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Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Obama Donors Show No Aversion to Tax Inversions
Bloomberg, Obama Donors Altman, Effron Embrace Deals President Slams:
President Barack Obama has been bashing companies that pursue offshore mergers to reduce taxes. He hasn't talked about the people behind the deals -- some of whom are his biggest donors.
Executives, advisers and directors involved in some of the tax-cutting transactions include Blair Effron, an investment banker who hosted Obama for a May fundraiser at his two-level, 9,000-square-foot apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
Others are Jim Rogers, co-chairman of the host committee for the 2012 Democratic National Convention; Roger Altman, a former senior Treasury Department official who raised at least $200,000 for Obama's re-election campaign; and Shantanu Narayen, who sits on the president's management advisory board.
The administration's connections to more than 20 donors associated with the transactions are causing tensions for the president as he urges Congress to act against the deals and prods the Treasury Department for short-term steps to curb them.
The president's tough talk also may become a liability as Democrats seek corporate America's cash this year as they try to preserve their majority in the U.S. Senate.
August 13, 2014 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Colinvaux: Political Activity Limits and Tax Exemption
Roger Colinvaux (Catholic), Political Activity Limits and Tax Exemption: A Gordian's Knot, 33 Va. Tax Rev. ___ (2014):
The article considers the correct tax treatment of political activity by the tax system and discusses the problems that have arisen from political activity depending on whether the organization is a charity, a noncharitable exempt, or a political organization. The article then examines administrative and legislative options to the problems raised by political activity. Quantum-based solutions to the problem of political activity by noncharitable exempts do not provide a clear advantage over present law. Formally quantifying the "primarily" test would result in more certainty, but would also require that the Service be more, not less, involved in the regulation of political activity. If the policy goal is to curb political activity by noncharitable exempts, changing the test from "primarily" to something more restrictive like "substantially" or "exclusively" would be effective, but would create new categories of taxable nonprofits that are treated worse than political organizations for engaging in less political activity, which is irrational. Further, it is not clear, especially after the Citizens United decision, why as a matter of tax exemption the regulations decree that political activity may not further noncharitable exempt purposes. Before Citizens United, the political activity limits were not especially relevant, but at least helped to differentiate organization types. However, Citizens United largely rendered existing tax law limitations obsolete by making a new kind of multi-purpose organization possible. As a result, definitional political activity limits are no longer justified and should be eliminated, but only if the 527(f) tax on investment income remains vital and the differences in the disclosure regimes between political organizations and noncharitable exempts are erased. In addition, Congress should affirm that the gift tax does not apply with respect to political contributions, but also extend the income tax to transfers of appreciated property to noncharitable exempts. Further, Congress should acknowledge that the increase in political speech by noncharitable exempts will lead to abuse of charitable organizations, and take steps to prevent the laundering of independent expenditures through the charitable form. Congress also should recognize that Citizens United has led to a need to develop a new tax baseline for political activity conducted "for profit" or outside of section 527.
August 13, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Best Value Law Schools
Prelaw, Best Value Law Schools:
To be considered for the overall list, a school must have an average debt of less than $106,000 [$115,000 for private schools]; employment greater than 69.5%; and a bar pass rate greater than 75%, and no less than 3% below the state average. ...
After we narrowed down the list based on these parameters, we then ranked the schools using this formula: percent of graduates who pass the bar exam (15%); employment rate (35%); tuition (25%); cost of living (10%); and average indebtedness upon graduation (15%).
National Jurist ranked the 53 Best Value Law Schools. Here are the Top 20:
August 13, 2014 in Law School Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (6)
U.S. Expats Sue in Canada to Block FATCA
Wall Street Journal, U.S. Expats Sue Over Canadian Deal to Tell Washington About Their Accounts:
A group representing American expatriates is taking legal action against the Canadian government for its role in implementing a U.S. law designed to clamp down on tax evasion.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in the Federal Court of Canada in Vancouver, challenges the constitutionality of a Canada-U.S. intergovernmental agreement reached in February that forces domestic banks to comply with the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca. The agreement requires Canadian banks to share account information about U.S. citizens with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service via Canadian tax authorities.
- Forbes, Canadians File Suit to Block FATCA and Prohibit Handover of U.S. Names to IRS
- Globe & Mail, Dual Citizens Launch Legal Challenge on Canada-U.S. Tax Deal
(Hat Tip: Allison Christians.)
August 13, 2014 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (1)
Fundraiser for Law School Transparency
Racing for Law School Transparency at 10,000 Feet:
A message from Mike Spivey . . .
As you may be aware, I was recently named to Law School Transparency's (LST) board of directors. LST is a non-profit founded five years ago that helps prospective law students make informed decisions about whether and where to attend law school. LST organizes and shares real consumer information with tens of thousands of applicants each year who are looking to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a law degree.
LST has made an enormous impact on legal education through its tireless advocacy efforts, but it still has much to accomplish. For example, schools still hide unfavorable jobs data and the ABA still does not adequately enforce its own standards prohibiting deceptive marketing. I believe that LST will continue to be a major force for accountability. This is why I joined the board and pledged to raise $10,000.
August 13, 2014 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)
The IRS Scandal, Day 461
- American Thinker: The Sad But Common Irony That Lawbreakers Such as Lois Lerner Are in Positions of Law Enforcement
- Bloomberg: IRS Tried, Failed to Repair Lois Lerner Hard Drive
- Chronicle of Philanthropy: IRS Says Techs Labored to Fix Lois Lerner's Hard Drive
- Fox: Under Oath: IRS Officials Detail Lerner Computer Crash in Declarations to Court
- National Review: The IRS's Lawyer
- Washington Times: IT Specialists' Effort to Save Lerner's Hard Drive Failed
- Western Journalism: IRS Tech Experts Can't Recover Lerner Emails
August 13, 2014 in IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Walker Reviews Hickman's Administering the Tax System We Have
Christopher Walker (Ohio State), Taking Administrative Law to Tax Exceptionalism (Jotwell), reviewing Kristin Hickman (Minnesota), Administering the Tax System We Have, 63 Duke L.J. 1717 (2014):
I'll focus on the Duke Law Journal's Taking Administrative Law to Tax Symposium, which was published in May. There is a lot to like about this symposium, starting with a refreshingly succinct foreword from Andy Grewal and followed by articles from Ellen Aprill, Bryan Camp, Kristin Hickman, Steve Johnson, Leandra Lederman, and Lawrence Zelenak. [Video of the symposium is available here, and the written issue is here.]
As the title suggests, the symposium focuses on tax exceptionalism, or "tax myopia" as Paul Caron coined the phenomenon two decades ago [Tax Myopia, or Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Tax Lawyers, 13 Va. Tax Rev. 517 (1994)]. Tax exceptionalism is the misperception that tax law is so different from the rest of the regulatory state such that general administrative law principles do not apply. But tax exceptionalism is dying—something my tax colleague Stephanie Hoffer and I document in a forthcoming article on the Tax Court and the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA"). In Mayo Foundation v. United States, for instance, the Supreme Court refused to apply a standard less deferential than Chevron to the Treasury Department's interpretation of the tax code, noting that it was "not inclined to carve out an approach to administrative review good for tax law only." That same year (2011), in Cohen v. United States, the D.C. Circuit held that the judicial review provisions of the APA apply to IRS notices: "The IRS is not special in this regard; no exception exists shielding it—unlike the rest of the Federal Government—from suit under the APA."
It is thus only fitting that Professor Hickman contributed to the symposium. After all, as a scholar at the intersection of administrative law and tax, she has spent nearly a decade calling for the reconsideration of tax exceptionalism.
August 12, 2014 in Conferences, Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
George Washington Seeks to Hire a Tax Prof
The George Washington University Law School is seeking to hire a tenure-track or tenured tax professor in a variety fields, including tax:
The George Washington University Law School may make one or more full-time faculty appointments in subject areas that may include Corporate Finance, Intellectual Property, Health Law, and/or Tax, among others. In addition, it is possible that we will make one or more faculty appointments in clinical teaching. Appointments will be for either tenure-track or tenured positions. ...
August 12, 2014 in Legal Education, Tax, Tax Prof Jobs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Kinder Morgan Abandons MLP Structure It Pioneered, Sticking Investors With Big Tax Bill
New York Times, Kinder Morgan's Reorganization Puts Master Limited Partnerships in Question, by David Gelles:
What happens when the pioneer of an industry abandons its own legacy?
When Kinder Morgan announced on Sunday that it was consolidating its four related pipeline companies into one, executives and bankers from Houston to New York, particularly those in the merger and energy sectors, were stunned.
With the move, Kinder Morgan, a $100 billion empire that transports much of America's oil and natural gas, was abandoning the master limited partnership structure it helped popularize. Largely because of Kinder Morgan's success, the partnerships have become increasingly popular for energy companies. The structure allows them to pass all profits along to their investors as dividends, and pay no corporate taxes (though the investors are subject to taxes on the distributions).
But now, with Kinder Morgan restructuring as a traditional corporation, questions have emerged about what will happen to the many other master limited partnerships. If Kinder Morgan no longer wants to be one, does the structure still make sense for other companies?
Adding to the sense of uncertainty was the Treasury Department, which said on Monday that it was examining whether the partnerships were depriving the government of needed tax revenue. Although the partnerships have mostly managed to fly under the radar, the renewed focus on the corporate tax code and its loopholes is putting the structure under new scrutiny.
Despite the move by Kinder Morgan, and saber-rattling from Washington, master limited partnerships are for the most part seen as safe for now.
- Bloomberg, Pipeline Billionaire Spurns the Tax Break He Popularized
- Forbes, Kinder Morgan Eats Its Own; Will Other MLPs Follow Its Lead?
- Investment News, MLP Investors Face Prospect of New Taxes After Kinder Morgan Deal
- New York Times, After Kinder Morgan Deal, What's Next for Master Limited Partnerships?
- New York Times, Renouncing Partnership Structure, Pipeline Group Kinder Morgan to Reorganize as Single Corporation
- New York Times, To Solve a Problem of Size, Kinder Morgan Gets Bigger
- U.S. News & World Report, Kinder Morgan to Abandon MLP Structure It Pioneered
- Wall Street Journal, Kinder Morgan to Consolidate Empire
- Wall Street Journal, Kinder Morgan Deal Risks Big Tax Bills for Investors
- Wall Street Journal, Q&A: How the Kinder Morgan Deal Affects Investors' Taxes
August 12, 2014 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (1)
Benshalom: Mechanisms to Promote Global Wealth Redistribution
Ilan Benshalom (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Faculty of Law), How to Redistribute? A Critical Examination of Mechanisms to Promote Global Wealth Redistribution, 64 U. Toronto L.J. 317 (2014):
The literature on global redistributive justice deals primarily with the important, yet unresolved issues of why global wealth redistribution may be morally justified or beneficial. However, philosophers and economists who address these issues often do not address the question of how such redistribution should take place. This article seeks to rectify this deficiency and argues that, if a certain level of global wealth distribution is morally justified and, more importantly, beneficial, the question of how it should be promoted is far from trivial. In this context, the analysis opens a new discussion of what form of redistributive measures should be adopted in a multistate reality.
August 12, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
ABA Approves Changes to Law School Accreditation Standards
National Law Journal, ABA Delegates Approve Law School Reforms:
The ABA's governing body on Monday endorsed an extensive package of law school reforms designed to increase students' clinical and distance-learning opportunities.
Standards for law schools would require students to take a minimum of six hours in a legal clinic or other "experiential" environment; encourage 50 hours of pro bono service; and allow students to take up to 15 credit hours of distance courses, up from 12. Students won't be limited to 20 hours of outside work per week anymore.
To protect accreditation, law schools would have to shift toward assessments that focus on student outcomes—including bar-exam results and employment—rather than qualifications of incoming students or other factors.
"J.D. programs will remain a rigorous study of the law," former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor assured the ABA House of Delegates, which voted on the reforms during the ABA's annual meeting in Boston. "It will basically remain a three-year program." ...
While most of the changes were unanimously approved by voice vote, disagreement arose over two aspects of the reform package.
August 12, 2014 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (1)
Zelinsky: Wynne and the Double Taxation of Dual Residents
Edward A. Zelinsky (Cardozo), Wynne and the Double Taxation of Dual Residents, 73 State Tax Notes 259 (July 28, 2014):
Zelinsky discusses Maryland State Comptroller of the Treasury v. Wynne [431 Md. 147 (2013), cert. granted (May 27, 2014)]. He writes that the U.S. Supreme Court should decide the case narrowly and in a way that does not prevent it from ruling later that the dormant commerce clause requires tax credits to abate the double taxation of individuals who are residents of two or more states but lack the ability to vote in a state that taxes them as residents on their worldwide income.
August 12, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Analysts | Permalink | Comments (0)
Olson: Rat Out Your Employer On Taxes. Win Cash Rewards!
Reason: Rat Out Your Employer On Taxes. Win Cash Rewards!, by Walter Olson (Cato Institute):
A former employee has filed a lawsuit charging that Vanguard Group, the gigantic ($2 trillion under management) and very successful mutual fund company, provides services to the funds it manages at "artificially low," "at-cost" prices, which may be beneficial to investors in those funds but (the suit argues) results in lowering the federal and state income taxes it pays.
New York's False Claims Act, under which the employee is suing, entitles him to a generous share of any tax proceeds as well as attorneys' fees if successful.
The Philadelphia Inquirer and Wall Street Journal have more; the complaint is here courtesy of TaxProf. The company denies wrongdoing, and the general question of transfer pricing on which the claim hinges is very well aired in the tax and accounting literature, which makes it seem unlikely that auditors would have neglected the issue.
August 12, 2014 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
The IRS Scandal, Day 460
Biz Pac Review: Sharyll Attkisson's Impressive Account of How Watergate Would Play Out in Obama Era:
Sharyl Attkisson, the former CBS News reporter who left the network complaining because of liberal bias, offered a sobering account of Sunday how she thinks Watergate would play out today in the Age of Obama.
And it sounds awfully familiar.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Attkisson described what has basically been the pattern for every scandal of the Obama years – dubbed "phony scandals" by all the president's men.
"I think that we've gone backwards since that time when we really felt empowered as journalists," Attkisson said. "And all I can think is: What would happen today during a Nixon-type scandal?"
"Nixon would basically refuse to turn over tapes to Congress," she said, in an apparent allusion to the IRS simply "losing" emails key to investigations of its targeting conservative groups.
"His aides would refuse to testify to Congress, or would take the Fifth, or would like to Congress with a fair amount of immunity," Attkisson continued, describing the refusal of former IRS official Lois Lerner to testify before Congress and the stonewalling other administration officials have engaged in.
The Hill op-ed: More Lost Emails — When Will Democrats Have Enough?, by Rick Manning (Citizens for Limited Government):
Twenty different Obama administration officials have lost or destroyed a portion of their email traffic. Email traffic that was, in some cases, under subpoena or in others requested as part of a larger inquiry into the conduct of the executive branch. ...
The brazenly contemptuous stonewall-and-erase-evidence approach to congressional inquiries preferred by the Obama administration is perhaps this president's greatest affront to our constitutional system of government.
When you have records going missing across an administration, it is impossible to conclude anything other than it is a coordinated and condoned cover-up, and not just a series of incompetent, coincidental keystrokes wiping out information.
The conclusions get even uglier when you realize that the IRS dismissed the government contractor responsible for maintaining back-up files of their emails concurrent with Lois Lerner and her band mysteriously having their computers flatline.
The question is, where are the Democrats in the face of this obvious malfeasance?
During the Watergate scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon, a few Republicans came forward and urged the president to come clean. Yet, the silence is deafening from Democrats in both the House and Senate in the wake of this obvious obstruction of the congressional oversight function.
Where are the patriots on the Democratic side, who are willing to stand up to an executive branch that has declared them inconsequential?
National Review op-ed: Stonewaller-in-Chief: We're Transparent, but Don't Ask For Any Documents, Says the Obama White House, by John Fund:
The most valuable lesson I've learned in reporting about Washington is a simple one: watch what politicians do, not what they say. There can be no better illustration of this than Obama's summit meeting with African leaders last week. He used the meeting as an opportunity to tout the positive role inspectors general can play in fighting corruption in government agencies; at the same time that he was speechifying about this, some two-thirds of President Obama's own inspectors general wrote a scathing letter to Congress complaining that his administration was placing "serious limitations" on their ability to do their jobs.
Wall Street Journal editorial: Justice's IRS Connection: The Lawyer Who Had Tax-exempt Cases Coming and Going:
It was fishy enough when Democratic donor Barbara Bosserman was appointed to lead the Justice Department investigation of IRS targeting of conservative groups. Now there are new questions about Justice's staffing choice on one of the private lawsuits brought against the IRS.
We've been telling you about the pro-Israel group Z Street, which sued the IRS in 2010 on grounds that the agency engaged in viewpoint discrimination when it singled out 501(c) groups with Israel-related missions for additional scrutiny. The case has been handled by Justice Department trial attorney Andrew Strelka, who previously worked in the IRS office run by Lois Lerner that handled tax-exempt applications. ...
[R]ecently Mr. Strelka was withdrawn as the Justice Department's counsel of record on the Z Street case. A review of court dockets showed that he has also withdrawn from two other cases involving tax-exempt groups, including Judicial Watch's suit against the IRS. ...
If Mr. Strelka had personal knowledge of the processing of tax-exempt applications for groups like Z Street while he was assigned to the IRS, he should have recused himself from handling the case at Justice.
- American Thinker: What to Do About the Politicization of the Attorney General's Office
- The Hill: IRS Officials Don't Recall Physical Damage to Lerner's Hard Drive
- PJ Media: Judicial Watch Rips Latest IRS Response to 'Lost' Emails: They're Treating It Like a Joke
- WND: IRS in Clandestine Move Against Churches Again?
August 12, 2014 in IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, August 11, 2014
Virginia Tax Review Publishes New Issue
The Virginia Tax Review has published Vol. 33, No. 3 (Winter 2014):
- Tim Edgar (Osgoode Hall) Corrective Taxation, Leverage, and Compensation in a Bloated Financial Sector, 33 Va. Tax Rev. 393 (2014)
- Kelly A. Moore (Toledo), Rubik's Cube and Tax Policy: Proposed Solutions for Puzzling Components of Estate Planning With Life Insurance, 33 Va. Tax Rev. 429 (2014)
- Eric S. Smith (Weber State), A Deduction Properly Extinguished? The Live-burn Donation: A Proposed Sequence of Analysis and Policy Evaluation, 33 Va. Tax Rev. 459 (2014)
- Adam B. Thimmesch (Nebraska), The Tax Hangover: Trailing Nexus, 33 Va. Tax Rev. 497 (2014)
August 11, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
ABA Task Force Debates Financing of Legal Education at its First Meeting
ABA Journal, Task Force on Legal-ed Financing Mulls Causes of Rising Tuition at its First-ever Public Hearing:
At its first public hearing, the ABA's new Task Force on the Financing of Legal Education spent much of its time trying to determine exactly what is leading to increases in law school tuition, and debilitating debt loads being carried by so many law students.
The task force, chaired by former Detroit mayor and onetime ABA President Dennis Archer, met over a day and a half Saturday and Sunday during the ABA's Annual Meeting in Boston. Its aim is to examine the cost of legal education for students, and to explore student lending and how law schools are being financed. Beginning with the public hearing, the task force is delving into how law schools use merit scholarships, tuition discounts and need-based financial aid.
Witnesses sought to frame core issues and problems, each from their own perspectives. And task force members pushed each of them to back up their statements with data or anything besides anecdotes. ...
August 11, 2014 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (1)
GiveWell Considers Funding Tax Reform
GiveWell is considering selecting tax reform as one of the causes to fund:
Tax policy, like macroeconomic policy, has theoretically huge economic stakes and a good deal of attention from intellectuals. We see it as having substantially more attention from funders and nonprofits, and (likely as a consequence) fewer gaps in the work done by intellectuals (particularly with regard to developing workable policy proposals). We also see less room for impact from new academic research on related matters, as the main bottleneck to improved policy seems to be politics (in particular, resistance from groups like Americans for Tax Reform to changes that would involve new taxes or reduced tax expenditures) rather than knowledge. We have done a shallow investigation of this area and will be writing it up in the future.
As part of its due diligence, GiveWell has interviewed two experts:
- Richard England, Visiting Fellow, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; Professor of Economics and Natural Resources, University of New Hampshire (March 27, 2014)
- Daniel Shaviro, Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation, New York University School of Law (July 17, 2014) (blogged here)
August 11, 2014 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Task Force of Mayors Assails Growing Income Inequality
The United States Conference of Mayors, Income and Wage Gaps Across the U.S.:
- The US has regained the 8.7 million jobs that were lost during the Great Recession, and employment has surpassed its pre-‐recession peak of 138.4 million jobs in 2008.
- Average annual wage of jobs lost in 2008-‐09 was $61,637, and average wage of job gains through the second quarter of 2014 equaled $47,171. This wage gap of 23% is significantly larger than that of the earlier recession and recovery (2000-‐2006), and implies $93 billion in lower wage income.
- In comparison, the wage gap following the 2000-‐2003 recession was 12%. Wages earned in advancing sectors fell $27 billion short of the annual wages lost in the declining sectors over 2000-‐2003.
- Extensive job losses in high-‐wage manufacturing ($63K) and construction ($58K) sectors were replaced by jobs in the lower wage sectors of hospitality ($21K), health care ($47K), and administrative support ($37K).
The Income Distribution in the US:
- The 2012 household median income of $51,017 was, in real terms, the lowest since 1995. The median was greater in the West ($55,157), and Northeast ($54,627), than in the South ($48,033) and Midwest ($50,479).
- The highest-‐earning 20% of households saw their share of income rise from 43.6% in 1975 to 51.0% in 2012. Most of this gain was among those in the highest 5% of income, which rose from 16.5% in 1975 to 22.3% in 2012, a gain of $490 billion in 2012.
- Each of the lower quintiles experienced a declining share of income since 1975. The lowest two quintiles, or 40% of households, received just 6.6% of all US income gains since 2005, and 9.5% of gains since 1995.
- The highest 20% of households captured 60.6% of total income gains from 2005 to 2012, and the top 5% received 27.6% of total gains.
- In 2012 the 80th percentile (the lowest income in the top 20%) income of $104,906 was more than double (2.04x) the median. That ratio has increased from 1.73 in 1975.
- New York Times, TTask Force of Mayors Addresses Income Gap
- U.S. News & World Report, Low-Wage Jobs Gained During Recovery Strain Wage Gap
August 11, 2014 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Schler: International Mismatches on Hybrid Instruments
Michael L. Schler (Cravath, New York), OECD vs. D/NI: International Mismatches on Hybrid Instruments, 75 Tax Notes Int'l 485 (Aug. 11, 2014):
Michael L. Schler discusses technical and policy issues, as well as unexpected results, that arise under the OECD's proposals to eliminate mismatches of income and deduction resulting from hybrid instruments.
August 11, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Analysts | Permalink | Comments (0)
A Moment of Simple Justice: Law School
August 11, 2014 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (3)
The IRS Scandal, Day 459
- Sharyl Attkisson: No Kidding? HHS Likely Lost Subpoenaed Docs, Too.
- The Hill: Judge Sides With IRS in Search for Lerner Emails
- Politico: IRS Notches Legal Win Over Lost Tea Party
- Washington Times: Lost Emails Scandal Spreads to Top Obamacare Official
August 11, 2014 in IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup
- Princeton and Wellesley May Re-inflate Grades
- Retirement of John Dean, First African-American Tax Court Judge
- Robert Redford Sues New York Over $1.6 Million Tax Bill; Can State Tax Nonresident on Sale of Interest in Nonresident LLC?
- The IRS Scandal, Day 457
- NY Times: A Corporate Tax Break That's Closer to Home
- Byrnes: Charity and the Jurisprudential Lessons from History
- Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads
- The IRS Scandal, Day 458
August 11, 2014 in Legal Education, Tax, Weekend Roundup | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sunday, August 10, 2014
NY Times: A Corporate Tax Break That's Closer to Home
New York Times: A Corporate Tax Break That's Closer to Home, by Gretchen Morgenson:
Rage is rising over American corporations that chop their tax bills by acquiring entities in lower-tax countries. Medtronic, AbbVie and Mylan have all announced such plans — known as inversions — in recent months. And Walgreen was poised to relocate to Switzerland after it completes its purchase of Alliance Boots, but did an about-face last week in the face of widespread denunciation.
Some in Congress have proposed legislation to shut the door on this tax-savings tactic. But across town at the Internal Revenue Service, officials have recently opened the window to another. They did so in a ruling disclosed late last month by Windstream Holdings, a telecommunications company based in Little Rock, Ark.
The ruling allows Windstream to spin off its copper and fiber network into a real estate investment trust, or REIT. That sounds pretty ho-hum until you realize it means that Windstream won't have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. ...
How did the I.R.S. conclude that a telecom network is a real estate asset? As with all things tax-related, the details are somewhat complicated. ...
August 10, 2014 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Byrnes: Charity and the Jurisprudential Lessons from History
William Byrnes IV (Thomas Jefferson), The Development of Charity: Jurisprudential Lessons from History:
This article describes the ancient legal practices, codified in Biblical law and later rabbinical commentary, to protect the needy. The ancient Hebrews were the first civilization to establish a charitable framework for the caretaking of the populace. The Hebrews developed a complex and comprehensive system of charity to protect the needy and vulnerable. These anti-poverty measures, including regulation of agriculture, loans, working conditions, and customs for sharing at feasts, were a significant development in the jurisprudence of charity.
The article begins with a brief history of ancient civilizations, providing context for the development of charity by exploring the living conditions of the poor. The second half of the article provides a searching analysis of the rabbinic jurisprudence that established the jurisprudence of charity. This ancient jurisprudence is the root of the American modern philanthropic idea of charitable giving exemplified by modern equivalent provisions in the United States Tax Code.
August 10, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Top 5 Tax Paper Downloads
This week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads on SSRN is the same as last week's list:
- [350 Downloads] What Would Yale Do If It Were Taxable?, by Patrick Geddes (Aperio Group), Lisa Goldberg (UC-Berkeley) & Stephen Bianchi (UC-Berkeley)
- [327 Downloads] Guide to FATCA Compliance (Chapter 1, Background and Current Status of FATCA) (LexisNexis 2d ed. 2014), by William Byrnes (Thomas Jefferson), Denis Kleinfeld, & Alberto Gil Soriano
- [254 Downloads] Sales Suppression as a Service (SSaaS) & the Apple Store Solution, by Richard Ainsworth (Boston University)
- [223 Downloads] Desperate Retirees: The Perplexing Challenge of Covering Retirement Health Care Costs in a YOYO World, by Richard L. Kaplan (Illinois)
- [193 Downloads] Unconstitutional Perpetual Trusts, by Steven Horowitz (Sidley Austin, Chicago) & Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)
August 10, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax, Top 5 Downloads | Permalink | Comments (0)
The IRS Scandal, Day 458
- Sharyl Attkisson: Six Serious Questions Regarding Elusive Federal Documents
- Chronicle-Tribune op-ed: Special Prosecutor Needed in IRS Scandal, by Sen. Dan Coates (R-IN)
- Fiscal Times, Now the Administration Is Missing Obamacare Emails
- Legal Insurrection: IRS Wins Key Evidentiary Ruling In True the Vote Suit
- Washington Free Beacon: Judge Refuses to Appoint Forensics Expert to Locate Lost IRS Emails
August 10, 2014 in IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Saturday, August 9, 2014
Princeton and Wellesley May Re-inflate Grades
Princeton and Wellesley are considering reversing actions they took a decade ago to curb grade inflation: Princeton capped A-range grades at 35%, and Wellesley imposed a mandatory B+ median in introductory (100) level and intermediate (200) level courses with at least 10 students:
Princeton, Report from the Ad Hoc Committee to Review Policies Regarding Assessment and Grading:
Wellesley, The Effects of an Anti-Grade-Inflation Policy at Wellesley College:
- Business Insider, Harvard Students Told College Applicants Not To Go To Princeton Because They Wouldn't Get As Many 'A's'
- Chronicle of Higher Education, 2 Word Clouds That'll Tell You Nothing About Grade Inflation at Princeton
- Chronicle of Higher Education, Princeton Faculty Group Recommends Axing Policy That Limits A's
- Daily Princetonian, A-grades Decreased the Most Before Deflation and Have Increased Since, Committee Finds
- Inside Higher Ed, A For Effort
- New York Times, Princeton Is Proposing to End Limit on Giving A's
- Newsweek, Princeton Looks to Scrap 'Grade Quotas'
- Quartz, What Happens When an Elite American University Kills Grade Inflation
Update: The Economist, What the Ivies Can Learn From Wellesley
August 9, 2014 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (6)
Retirement of John Dean, First African-American Tax Court Judge
John F. Dean has retired after twenty years as a Special Trial judge on the U.S. Tax Court. He was the first African-American Judge on the Tax Court.
b. Washington, District of Columbia. Graduated, B.S., Michigan State University, 1970; Columbus School of Law; J.D., Catholic University of America, 1975; M.L.T., Georgetown University Law Center, 1985. Admitted to District of Columbia Bar, 1975, Supreme Court of the United States, Federal District Courts, Northern District of Texas, District of Maryland, and United States Tax Court. Employed by the Office of Chief Counsel for the Internal Revenue Service, Dallas District Counsel, 1975-78; Baltimore District Counsel, 1978-86; Office of Associate Chief Counsel, International, 1986-94. Adjunct Professor of Law, Howard University, 1999 to present; Vice Chair, Judicial Counsel of the Washington Bar Association, 2002-03. Appointed Special Trial Judge, United States Tax Court, on August 7, 1994.
August 9, 2014 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Robert Redford Sues New York Over $1.6 Million Tax Bill; Can State Tax Nonresident on Sale of Interest in Nonresident LLC?
- Accounting Today, Robert Redford Sues New York over $1.6M Tax Tab for Selling Sundance Channel
- Broadway World, Robert Reford Suing New York Over Sundance Tax Bill
- Hot Air, Robert Redford Sues to Get His $1.6 Million Back From the Fair Share Pot in NY
- New York Daily News, Robert Redford Suing New York State Over His $1.6 Million Tax Bill
- New York Post, Taxing Robert Redford
- USA Today, Robert Redford Sues N.Y. Over $1.6M Tax Bill
- Washington Times, Robert Redford Sues New York Over $1.6 Million Tax Bill
- The Wrap, Robert Redford Sues NY State Over $1.6 Million Tax Bill for Sundance Channel Sale
August 9, 2014 in Celebrity Tax Lore, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
The IRS Scandal, Day 457
George Will, The Reason for Watergate:
June 17, 1971, was four days after The New York Times began publishing the leaked "Pentagon Papers," the classified Defense Department history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Nixon worried that further leaks would reveal his role in sabotaging negotiations that might have shortened the war. This fear caused Nixon to create the "the plumbers" and to direct an aide to devise other proposals such as the one concerning Brookings. This aide suggested using the IRS against political adversaries, but added:"The truth is we don't have any reliable political friends at IRS. ... We won't be ... in a position of effective leverage until such time as we have complete and total control of the top three slots at IRS." Forty years later, the IRS has punished conservative groups, and evidence that might prove its criminality has been destroyed. Happy anniversary.
August 9, 2014 in IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink | Comments (2)
Friday, August 8, 2014
Weekly Tax Roundup
- ABA Journal, Ex-BigLaw Partner Gets 6 Months in Massive Tax-shelter Case, Must Help Pay $220M Restitution
- Accounting Today, Obama Blames Accountants for Inversion Trend
- Bloomberg, Companies Bulk Up Tax Lobbying as Obama Seeks to Curb Inversions
- Bloomberg, Treasury's Tax Powers Could Limit Benefits of Inversions
- Bloomberg, Yesterday's Inversion Buyers Become Tomorrow's Targets
- Bloomberg BNA, Court Deals Blow to KPMG, Others Marketing Bond-Linked Tax Shelters
- Bloomberg Businessweek, Obama Says Administration Seeking Ways to Curb Inversions
- Bloomberg View, Inequality Exists. Ask the Middle Class., by Edward Kleinbard (USC)
- Bloomberg View, There's No Defense for Today's Income Inequality, by Edward Kleinbard (USC)
- ESPN, Bears Owe Cook County Millions in Taxes
- Forbes, Has Mind Control Conspiracy Captured IRS?, by Peter J. Reilly
- Forbes, John Koskinen Indicates IRS Revolving Door Is A Feature Not A Bug, by Peter J. Reilly
- Forbes, Lionel Messi Tax Evasion Case (Secrecy = Willfulness) Impacts U.S. & U.K. Taxpayers Too, by Robert W. Wood
- Going Concern, President Obama Is Mad at Accountants For Being Accountants
- The Hill, Covington Snags Senior IRS Official
- Los Angeles Times editorial, Keep Politics Out of the Pulpit
- Jim Maule (Villanova), Philadelphia Lap Dance Tax Effort Bumped Up to Court, Which Grinds It Down
- National Law Journal, Senators Oppose Tax Change for Law Firms
- New York Times, Britain Fails to Find Riches It Expected in Swiss Accounts
- New York Times op-ed, Inequality is a Drag, by Paul Krugman
- Oxford University Press Blog, The HSA/HRA Response to Hobby Lobby, by Edward Zelinsky (Cardozo)
- Reuters, Senator Levin Says IRS Should Stamp Out U.S. Tax Inversion Deals
- Tax Analysts Blog, Beware the Individual Income Tax Inversion, by Christopher Bergin
- Tax Analysts Blog, Doing Business in California, by Cara Griffith
- Tax Analysts Blog, Keep the Inversion Hysteria Out of the States, by David Brunori
- Tax Analysts Blog, The Libertarian Case for BEPS, by Ajay Gupta
- Tax Foundation, Everything You Need to Know About Corporate Inversions
- Tax Update Blog, Tax Court Reduces Estate Value of Stock by Executive's "Personal Goodwill", by Joe Kristan
- Tax Justice Blog, How Corps. Are Avoiding Taxes by Using Tax Rule Intended for Small Investors
- Tax Justice Blog, Woody Guthrie on Corporate Tax Inversions
- Taxable Talk, The IRS Apparently Thinks They Won the Loving Case, by Russ Fox
- Wall Street Journal, A Tale of Two Companies: Obama's Flip-flop on Tax Inversions, by James Taranto
- Wall Street Journal, How Tax Inversions Became the Hottest Trend in M&A
- Wall Street Journal, Obama Explores Tax-Code Weapons in Inversion-Merger Fight
- Wall Street Journal, Treasury Could Target 'Earnings Stripping' In Inversion Hunt
- Wall Street Journal, U.S. Energy Firms Rewarded With Tax Deferrals
- Wall Street Journal, Why Walgreen Chose Not to Invert
- YouGov, Americans: Reducing Tax Burden Not Unpatriotic – Unless You're a Corporation
August 8, 2014 in Tax, Weekly Tax Roundup | Permalink | Comments (0)
Weekly Legal Education Roundup
- ABA Journal, Law Grads Sue Over 'Barmageddon,' Seek Refund of Software Fee and Punitive Damages
- ABA Journal, What Kind of Jobs Are JD Advantage?
- Above the Law, ExamSoft Sued in Illinois
- American Lawyer, NALP's Fuzzy Definition of 'JD Advantage', by Matt Leichter
- Elizabeth Chambliss (South Carolina), Law School Training for Licensed 'Legal Technicians'?, 65 S.C. L. Rev. 579 (2014)
- Michael Colatrella (McGeorge), Learning 'The True, the Good and the Beautiful' in Law School
- Faculty Lounge, The ExamSoft Bar Question
- Ken Hirsh (Cincinnati), "Biggest Bar Exam Disaster Ever?" Was More a Fender Bender
- Law Deans on Legal Education Blog, SEALS v. AALS, by I. Richard Gershon (Dean, Mississippi)
- Legal Times, Georgetown Law Prof Victoria Nourse Joins Biden's Legal Team
- National Jurist op-ed, The Problem With Dumping the LSAT, by Robert Steinbuch (Arkansas)
- National Law Journal, Angry Bar Candidates Sue Over Exam Software Problems
- National Law Journal, Case Western Puts Off Search for Permanent Dean
- New York Law Journal, Once a Critic, New Law Dean Now a Champion of Cornell
- PrawfsBlawg, SEALS v. AALS, by Howard Wasserman (Florida International)
August 8, 2014 in Legal Education, Weekly Legal Education Roundup | Permalink | Comments (0)
Weekly SSRN Tax Roundup
- Sarfaraz Bhutto (University of Pakistan), Tax Cut Brightens Economic Prospects in Under-Developing Countries
- Scott Dyreng (Duke), Jeffrey Hoopes (Ohio State) & Jaron Wilde (Iowa), Public Pressure and Corporate Tax Behavior
- Magnus Henrekson & Daniel Waldenström, Inheritance Taxation in Sweden, 1885-2004: The Role of Ideology, Family Firms and Tax Avoidance
- Eva Hofmann at al. (University of Vienna), Enhancing Tax Compliance Through Coercive and Legitimate Power of Tax Authorities by Concurrently Diminishing or Facilitating Trust in Tax Authorities
- Hans Gribnau (Tilburg University), Not Argued from But Prayed to. Who's Afraid of Legal Principles in Taxation?
- Henry Huang (Yeshiva), Gerald Lobo (Houston), Chong Wang (Kentucky) & Hong Xie (Kentucky), Customer Concentration and Corporate Tax Avoidance
- Andrey Krahmal (Atlas Tax Chambers), Practice Guide: How FATCA Applies to Non-US Funds
- Kevin Morrell (University of Warwick) & Penelope Tuck (University of Birmingham), Governance, Tax and Folk Tales
August 8, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax, Weekly SSRN Roundup | Permalink | Comments (0)
Weekly Student Tax Note Roundup
- Luke Rosseel (J.D. Suffolk, 2014), Note, The Individual Mandate -- A Tax in Pena Clothing -- Ought the Judges to Close Their Eyes on the Constitution, and Only See the Law?, 19 Suffolk J. Trial & App. Advoc. 96 (2014)
- Thomas Slattery (J.D. Brooklyn, 2014), Note, Taking a Bit Out of Crime: Bitcoin and Cross-border Tax Evasion, 39 Brook. J. Int'l L. 829 (2014)
August 8, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax, Weekly Student Tax Note Roundup | Permalink | Comments (0)
NY Times, WSJ Disagree Over Obama's Authority to Stop Corporate Inversions
New York Times Dealbook: How Obama Can Stop Corporate Expatriations, for Now, by Victor Fleischer (San Diego):
The Obama administration has broad legal authority to stop corporate inversions.
Professor Stephen E. Shay recently published an article in the trade journal Tax Notes, calling on the Obama administration to take unilateral action to impede the surge of tax-motivated corporate expatriations without waiting for Congress to pass new legislation. Professor Shay, a professor of practice at Harvard Law School and former deputy assistant secretary for international tax affairs at the Treasury Department, argued that the Treasury Department has the legal authority to reduce the incentives to give up United States citizenship. This could be done, he said, by limiting the deductions for interest payments that an American subsidiary pays its foreign parent company, and by ensuring that profits of overseas subsidiaries will continue to be subject to American taxes. ...
Robert Willens, an influential tax commentator, dismissed Professor Shay's article in a bulletin to clients as merely "interesting reading with little, if any, practical significance." Mr. Willens noted that Treasury has never been able to set workable regulations under Section 385 of the tax code, one of the key sections Professor Shay suggested as legal authority. Mr. Willens also explained that rules limiting interest deductions may cause some consternation among the nation's trading partners. "If these weapons were so readily available," he concluded, "it stands to reason that they would have already been utilized."
The dispute boils down to law versus politics. There is no question that Professor Shay gets the law right. To be sure, there are limits on what the Treasury Department can do. It is limited in its ability to define who is, and who is not, a United States corporation; those rules are fixed by statutory language. But Professor Shay has nudged the Treasury to focus on related legal questions — what constitutes debt versus equity, and what is the definition of United States property under Section 956 — where the law is unclear and the Treasury Department has broad authority to interpret those rules in a manner consistent with the legislative framework of the tax code. ...
Of course, it is possible that Mr. Willens has the politics right. The fact that the Obama administration has the legal authority to change the incentives of inversions does not necessarily mean that it will. It must consider the reaction of Britain and our other trading partners. It should think about whether investors have settled expectations about deals that have already been announced. But I see no obvious reason that the Treasury Department should feel constrained by these political issues.
Wall Street Journal editorial, Obama's Tax Law Rewrite: Where's the Law That Gives Jack Lew the Power to Raise Taxes?:
Let's focus today on tax inversions, which allow corporations to relocate overseas in a way that reduces their tax liability. Mr. Obama has conceded these are legal, and as recently as July 16 Mr. Lew told CNBC that "we have looked at the tax code. There are a lot of obscure provisions that we do not believe we have the authority to address this inversion question through administrative action. If we did, we would be doing more."
But lo, on Tuesday a spokeswoman announced that Treasury "is reviewing a broad range of authorities for possible administrative actions" to limit inversions "as well as approaches that could meaningfully reduce the tax benefits after inversions take place."
Hello? That sure sounds like rewriting tax law by executive fiat, which violates the Constitution's separation of powers. The rewrite is all the more legally suspicious since no one at Treasury or the Justice Department seems to have been aware of this power before Mr. Obama began denouncing the "unpatriotic tax loophole." From where does Mr. Lew derive this power to act like a one-man Ways and Means Committee? ...
[A]n [Office of Legal Counsel] precedent is directly relevant to tax policy. President George H.W. Bush campaigned in 1988 on cutting the capital-gains tax, but Democratic Majority Leader George Mitchell used a filibuster to block it in the Senate as the economy stumbled.
As Mr. Bush sought re-election in 1992, these columns urged him to use what we believed was his unilateral authority to index the capital gains tax for inflation—a way to boost the economy by other means. Our legal argument was that the term "cost" as written by Congress in the tax code is ambiguous and doesn't mean the "purchase price" of a stock as interpreted in Treasury regulations.
The White House counsel's office wrote a lengthy memo explaining Mr. Bush's legal power to do this. But the Treasury's legal department disagreed, the Justice Department was asked for its opinion, and the OLC lawyers sided with Treasury. Mr. Bush declined to act, the economy took longer to recover, and Bill Clinton won the 1992 election.
So now we have a President in an election year looking for a way to raise taxes on corporations after he couldn't get Congress to agree. Has anyone asked Treasury's career lawyers or the Office of Legal Counsel? Someone should. And when the next President arrives in 2017, one of his first acts should be to release publicly all of the OLC memos making the legal case for Mr. Obama's many illegal acts, assuming there are any.
August 8, 2014 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Council of the ABA Section on Legal Education Meets Today
The Council of the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar meets today in Boston:
Open Session Agenda
A. June 2014 Open Session Minutes
B. Review and Approve Revised Internal Operating Practices (IOPs)
1. Revised IOPs
2. Explanation of Revisions
C. Report on Standards Transition Plan
D. Budget:
1. Consider revised budget, based on ABA budget outcome, hiring, revision to travel budget, technology and set school fees
E. Affiliate Reports
5. NALP Update
6. NALP Class of 2013 Selected Findings
F. Data Policy Committee Report (Strickman)
1. Minor adjustments to AQ
2. Beta testing of employment outcomes protocol
H. Committee Reports
1. BOG Liaison
2. Law Student Division
3. Young Lawyers
4. House of Delegates
5. Managing Director
6. Chairperson
August 8, 2014 in ABA Tax Section, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (0)
1911 College Rankings (U.S. Government Edition)
Chronicle of Higher Education, How Did the Federal Government Rate Your College a Century Ago?:
As Vox's Libby Nelson notes in a chronicle of the 1911 ratings, the Association of American Universities actually asked the government to devise them. Kendric Charles Babcock, the top higher-education official in the U.S. Bureau of Education, itself a division of the Interior Department, undertook the task. Few were happy with the result. (Anyone surprised?) President William Howard Taft later killed it.
So how did your college stack up more than a century ago? A few things to keep in mind: The four tiers of colleges were based on how prepared their graduates were for graduate school. Also, the asterisks in Class II were used to distinguish its stronger colleges, the equivalent of a "plus" in a paper grade.
August 8, 2014 in Law School Rankings, Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (1)
94% of Academic Economists Admit to Unacceptable Research Practices, Including Sex for Co-authorship and Promotion
Inside Higher Ed, Sex, Lies, Economists:
A small proportion of European economists have confessed to "acceptance or offering of sex" in exchange for co-authorship or promotion, as well as owning up to fabricating or manipulating data.
A survey of about 400 economists, conducted among members of the European Economic Association on an anonymous basis, is analyzed in the article Scientific Misbehavior in Economics, currently in press for the journal Research Policy.
Ninety-four percent of respondents reported having engaged in at least one "unaccepted research practice," the paper says.
London School of Economics, Scientific Misbehavior in Economics: Unacceptable Research Practice Linked to Perceived Pressure to Publish:
Almost every economist reports having engaged in at least one practice considered unacceptable by peers. For example, one third of the participants admit to having cherry-picked results – the selective presentation of empirical results that confirm one's argument is rejected by 84%. Even though 64% consider it unacceptable to divide one's work into small units to maximize the number of publications, 20% confess salami slicing. Strategic behavior in the publication process is considered unjustifiable by two thirds. However, 39% admit that they have taken into account suggestions of referees or editors even though they thought that they were wrong. Even 60% report that they have cited strategically to raise publication prospects.
August 8, 2014 in Legal Education, Scholarship | Permalink | Comments (1)
The IRS Scandal, Day 456
Vox, The IRS Scandal, Explained:
- What, Exactly, Did the IRS Do That Was Inappropriate?
- Why Would the IRS Look at Groups' Political Activity?
- Why Do Many Conservatives Argue That We Don't Have the Full Story?
- Which IRS Officials Were Involved in the Scandal?
- Who is Lois Lerner?
- What's the Controversy Over Lois Lerner's Missing Emails?
- What Are Some Primary Sources About the IRS Scandal?
August 8, 2014 in IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Kleinbard: 'Competitiveness' Has Nothing to Do With Inversions
Edward D. Kleinbard (USC), 'Competitiveness' Has Nothing to Do With It:
The recent wave of corporate tax inversions has triggered interest in what motivates these tax-driven transactions now. Corporate executives have argued that inversions are explained by an "anti-competitive" U.S. tax environment, as evidenced by the federal corporate tax statutory rate, which is high by international standards, and by its "worldwide" tax base. This paper explains why this competitiveness narrative is largely fact-free, in part by using one recent articulation of that narrative (by Emerson Electric Co.'s former vice-chairman) as a case study.
August 7, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (2)
Oei & Ring: Human Equity? Regulating the New Income Share Agreements
Shu-Yi Oei (Tulane) & Diane M. Ring (Boston College), Human Equity? Regulating the New Income Share Agreements:
A controversial new financing phenomenon has recently emerged. New "income share agreements" ("ISAs") enable an individual to raise funds by pledging a percentage of her future earnings to investors for a certain number of years. These contracts, which are offered by entities such as Fantex, Upstart, Pave, and Lumni, raise important questions for the legal system: Are they a form of modern-day indentured servitude or an innovative breakthrough in human financing? How should they be treated under the law?
August 7, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Desai: Tax Withholding, Statutes and Constitutional Law
Anuj C. Desai (Wisconsin), What a History of Tax Withholding Tells Us About the Relationship between Statutes and Constitutional Law, 108 Nw. U. L. Rev. 859 (2014):
In this Article, I explain what a seemingly obscure statute, the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943, can tell us about the relationship between statutes and constitutional law. I use William Eskridge and John Ferejohn's notion of a "superstatute" as a lens through which to view this relationship. A "superstatute," in Eskridge and Ferejohn's conception, is a statute that has small "c" constitutional emanations, emanations that both affect interpretations of the large "C" Constitution and are entrenched against subsequent legislative change. To better understand the precise contours of the notion of a superstatute, I look at the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943, which instituted the system of federal tax withholding for wage income. I describe the history of federal income tax withholding leading up to the passage of that Act, explaining in turn how that history sheds light on the underlying notion of a superstatute.
August 7, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tenured Florida A&M Prof Sues Law School, Claiming Gender Discrimination in Pay
Tampa Tribune, FAMU's Law School Hit with Discrimination, Unequal Pay Lawsuit by Female Professor:
Jennifer Smith, an associate professor hired in 2004, ... accuses [Florida A&M Law School] of eight violations of federal and state law on equal pay and gender discrimination, her suit says. She seeks unspecified damages, a promotion to full professor, attorney fees and other relief.
Her complaint says the law school "consistently hired men at considerably higher rates than women," with male associate professors "paid considerably more" than females. Smith says she was granted tenure in 2010, but has been repeatedly turned down for promotion to full professor ever since, starting that same year.
Smith's complaint says that an administrator "sabotaged" her promotion by replacing the good recommendations in her file with bad ones and then called other university officials to further torpedo any promotion. She says her treatment was in part retaliation for submitting public record requests to the school for professor-pay information.
Her complaint also reveals she lodged a workplace-violence complaint against the same administrator, saying that person "made some threatening comments about her." Smith's complaint quotes from a September 2012 ABA report on the law school that cited faculty concerns about an "inhospitable environment for women, lesbians and gay faculty members."
- ABA Journal, Pay Discrimination Alleged in Prof's Suit Against FAMU Law School
- Tallahassee Democrat, Professor Files Gender-discrimination Suit Against FAMU
August 7, 2014 in Legal Education | Permalink | Comments (4)
Nebraska 'Sovereign Citizen' Convicted of Filing False Liens Against Federal Officials and Federal Tax Crimes
U.S. Department of Justice press release, Nebraska "Sovereign Citizen" Convicted of Filing False Liens Against Federal Officials and Federal Tax Crimes:
A federal jury in Omaha, Nebraska, found Donna Marie Kozak guilty on Friday of conspiracy to file and filing false liens against two U.S. District Court judges, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Nebraska, two Assistant U.S. Attorneys and an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) special agent, the Justice Department announced.
The federal jury also convicted Kozak of filing a false claim against the United States for $660,000 and for corruptly endeavoring to obstruct the due administration of the internal revenue laws. Kozak was remanded into custody pending sentencing. The maximum prison term for each false lien charge is 10 years, five years for the false claim charge and three years for the obstructing the IRS charge. Many of the offenses have an additional 10 years of potential imprisonment because they were committed while Kozak was on pretrial release.
Based on the evidence introduced at trial and court filings, Kozak, a former member of the so-called sovereign citizen group "Republic for the united States of America," engaged in a conspiracy to retaliate against federal officials involved in the criminal investigation and prosecution of David and Bernita Kleensang, associates of Kozak who were convicted of federal tax crimes in 2012. Kozak initially retaliated against the federal judge who presided over the Kleensang trial by filing a false lien against her for $19 million with the Boyd County, Nebraska, clerk's office. After a federal grand jury indicted Kozak for filing the false lien and for federal tax crimes, she filed five $18 million false liens against federal officials at the Washington County, Nebraska, register of deeds office while on pretrial release.
The evidence introduced at trial and court filings also showed that since the late 1990s, Kozak has engaged in a long series of fraudulent schemes to obstruct the internal revenue laws. These included placing her property in sham trusts, establishing a sham charitable foundation, sending harassing correspondence to IRS employees and filing bogus tax returns, trust returns, private-foundation returns and other false documents with the IRS. In 2008, she filed a tax return based on fictitious income and tax withholdings on Form 1099-OID statements that claimed a refund of $660,000.
Above the Law, Tax Fraud, Tax Protestors, and the Most Awesome Willfulness Doctrine in Federal Criminal Law Today
August 7, 2014 in IRS News, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Taylor: Closing the Gap Between Private Letter Rulings and Regulations
Willard Taylor (Sullivan & Cromwell & NYU), Closing the Gap Between Private Letter Rulings and Regulations, 144 Tax Notes 597 (Aug. 4, 2014):
In this article, Taylor summarizes and comments on proposed regulations that would redefine real property for real estate investment trusts, and he argues that there should be more (and earlier) guidance on these and similar issues to close the gap between private letter rulings and published guidance affecting REITs and publicly traded partnerships in the natural resources sector.
August 7, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax, Tax Analysts | Permalink | Comments (0)
Seto Reviews Tahk's Public Choice Theory & Earmarked Taxes
Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.), An Empirical Test of Public Choice Theory (Jotwell) (reviewing Susannah Camic Tahk (Wisconsin), Public Choice Theory & Earmarked Taxes, 68 Tax L. Rev. ___ (2015)):
In 1980, James Q. Wilson, in The Politics of Regulation, predicted that laws with diffuse costs and concentrated benefits would be relatively easy to enact, but that laws with concentrated costs and diffuse benefits would be relatively hard to enact and, once enacted, hard to maintain. This hypothesis, one of the pillars of public choice theory, has long been asserted without empirical verification. ... In Public Choice Theory & Earmarked Taxes, Susannah Camic Tahk provides the first rigorous empirical support for Wilson's hypothesis.
Her study explores the histories of 1497 state-level earmarked taxes between 1997 and 2005. Earmarked taxes, in general, produce more concentrated benefits than taxes the proceeds of which flow into a state's general fund. Thus, we would expect earmarked taxes to perform strongly as revenue generators. And, indeed, Tahk finds that the earmarked taxes in her sample raised 58.39% more revenue in 2005 than in 1997—a larger percentage increase than any major federal tax over the same period. ...
It is hard to overstate the importance of this accomplishment.
August 7, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (1)
Death of Cynthia Beerbower
Dayton Daily News Obituary:
Cynthia Gibson Beerbower passed away on July 26, 2014, in her South Kensington home in London. She was 65. ...
Cynthia received her BA, magna cum laude, from Mount Holyoke College in 1971, her JD from Boston University Law School in 1974 and her LLB from the University of Cambridge in 1976. At Cambridge, she was a member of Newnham College. She married John E. Beerbower in 1971. John, a 1966 graduate of Oakwood High School and also a panelist of the Dayton Daily News Youth Forum the year ahead of Cynthia, became a partner at the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York City in 1980.
After admission to the New York Bar, Cynthia was an associate at the New York City law firm of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, where she was elected a partner in 1981. She specialized in tax. At the time, she was one of only a handful of women partners at Wall Street law firms. In 1993, she joined the first Clinton administration, serving first as International Tax Counsel under Secretary Lloyd Benson and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy under Secretary Robert Rubin. She left government service in late 1996.
August 7, 2014 in IRS News, Obituaries, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Cooper & Ivimey: 2013 Developments in Connecticut Trusts & Estates Law
Jeffrey A. Cooper (Quinnipiac) & John R. Ivimey (Reid and Riege, Hartford), 2013 Developments in Connecticut Estate and Probate Law, 88 Conn. Bar J. ___ (2014):
This Article provides a summary of recent developments impacting Connecticut estate planning and probate practice. Part I discusses 2013 legislative developments. Part II surveys selected 2013 case law relevant to the field.
August 7, 2014 in Scholarship, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
The IRS Scandal, Day 455
National Review: No, the IRS Did Not Target Progressives Like It Targeted Conservatives:
NPR's politics blog has published a chart — compiled from a House Ways and Means staff analysis — of the different levels of IRS targeting between conservative and progressive groups. Bottom line? Far more conservative groups faced IRS scrutiny, they faced more questions, and were approved at a much lower rate than progressives. The chart is based on the IRS's now-discredited "BOLO" (be on the lookout) lists.
August 7, 2014 in IRS News, IRS Scandal, Tax | Permalink | Comments (0)
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Record Numbers of Americans Are Renouncing Their U.S. Citizenship
International Tax Blog: 2014 Second Quarter Published Expatriates, by Andrew Mitchel:
Today the Treasury Department published the names of individuals who renounced their U.S. citizenship or terminated their long-term U.S. residency ("expatriated") during the second quarter of 2014. The number of published expatriates for the quarter was 576. The number of published expatriates for the first half of 2014 has been 1,577 (1,001 + 576). Last year there was a record setting 2,999 published expatriates.
- Bloomberg, Americans Give Up Passports as Asset-Disclosure Rules Start
- Forbes, Many Americans Renounce Citizenship, Hitting New Record
(Hat Tip: Laura Saunders.)
August 6, 2014 in Tax | Permalink | Comments (3)


text:
About the Book
The principles of NLP can seem daunting and the jargon can be hard to decipher–what is meant by rapport, changing emotional states, modelling, the conscious and unconscious? This book unpicks the jargon and makes the subject accessible for both novices and experienced NLP enthusiasts alike.
The pocket workbook-style makes it easy to develop your communication skills at any time with quick exercises, activities and techniques. All you need is a pencil.
Fully illustrated throughout, including a clear introductory section explaining the basics of NLP as well as an extensive glossary for reference this is the ideal practical guide to help you build upon and practise your communication strategies at your own pace.
Educator and Librarian Resources
Critical Praise
. —
Product Details
- Imprint: Collins
- On Sale: 01/03/2013
- Pages: 192
- List Price: 6.95 USD
- BISAC1: Health & personal development / Popular psychology
- BISAC2: Undefined Category
- BISAC3: Undefined Category

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Hit Musical Comedy The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
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Reviews & Ratings
Featured review from Bill Dollear
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The seats could not have been better, directly in the center. Thank you Goldstar. and, this is the second time I have seen th 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee. Both were great. Lots of laughs.
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A very enjoyable evening. The actors are fantastic.
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Not sure I would like it but this young cast (many were celebrating their debut at Drury Lane) soon won me over. Funny, Good singing. A very pleasant afternoon.


text:
The Chicago Way: Judgeships for Demcare votes?
There are no coincidences in Obama world, I've joked many times on this blog.
This one looks like a quid pro quo, smells like a quid pro quo, and quacks like a quid pro quo:
Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he's obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson's brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Let us consider the possibility, for a brief moment, that it is merely coincidence.
Is the White House so fantastically blind and tone-deaf that it failed to detect the blood-red flags and blaring alarm bells that Scott Matheson's judicial nomination would raise coming on the very day President Obama is wooing his brother, Jim?
Incorrigibly corrupt or incorrigibly stupid. Take your pick.
Allahpundit reminds us of Obama's words this afternoon: "I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform."
Whatever it takes: Borrow, bully, bribe.
It's the Chicago Way. It's the Demcare way. And it stinks to high heaven.
GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann calls for an investigation: "What in the world is going on in the White House?"
The Hunter Biden Chronicles
October 22, 2014 12:36 AM by Michelle Malkin
Paging Sheriff Joe! Company co-owned by husband of Sen. Kay Hagan allegedly kept unspent stimulus money
October 14, 2014 10:35 AM by Doug Powers
Paging Eric 'vote fraud doesn't exist' Holder
September 30, 2014 10:44 AM by Doug Powers
Help wanted: Obama admin seeks Chief Corruption Smidgenizer; Must be able to start before November
September 25, 2014 05:36 PM by Doug Powers
Former State Department diplomat alleges effort to scrub damaging Benghazi docs
September 16, 2014 09:57 AM by Doug Powers
Categories: Al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Corruption, Democrats, Feature Story


text:
Have you found anything further about these people in the past four years. I find a Daniel Kitch on the 1880 census in Huntington County, whose mother was supposedly named Susanna Pressel, from York County, Pa.
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text:
A tense calm returned to the streets of Tunis on Saturday morning following clashes which marred Friday's funeral of murdered opposition leader Chokri Belaid.
One prominent newspaper called his burial a "funeral of wrath". His supporters hold the ruling Islamist Ennahda party responsible for his death – a charge it denies.
It called for a rally on Saturday afternoon in defence of the National Constituent Assembly and against political violence.
The army has remained deployed around the Tunisian capital amid fears of further violence.
The Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali has repeated his offer to replace his government with technocrats and call early elections.
Hsouna Ellouz, a 63-year-old Tunis resident, said:
"I hope that the modification of the government can calm the tensions that are here in Tunisia."
A young woman added: "Tunisia is not the same anymore, this is unfortunate and frankly I cry when I see Tunisia in this situation."
Hundreds of thousands of Tunisians thronged the Jellaz cemetery in a Tunis suburb on Friday for the funeral.
There were chants of anti-government slogans. Chokri Belaid was a leading critic of governing Islamists and had accused them of attacks on opposition figures.
The interior ministry said 132 people arrested during the clashes were being questioned to see whether a particular group was behind the violence.
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