Taxation & Estate Planning

Bassin, Littman Leave DOJ, Joint Tax for Baker Hostetler

Posted on December 17, 2008
My law school classmate Stuart J. Bassin, Senior Litigation Counsel with the U.S. Department of Justice Department Tax Division, and Allen J. Littman, Legislation Counsel with the Joint Committee on Taxation, have joined Baker Hostetler as partners in the firm's...

Goldman Sachs Pockets $10b in Federal Bailout Funds, Pays 1% Tax Rate

Posted on December 16, 2008
Bloomberg: Goldman Sachs?s Tax Rate Drops to 1%, or $14 Million, for 2008, by Christine Harper: Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which got $10 billion and debt guarantees from the U.S. government in October, expects to pay $14 million in taxes...

Distributional Effects of the 2001 & 2003 Tax Cuts: Do Financing & Behavioral Responses Matter?

Posted on December 16, 2008
Douglas W. Elmendorf, Jason Furman, William G. Gale & Benjamin H. Harris (all of The Brookings Institution) have published Distributional Effects of the 2001 and 2003 Tax Cuts: How Do Financing and Behavioral Responses Matter?, 61 Nat'l Tax J. 365...

NY Times Profile of Constantine Katsoris

Posted on December 16, 2008
New York Times: A Legal Mind, With No Quit in It, by Tina Kelley: Constantine Katsoris, 76, has been a Fordham University law professor for 45 years ... Most yellowed cartoon on door: Two guys at a bar: ?I?m not...

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Di Tella & MacCulloch: Happiness Adaptation to Income Beyond "Basic Needs"

Posted on December 16, 2008
Rafael Di Tella (Harvard Business School) & Robert MacCulloch (Imperial College of London Business School) have posted Happiness Adaptation to Income Beyond "Basic Needs" (NBER Working Paper No. 14539) on NBER. Here is the abstract: We test for whether, once...

Christmas Gifts for that Special Tax Person

Posted on December 16, 2008
Available on eBay: Britney Spears Original Belly Button and Fair Tax Combo: As Britney Spears is the most searched for term on the Internet, "hook it up" with The Fair Tax idea for the Fresh way to pay tax. A...

ABA Tax Section Awards Two Public Service Tax Fellowships

Posted on December 16, 2008
The ABA Tax Section yesterday announced the winners of its two inaugural Public Service Tax Fellowships (blogged here): Laura Newland (J.D. 2009, Georgetown). After graduating, Laura will work on tax-related matters at the AARP?s Legal Counsel for the Elderly program...

Beck: Credit Card Defaults Should Not Result in DOI Income

Posted on December 16, 2008
Richard C.E. Beck (New York Law School) has published Payne and the Tax Treatment of Defaulted Credit Card Debt, 121 Tax Notes 1315 (Dec. 15, 2008). Here is the Conclusion: Canceled interest and penalties for nonbusiness consumer debts such as...

Symposium on Tax Patents

Posted on December 16, 2008
The University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy has published a symposium issue on tax patents with these three articles: Max Stul. Oppenheimer, Patents, Taxes, and the Nuclear Option: Do We Need a "Tax Strategy Patent" Ban Treaty?,...

IRS Issues Return Preparer Penalty Guidance

Posted on December 16, 2008
The IRS yesterday released several guidance items relating to return preparer penalties: T.D. 9436, final regulations under §§ 6694 and 6695A Notice 2009-5, interim guidance on the application of T.D. 9436 Rev. Proc. 2009-11, list of forms subject to the...

Boise Presents Oral Argument Today in Ohio Supreme Court

Posted on December 16, 2008
Craig M. Boise (Case Western) will share oral argument time with the Ohio Attorney General?s Office before the Ohio Supreme Court today in HealthSouth Corp. v. Wilkins (No. 07-2281). Professor Boise argues that HealthSouth should be denied a refund of...

TaxProf Blog in 4th place in ABA Journal's Top 100 Blawg Voting

Posted on December 15, 2008
Robert J. Ambrogi gives an interim report on the voting in the ABA Journal's 2008 Blawg 100 contest. In the 15-blog "professors" category, TaxProf Blog is currently in fourth place with 108 votes, trailing Jonathan Turley (333 votes), Mirror of...

Taxable Income Response to the 2001 & 2003 Tax Cuts

Posted on December 15, 2008
Gerald Auten (Office of Tax Analysis, Treasury Department), Robert Carroll (Vice President for Economic Policy, Tax Foundation) & Geoffrey Gee (Office of Tax Analysis, Treasury Department) have published The 2001 and 2003 Tax Rate Reductions: An Overview and Estimate of...

Wisconsin Considers Reviving Estate Tax to Respond to Economic Crisis

Posted on December 15, 2008
Wisconsin governor considers bring his state's estate tax back from the dead to help deal a record $5.4 budget deficit. Citizens for Tax Justice Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

NLJ: IRS Probe of Offshore Accounts Keeps Lawyers Busy

Posted on December 15, 2008
National Law Journal: Offshore Accounts Causing Angst; The IRS' Stepped-up Probe of Swiss UBS Is Keeping Lawyers Busy, by Pamela A. MacLean: Wealthy Americans with secret offshore accounts, nervous about stepped-up IRS investigations of Swiss bank UBS A...

Christmas Gifts for that Special Tax Person

Posted on December 15, 2008
Continuing a TaxProf Blog holiday tradition, I will offer some gift ideas for that special tax person in your life. Today's suggestion: For Counsel (Products and Gifts for Lawyers) sells an exact reproduction of the original 1913 Form 1040: Four...

Today Is Final Day to Submit Comments on ABA's Proposal to Eliminate Student-Faculty Ratio Data

Posted on December 15, 2008
Today is the final day to submit comments to the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education & Admission to the Bar on the proposal of the Standards Review Committee to eliminate computation of the student-faculty ratio in connection...

Did Double Tax on Corporate Income Contribute to Economic Meltdown?

Posted on December 15, 2008
Following up on the December 5 conference, Memo to the President: Tax Reform?s Challenges and Opportunities: Howard Gleckman reports that former assistant Treasury Secretary for Tax Policy Pam Olson fingered the double taxation of corporate income as one of the...

The Annual Year in Ideas, Tax Edition

Posted on December 15, 2008
Four of the 54 ideas in the New York Times' 8th Annual Year in Ideas Issue involve taxes: Guaranteed Retirement Account, The National "10 Percent Off Sale," The Rising-tide Tax System, The Stock Transfer Tax, The

IRS Names Retired Deloitte Partner Special Counsel to the Associate Chief Counsel (Corporate)

Posted on December 15, 2008
The IRS announced on Friday the selection of retired Deloitte partner Lawrence M. Axelrod as Special Counsel to the Associate Chief Counsel (Corporate): Axelrod is a graduate of the USC Law Center and holds a Masters of Law in Taxation...

TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Posted on December 15, 2008
Saturday: 9th Circuit: Parents Cannot Deduct Payments to Their Children's Religious Schools Former Chair of Greenberg Traurig's Tax Department Pleads Guilty to Receiving Kickbacks in Tax Shelter Cases Tax Consequences of e-Commerce Galloway, Split-Interest Trusts, and Undivided Portions Sunday: Top...

Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads

Posted on December 14, 2008
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 #5: 1. [553 Downloads] A Brief Analysis of Governor Palin's Tax Returns for...

Aprill: Sklar Confirms Nondeductibility of Payments for Religious Education

Posted on December 14, 2008
Following up on yesterday's post, 9th Circuit: Parents Cannot Deduct Payments to Their Children's Religious Schools: Ellen P. Aprill (Loyola-L.A.) offers her thoughts on Sklar v. Commissioner, No. 06-72961 (9th Cir. Dec. 12, 2008): The new Sklar case relies heavily...

Life Insurance Companies Seek to Feed at TARP Trough Despite Paying Minimal Taxes

Posted on December 14, 2008
Wall Street Journal: Lightly Taxed Insurers Aim to Tap TARP, by Jesse Drucker & Tom McGinty: Several of the biggest U.S.life-insurance companies are seeking a piece of the taxpayer-funded $700 billion federal bailout program, but pay little in income taxes...

WSJ Tax Articles

Posted on December 14, 2008
"Cow Tax" Uproar Underscores Greenhouse-gas Divide, by Stephen Power: "Is the EPA preparing to slap a "cow tax" on bovines for their contribution to global warming? The agency says no. But in recent weeks, farmers and livestock ranchers have flooded....

Why the IRS Should Strictly Enforce the § 501(c)(3) Prohibition Against Church Electioneering

Posted on December 14, 2008
Sarah Hawkins (J.D. 2008, Duke) has published Note, From Branch Ministries to Selma: Why the Internal Revenue Service Should Strictly Enforce the Section 501(c)(3) Prohibition Against Church Electioneering, 71 Law & Contemp. Probs. 185 (2008). Here is part of the...

9th Circuit: Parents Cannot Deduct Payments to Their Children's Religious Schools

Posted on December 13, 2008
The Ninth Circuit yesterday affirmed the Tax Court (125 T.C. 281 (2005)) in holding that a couple's tuition and fee payments to their children's Jewish day schools do not qualify for the charitable deduction because they received a substantial benefit...

Former Chair of Greenberg Traurig's Tax Department Pleads Guilty to Receiving Kickbacks in Tax Shelter Cases

Posted on December 13, 2008
I previously blogged the case of Jay Gordon, the former chair of Greenberg Traurig's Tax Department who rresigned from the New York bar after receiving over $1.2 million in kickbacks in tax shelter case. Gordon yesterday pled guilty to charges...

Tax Consequences of e-Commerce

Posted on December 13, 2008
Trevor J. Mohr (J.D. 2008, Widener; Associate, Wilbraham, Lawler & Buba, Philadelphia) has published Note, From the Garage to the Internet Superhighway: Tax Consequences For Individual eBay Users and IRS Policy Towards the Online Marketplace, 14 Widener L...

Galloway, Split-Interest Trusts, and Undivided Portions

Posted on December 13, 2008
Valerie H. Kuntz (J.D. 2009, Regent) has published Note, Galloway, Split-Interest Trusts, and Undivided Portions: Does Disallowing the Charitable Contributoin Deduction Overstep Legislative Intent?, 20 Regent U. L. Rev. 125 (2007). Here is the Conclusion: When individuals make charitable contributions...

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