Posted on October 27, 2010
David Hasen (Santa Clara) has published Financial Options in the Real World: An Economic and Tax Analysis, 37 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 789 (2010). Here is the abstract: Many of the consequences of issuing and purchasing options on publicly traded property have been well understood since Black and Scholes...

Minnesota Law Battles 50% State Subsidy Cut With 13% Tuition Increase, 1% Faculty Pay Cut

Posted on October 27, 2010
MNDaily, After Cuts, Law School Eyes Future: A 50% Cut in Two Years Translates to Increased Tuition: Like every other college at the University of Minnesota, the Law School is facing a litany of budget woes, including a daunting cut in state funding from 22% to 11% in two years...

SSRN Tax Professor Rankings

Posted on October 26, 2010
SSRN has updated its monthly rankings of 663 American and international law school faculties and 1,500 law professors by (among other things) the number of paper downloads from the SSRN data base. Here is the new list (through October 16, 2010) of the Top 25 U...

Johnston: Scary New Wage Data

Posted on October 26, 2010
David Cay Johnston has published Scary New Wage Data, 129 Tax Notes 481 (Oct. 25, 2010): Now for some really scary breaking news from the latest payroll tax data. ... Total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined, but at the very top, salaries grew more than fivefold...

GOP to Target IRS Funding to Starve Health Care Law

Posted on October 26, 2010
Wall Street Journal, IRS Funding A Target In Health-Care Implementation Battle, by Martin Vaughan: Funding for the IRS could become a battleground in the next Congress as Republicans seek to halt implementation of the new health-care law. GOP candidates are running on a pledge to repeal that law...

21st Annual Philadelphia Tax Conference

Posted on October 26, 2010
The two-day 21st Annual Philadelphia Tax Conference kicks off today. For a list of speakers and their topics, see here.

Lambda Tax Guide for California Same-Sex Couples

Posted on October 26, 2010
Lambda Legal has released Tax Guide Following Important IRS Acknowledgment of California's Same-Sex Couples. From the press release: Lambda Legal has released a short guide aimed at tax professionals and California's registered domestic partners explaining the consequences of a significant shift in federal tax policy as they file their tax...

CTJ Releases

Posted on October 26, 2010
Citizens for Tax Justice has released two reports: How to Enact (and Maintain) Tax Reform Will Taxes Cause Former Bush Adviser Greg Mankiw to Work Less?

Obama's Deficit Commission Eyes $1 Trillion in Annual Tax Expenditures

Posted on October 26, 2010
President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is eying over $1 trillion in annual tax expenditures to begin to close the budget deficit. Fox News, Deficit Commission Weighs Dropping Mortgage Interest Deduction MSN Money, Shrink the Mortgage Interest Tax Deduction? New York Times, Deficit Divisions Likely to Grow...

GAO Releases Two Tax Reports

Posted on October 26, 2010
The Government Accountability Office today released two tax reports: Tax Debt Collection: IRS Could Improve Future Studies by Establishing Appropriate Guidance (GAO-10-963) Tax Gap: IRS Can Improve Efforts to Address Tax Evasion by Networks of Businesses and Related Entities (GAO-10-968)

2011 Business Tax Climate: Chilliest in Blue States

Posted on October 26, 2010
The Tax Foundation today released the 2011 State Business Tax Climate Index (8th ed.) which ranks the fifty states according to five indices: corporate tax, individual income tax, sales tax, unemployment insurance tax, and property tax. Here are the ten states with the best and worst business tax climates: 1...

Abrams: Economic Substance and the Partnership Anti-Abuse Rule

Posted on October 26, 2010
Howard Abrams (Emory) has posted Did Codification of Economic Substance Repeal the Partnership Anti-Abuse Rule?, 51 Tax Mgmt. Mem. 299 (2010), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Since codification of the economic substance doctrine in March of 2010, representatives of the Treasury department have assured taxpayers that no change in...

Colbert on the Bush Tax Cuts

Posted on October 25, 2010
The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cTax Shelter Skelterwww.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes2010 ElectionMarch to Keep Fear Alive The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cAustan Goolsbeewww.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes2010 ElectionMarch to Keep Fear Alive

State Tax Commission Shuts Down Kids' Pumpkin Stand

Posted on October 25, 2010
Lewiston Tribune, Idaho Tax Agent Cracks Down on Two Lewiston Kids: Dan Charais viewed his kids' pumpkin stand as a great way for his son and daughter to learn entrepreneurship and raise money for school sports. The Lewiston man never dreamed the tax man would intervene...

Harry Reid Voted to Raise Taxes 'Only' 51 Times

Posted on October 25, 2010
FactCheck.org, Tall Tax Tales: In the Nevada Senate Race, Angle Makes the Inflated Claim that Reid Raised Taxes 300 Times: Republican Sharron Angle says in a TV ad that Nevada Sen. Harry Reid "voted to raise taxes" 300 times. A "staggering 300 times." He didn?t...

WSJ: Putting a Price on Professors

Posted on October 25, 2010
Wall Street Journal, Putting a Price on Professors: A Battle in Texas Over Whether Academic Value Can be Measured in Dollars and Cents, by Stephanie Simon & Stephanie Banchero: As budget pressures mount, legislators and governors are increasingly demanding data proving that money given to colleges is well spent...

NY Times: Congress, IRS & FEC Need to Take Aim at Political Groups

Posted on October 25, 2010
New York Times editorial, Jimmying the Tax Code for Votes: Bare-knuckled political machines masquerading as nonprofit social advocacy organizations are romping through the tax code on the strength of their own avowals that their blind attack ads serve the public interest...

TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Posted on October 25, 2010
Saturday: Drive-Thru Tax Advice? Single-Funder Groups Skirt Campaign Finance Laws Mad Men Tax Planning Cuba Announces New 'Small Business Friendly' Tax Code Sunday: Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads MBAs More Uncouth Than JDs? CTJ: Number of Decedents Subject to Estate Tax Continues to Drop CUI Posts Tax Papers on SSRN

Barthold Presents Inside the Tax Legislative Sausage Machine Today at SMU

Posted on October 25, 2010
Thomas A. Barthold (Chief of Staff, Joint Committee on Taxation) presents A View from Inside the Legislative Sausage Machine at SMU today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series: The presentation is a view of the legislative process with a focus on the Joint Committee's role in the process...

Shaviro Presents Taxation and the Financial Sector Today at St. John's

Posted on October 25, 2010
Daniel N. Shaviro (NYU) presents Taxation and the Financial Sector, 63 Nat'l Tax J. ___ (Dec. 2010) (with Douglas A. Shackelford (University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flager Business School) & Joel B. Slemrod (University of Michigan, Ross School of Business)) at St...

Adler Presents Well-Being and Equity Today at Loyola-L.A.

Posted on October 25, 2010
Matthew Adler (Penn) presents Well-Being and Equity: A Framework for Policy Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2011) at Loyola-L.A. today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series. The commentator is Richard Arneson (UC San Diego, Department of Philosophy)...

Taxpayer Advocacy Panel Releases Annual Report

Posted on October 25, 2010
The IRS's Taxpayer Advocacy Panel today released its 2009 Annual Report: Our Annual Report highlights the work of our members in representing taxpayers in our ongoing effort to improve the IRS. During the year, our members identified ?grass roots? issues and forwarded recommendations for improvements to customer service and completed...

Guide to State Tax Ballot Questions

Posted on October 25, 2010
The National Taxpayers Union has released 2010 General Election Ballot Guide -- The Taxpayer's Perspective: This is a guide to nearly 100 statewide ballot questions and more than 450 county, city, and local measures in 33 states that NTU has identified as potentially having a significant impact on taxpayers.

MBAs More Uncouth Than JDs?

Posted on October 24, 2010
The Careerist, MBAs More Uncouth than J.D.s?, by Vivia Chen: Lawyers can't help comparing themselves to their MBA counterparts. For starters, it irks them that those B-schoolers are making a lot more dough, even though everyone knows that law schools demand more intellectual firepower...

CTJ: Number of Decedents Subject to Estate Tax Continues to Drop

Posted on October 24, 2010
Citizens for Tax Justice has released State-by-State Estate Tax Figures: Number of Deaths Resulting in Estate Tax Liability Continues to Drop: New data from the IRS show that only 0.6 percent of deaths in the U.S. in 2008 resulted in estate tax liability in 2009...

CUI Posts Tax Papers on SSRN

Posted on October 24, 2010
Wei Cui (China University of Political Science and Law) has posted two tax papers on SSRN: What is 'Law' in Chinese Tax Administration? The Impact of the OECD and UN Model Conventions on China?s Tax Treaties

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