Tuesday, July 6, 2004

SUNY-Buffalo alumni have raised a $75,000 endowment fund to honor retired Tax Prof Louis Del Cotto, who taught at the school for over 40 years. The Louis Del Cotto Fund for Excellence in Tax and Tax-Related Studies will support lectures by visiting tax faculty and practitioners, research by tax faculty, and scholarships for students intending to pursue tax careers. For more details, see here.

Professor Del Cotto is perhaps best well known for his two influential articles on Crane and Kirby Lumber:

• Basis and Amount Realized Under Crane: A Current View of Some Tax Effects in Mortgage Financing, 118 U. Pa. L. Rev. 69 (1969)
• Debt Discharge Income: Kirby Lumber Co. Revisited Under the “Transactional Equity” Rule of Hillsboro, 38 Buff. L. Rev. 777 (1990)

Professor Del Cotto’s Penn article was cited by the Supreme Court in Commissioner v. Tufts, and greatly influenced the chapters on Kirby Lumber and Crane in our Tax Stories book on the ten leading income tax cases.