Taxation & Estate Planning

Tax Consequences of Extreme Philanthropy

Posted on January 04, 2010
Following news of Rick Warren's dramatic appeal for $900,000 in contributions in 48 hours to close a year-end budget shortfall, and his Saddleback Church congregation's response of $2.4 million in gifts, Len Burman (Syracuse) blogs the tax consequences of Rev...

Court Rejects UBS Whistleblower's Motion for Postponement and Reduction of Sentence

Posted on January 04, 2010
Following his selection as Tax Person of the Year and his appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes last night: the district court has rejected the motion filed by UBS tax whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld to reduce his 40-month prison sentence and to postpone the Jan...

Joshua Blank Begins Work as Faculty Director of NYU Graduate Tax Program

Posted on January 04, 2010
Joshua D. Blank, formerly of Rutgers-Newark, assumed his duties as Associate Professor of the Practice of Tax Law and Faculty Director of the Graduate Tax Program at NYU on Jan. 1. From the NYU announcement: From 2006 to 2008, he served as an Acting Assistant Professor of Tax Law at...

Kirsch Presents The Taxation of Cross-Border Personal Services Today at Northwestern

Posted on January 04, 2010
Michael Kirsch (Notre Dame) presents The Role of Physical Presence in the Taxation of Cross-Border Personal Services, 51 B.C. L. Rev. ___ (2010), at Northwestern today as part of its Advanced Topics in Taxation Series organized by Tom Brennan and Charlotte Crane...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

McMahon & Shepard: Recent Developments in Federal Income Taxation, 2000-2008

Posted on January 04, 2010
Martin J. McMahon, Jr. (Florida) & Ira B. Shepard (Houston) have posted a decade's worth of their annual Recent Developments in Federal Income Taxation articles on SSRN: 2000, 5 Fla. Tax Rev. 109 (2001) 2001, 5 Fla. Tax Rev. 627 (2002) 2002, 6 Fla. Tax Rev...

Michigan Taxation

Posted on January 03, 2010
Lynn A. Gandhi (Honigman, Miller, Schwartz Cohn, Detroit) has published Taxation, 55 Wayne L. Rev. 601 (2009). Here is the Table of Contents: Single Business Taxes Sales, Use, Excise and Withholding Taxes Ad Valorem Taxes

§ 501(c)(3) and Politicking from the Pulpit

Posted on January 03, 2010
Stephanie A. Bruch (J.D. 2008, St. Louis) has published Comment. Politicking from the Pulpit: An Analysis of the IRS's Current Section 501(c)(3) Enforcement Efforts and How it is Costing America, 53 St. Louis U. L.J. 1253 (2009). Here is the Conclusion: Currently, the IRS appears to have been charged with...

Estate Tax Roundup

Posted on January 03, 2010
ABC News, Lack of Estate Tax in 2010: Now Cheaper to Die? With Taxes Gone, Will Death Be At A Premium?, by Joseph Brownstein Boston Globe editorial, As Estate Tax Drops to Zero, Congress Should Take Action Boston Globe op-ed, Let?s Keep the Death Tax Dead, by Jeff Jacoby Freedom...

Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads

Posted on January 03, 2010
There is a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with a new #1 paper and a new paper debuting on the list at #5: 1. [285 Downloads] The Accidental Deduction: A History and Critique of the Tax Subsidy for Mortgage Interest,...

Tax Strategy Patents

Posted on January 02, 2010
Christopher C. Anderson (J.D. 2010, Illinois) has published Note,? Patents on Tax Strategies: Just Another Harmless Subject, 2009 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1591. Here is the abstract: This Note analyzes the subject matter eligibility of patents on tax strategies...

Indiana Tax Developments, 2008

Posted on January 02, 2010
Lawrence A. Jegen, III (Indiana-Indianapolis), Matthew T. Black (J.D. 2009, Indiana-Indianapolis) & Tom D. Conley (Deputy Director of Tax Policy, Indiana Department of State Revenue.) have published Recent Developments in Indiana Taxation Survey 2009, 42 Ind...

Bartlett: Republican Rigidity Hurts Estate Tax Reform

Posted on January 02, 2010
Forbes, Republican Rigidity: Why Health Care Reform and Tax Laws Are Suffering, by Bruce Bartlett: It's an article of faith among right-wingers, especially the tea party crowd, that all of the United States' ills happen because Republicans in Congress don't stand for principle...

Economists

Posted on January 02, 2010
Gary Becker (Chicago) Martin Feldstein (Harvard) Greg Mankiw (Harvard) Jeff Miron (Harvard) Ed Prescott (Arizona State)

How Regressive Is a Carbon Tax?

Posted on January 01, 2010
Corbett A. Grainger & Charles D. Kolstad (both of UC-Santa Barbara, Department of Economics) have posted Who Pays a Price on Carbon? on SSRN. Here is the abstract: We use the 2003 Consumer Expenditure Survey and emissions estimates from an input-output model to estimate the incidence of a price on...

Jan. 1: A Good Day to Die

Posted on January 01, 2010
With the estate tax repealed as of today, the economics literature suggests that we may see a surge of deaths (or, at least, reported deaths) among the wealthy elderly: Joshua S. Gans (University of Melbourne) & Andrew Leigh (Australian National University), Toying with Death and Taxes: Some Lessons from Down...

Kirsch: The Role of Physical Presence in the Taxation of Cross-Border Personal Services

Posted on January 01, 2010
Michael S. Kirsch (Notre Dame) has posted The Role of Physical Presence in the Taxation of Cross-Border Personal Services, 51 B.C. L. Rev. ___ (2010), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This Article addresses the role of physical presence in the taxation of cross-border personal services...

Iran Wages War on its 'Star Students'

Posted on January 01, 2010
Sobering front-page article in the Wall Street Journal, Regime Wages a Quiet War on 'Star Students' of Iran: Behind the drama unfolding in the streets of Iran, the regime is quietly clamping down on some of the nation's best students by derailing their academic and professional careers...

WSJ: Are Taxes the Root of Unhappiness?

Posted on December 31, 2009
Wall Street Journal op-ed, Are Taxes the Root of Unhappiness? States with the Highest Taxes Also Rank as the Unhappiest, by Allysia Finley (Assistant Editor, opinionjournal.com): Does living in a blue state make people blue? It seems so, according to a new study in Science magazine that ranks states according...

ABA Proposal to Include Student Learning Outcomes in Accreditation Standards

Posted on December 31, 2009
The Standards Review Committee of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has proposed revising accreditation standard chapter 3 (Program of Legal Education) to incorporate "Student Learning Outcomes." The committee will discuss the proposed standards as part of the AALS Annual Meeting Program on Friday January...

Related Party Like-Kind Exchanges After Teruya Brothers

Posted on December 31, 2009
Kelly E. Alton (Nationwide Exchange Services), Bradley T. Borden (Washburn) & Alan S. Lederman (Akerman, Senterfitt) have published Related Party Like-Kind Exchanges: Teruya Brothers and Beyond, 111 J. Tax'n 324 (Dec. 2009). Here is the abstract: The Ninth Circuit recently held that the non-tax-avoidance exception of Section 1031(f) generally will...

The Give Blog Raises $92,000 for Charity

Posted on December 31, 2009
Kudos to Illinois Law Prof Suja Thomas and her husband Scott Bahr, who raised $92,000 for five wonderful charities throgh their Give Blog Matching Gift Challenge (blogged here and here).

The Top 10 Tax Stories of the Decade

Posted on December 31, 2009
From the Tax Foundation: 1. The Bush Tax Cuts 2. The Alternative Minimum Tax 3. The IRS, Rebate Checks, and Fiscal Stimulus 4. Influence of the Housing Lobby on the Federal Tax Code 5. Emergence of Environmental Taxation as Key Policy Issue 6. Health Care and Tax Reform 7...

Last Day to Vote for ABA Blawg 100

Posted on December 31, 2009
6:00 p.m. EST today is the deadline for voting for the 2009 ABA Blawg 100. Here are the nominees in the Legal Theory category: Becker-Posner Blog Concurring Opinions Conglomerate Empirical Legal Studies The Faculty Lounge A Failure of Capitalism Feminist Law Professors IdeoBlog Legal Ethics Forum Legal Profession Blog Leiter's...

WSJ: Starting Friday, Many Surviving Spouses Will Inherit $0

Posted on December 31, 2009
Wall Street Journal, Repeal of Estate Tax Creates Planning Dilemmas, by Martin Vaughan: Spouses of those wealthy who die next year might find themselves with nothing if the wills aren't revised, another wrinkle of the impending repeal of the federal estate tax Friday...

TurboTax, Geithner Edition

Posted on December 30, 2009
Following up on my January post, Geithner Blames Turbo Tax For His Tax Troubles: Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner implied at his confirmation hearing that the mistakes in his tax returns were caused by his use of the TurboTax software program...

Whistleblower in UBS Tax Shelter Case Seeks Postponement and Reduction of Sentence

Posted on December 30, 2009
Bradley Birkenfeld, the tax whistleblower in the UBS tax shelter case who is scheduled to begin serving his 40-month prison sentence on Jan. 8, has filed a motion seeking to postpone and reduce the sentence so he can cooperate more with the U.S. government to uncover more tax cheats...

Dave Barry: Obama Blames Bush Administration for Tax Code

Posted on December 30, 2009
Dave Barry's Year in Review 2009: JANUARY . . . The No. 1 item on the agenda is fixing the economy, so the new administration immediately sets about the daunting task of trying to nominate somebody -- anybody -- to a high-level government post who actually remembered to pay his...

Tax Treatment of International Civil Servants

Posted on December 30, 2009
Rutsel Silvestre J. Martha (General Counsel, International Fund for Agricultural Development) has published Tax Treatment of International Civil Servants (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 2010). Here is the abstract: What sets the tax treatment of the international civil servants apart are the legal considerations derived from public international law...

Kahn Posts Tax Papers on SSRN

Posted on December 30, 2009
Douglas A. Kahn (Michigan) has posted a third batch (first and second batches) of his tax papers on SSRN: The Proper Tax Treatment of the Transfer of a Compensatory Partnership Interest, 62 Tax Law. 1 (2009) Alimony Treatment for a Single Payment, 125 Tax Notes 1211 (Dec...

ABA Submits Comment Letter on Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act

Posted on December 30, 2009
The ABA Tax Section has submitted a comment letter on the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2009 (H.R. 3933, S. 1934): We set forth below a summary of our recommendations, followed by the discussion of the respective provisions of the Bill. Part I of the discussion addresses section 101...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.