Taxation & Estate Planning

The Business Case Against Overseas Tax Havens

Posted on July 21, 2010
Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), Chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, today launched a new initiative with Business and Investors Against Tax Haven Abuse to target tax havens and offshore tax evasion by U...

Facebook Ranks 'Slightly Above' IRS in Customer Satisfaction

Posted on July 21, 2010
Wall Street Journal, Users Rate Facebook Slightly Above the Tax Man: Facebook plans to announce it has reached a milestone 500 million users this week ? but that doesn?t mean the masses are happy customers. The American Customer Satisfaction Index, developed by the University of Michigan?s Business School, included Facebook...

WSJ: Washington's Tax Oracles and Revenue Estimates

Posted on July 21, 2010
Wall Street Journal editorial, Washington's Tax Oracles: How to Think About Revenue Estimates: The director of the Joint Committee on Taxation, Thomas Barthold, takes us to task in a nearby letter for exaggerating the revenue impact and economic benefits of the investment tax cuts of 2003...

The Economic Case Against the Death Tax

Posted on July 21, 2010
The Heritage Foundation has published The Economic Case Against the Death Tax, by Curtis S. Dubay. Here is the abstract: 2010 is the only year since 1916 in which heirs to an estate will not have to pay the dreaded death tax. Victory for small businesses? Not yet?due to a...

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Ventry: TurboTax Tries to Kill Free California e-Filing

Posted on July 21, 2010
Dennis J. Ventry, Jr. (UC-Davis) has published an op-ed in today's L.A. Times, Intuit Just Won't Quit: Here we go again. Another legislative session, another well-funded campaign waged by Intuit Corp. to abolish California's free, innovative and wildly popular electronic tax filing programs, ReadyReturn and CalFile...

BYU 'Study Like a Scholar' Parody of Old Spice 'Smell Like a Man' Commercial

Posted on July 21, 2010

Ring: Who Is Making International Tax Policy?

Posted on July 21, 2010
Diane M. Ring (Boston College) has published Who Is Making International Tax Policy? International Organizations as Power Players in a High Stakes World, 33 Fordham Int'l L.J. 649 (2010). Here is the abstract: Who makes international tax policy in today?s world? Certainly no single body possesses that power ? there...

Johnston: Taxes Are the Biggest Bargain in America

Posted on July 20, 2010
David Cay Johnston has published U.S. Tax Rates: A Bargain Hunter's Dream?, 128 Tax Notes 333 (July 19, 2010): In this article, Johnston examines new data showing that taxes are the biggest bargain in America, something no one would know from the tenor of the debate in Washington and on...

SSRN Tax Professor Rankings

Posted on July 20, 2010
SSRN has updated its monthly rankings of 654 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 July 18, 2010) of the Top 25 U...

Ideological Diversity and Law School Hiring

Posted on July 20, 2010
Douglas M. Spencer & James Cleith Phillips (both of UC-Berkeley) have posted Ideological Diversity and Law School Hiring on SSRN. Here is the abstract: America?s legal professoriate does not appear to be particularly diverse. Recent studies have revealed that a majority of law professors are male, Caucasian, and attended law...

Zelinsky: Tax Provisions of ObamaCare

Posted on July 20, 2010
Edward A. Zelinsky (Cardozo) has posted The Health-Related Tax Provisions of PPACA and HCERA: Contingent, Complex, Incremental and Lacking Cost Controls, 2010 N.Y.U. Review of Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation ___, on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Americans must, into the indefinite future, confront difficult issues pertaining to health care...

Couple That Gambled

Posted on July 20, 2010
Thongthepsomphou v. Commissioner, T.C. Summary Opinion 2010-94 (July 19, 2010): Before petitioner?s decision to become a professional gambler, petitioners had been casual gamblers but they did not wager large amounts. Sometime during 2005 petitioners began to invest heavily in gambling (mainly playing slot machines)...

NY Times: What If Tenure Dies?

Posted on July 20, 2010
Today's New York Times hosts a Room for Debate on What if College Tenure Dies: In 1975, 57% of all college professors had tenure or were on a tenure track. In 2007, that number had fallen to 31%, and a new federal report, to be released in the fall, is...

Lederman: Basketing and Corporate Tax Shelters

Posted on July 20, 2010
Leandra Lederman (Indiana-Bloomington) has posted A Tisket, A Tasket: Basketing and Corporate Tax Shelters, 88 Wash. U. L. Rev. __ (2011), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In an income tax system that comported with the economic, or Haig-Simons, definition of income, deductible expenses would not face source-based limitations...

NY Times: Stanley Fish on the UC-Hastings/Christian Legal Society Case

Posted on July 20, 2010
Following up on my prior post, Supreme Court: UC-Hastings Can Require Christian Legal Society to Admit Gays/Lesbians to Receive School Recognition: in today's New York Times, Being Neutral Is Oh So Hard to Do, by Stanley Fish: In the opening paragraph of his dissent in Christian Legal Society v...

Feldstein: Cut the Deficit by Reducing Tax Expenditures

Posted on July 20, 2010
Wall Street Journal op-ed, The 'Tax Expenditure' Solution for Our National Debt, by Martin Feldstein (Harvard University, Department of Economics): The credits and subsidies that make the tax code so complicated cost big bucks. Reduce them by third and the debt will be 72% of GDP in 2020 instead of...

McMahon: Marital Taxation in the U.K. and U.S.

Posted on July 20, 2010
Stephanie McMahon (Cincinnati) has posted London Calling: Does the U.K.'s Experience with Individual Taxation Clash with the U.S.'s Expectation?, 54 St. Louis U. L.J. ___ (2010), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The United States is one of the last countries to tax married couples jointly; most other countries have...

What Is One of My Classes Worth? $8,026.33

Posted on July 19, 2010
As regular readers of this blog know, I use clickers in my tax classes (Taking Back the Law School Classroom: Using Technology to Foster Active Student Learning, 54 J. Legal Educ. 551 (2004)) and take the students' performance into account in the final grade...

Johnson: Tax Penalty in ObamaCare Is Not Unconstitutional

Posted on July 19, 2010
Follwing up on last week's post, Steven J. Willis (Florida) & Nakku Chung (J.D. 2010, Florida), Constitutional Decapitation and Health Care, 128 Tax Notes 169 (July 12, 2010): Calvin H. Johnson (Texas) has published Healthcare Penalty Need Not Be Apportioned Among the States, 128 Tax Notes 335 (July 19, 2010):...

When the Tax Man is a Transgender Woman

Posted on July 19, 2010
Feminist Law Professors, When the Tax Man is a Transgender Woman, by Bridget J. Crawford (Pace): The New York Times home page features the video above (source here) about tax non-compliance in Pakistan. [Pakistan?s Elite Pay Few Taxes, Widening Gap.] The "hook" of the story is the use of transgendered...

TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Posted on July 19, 2010
Saturday: Death of Paul McDaniel Dividends and Capital Gains by Age Group: Seniors Rule ABA Tax Section Submits Comment Letter on Contingent Fees in Circular 230 Sunday: After Denying Insurance Mandate Was a Tax, Obama Now Defends Constitutionality of Health Care as Exercise of Taxing Power Top 5 Tax Paper...

Brown: Teaching Civil Rights through the Basic Tax Course

Posted on July 19, 2010
Dorothy A. Brown (Emory) has published Teaching Civil Rights through the Basic Tax Course, 54 St. Louis U. L.J. 809 (2010). Here is part of the Introduction: Writing about race and tax has also been difficult for one additional reason: tax academics, inevitably white men (because so many tax academics...

NY Times Debate: A Great Year to Die

Posted on July 19, 2010

Kotlikoff & Miao: What Does the Corporate Income Tax Tax?

Posted on July 19, 2010
Laurence J. Kotlikoff & Jianjun Miao (both of Boston University, Department of Economics) have posted What Does the Corporate Income Tax Tax? A Simple Model without Capital on NBER. Here is the abstract: The economics workings of the corporate income tax remain controversial...

TIGTA: IRS Did Not Properly Manage New $574m e-File System

Posted on July 19, 2010
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration today released Modernized e-File Will Enhance Processing of Electronically Filed Individual Tax Returns, but System Development and Security Need Improvement (2010-20-041): The IRS's Modernized E-file (MeF) system did not process electronically filed individual tax returns as effectively as it should have during the...

Dilley: Reimagining the Social Security Contribution and Benefit Base Limits

Posted on July 19, 2010
Patricia E. Dilley (Florida) has published Through the Doughnut Hole: Reimagining the Social Security Contribution and Benefit Base Limit, 62 Adm. L. Rev. 367 (2010). Here is the abstract: The Obama campaign proposal to address Social Security's future financing shortfalls by increasing the Social Security tax base limit only for...

WSJ: Lost in Taxation: The IRS's Vast New ObamaCare Power

Posted on July 18, 2010
Wall Street Journal editorial, Lost in Taxation: The IRS's Vast New ObamaCare Powers: If it seems as if the tax code was conceived by graphic artistM.C. Escher, wait until you meet the new and not improved IRS created by ObamaCare. ... National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, who operates inside the...

Man Tries to Pay Tax With 200,000 Pennies

Posted on July 18, 2010
Toronto Sun, Man Tries to Pay Tax With 200,000 Pennies: A Quebec man, fed up with his skyrocketing property taxes, carted more than 200,000 pennies down to City Hall to pay his bill. But he was denied, and asked to simply cut a cheque. ... Under the Currency Act, nobody...

After Denying Insurance Mandate Was a Tax, Obama Now Defends Constitutionality of Health Care as Exercise of Taxing Power

Posted on July 18, 2010
Volokh Conspiracy, Administration Now Says Individual Mandate Is a ?Tax,? by Jonathan H. Adler: During the debate over health care reform, the Obama Administration steadfastly denied that a statutory penalty for failing to purchase a government-approved health insurance policy would constitute a ?tax...

Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads

Posted on July 18, 2010
There is quite a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with a new #1 paper and new papers debuting on the list at #2, #4, and #5: 1. [449 Downloads] An Overview of Tax Issues for Synagogues (and Other Religious Congregations),...

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