Tax Analysts today named its second annual person of the year: Heather Maloy, Commissioner, IRS Large Business and International Division Commissioner (Person of the Year, 130 Tax Notes 7 (Jan. 3, 2011)):

2010 was no ordinary year for taxpayers and practitioners. In fact, it might be called the year of tax administration. Enforcement was the theme of 2009, when the UBS scandal and the campaign against offshore tax evasion dominated the IRS’s agenda. Enforcement didn’t completely disappear in 2010, but it did cede the limelight to more administrative issues, including the IRS’s controversial uncertain tax position (UTP) reporting proposal and its attempt to register and regulate all return preparers. Even the codification of the economic substance doctrine and the IRS’s approach to guidance on that topic can be viewed as an administrative issue.

The IRS also restructured the Large and Midsize Business Division, renaming it the Large Business and International Division. That occurred following the passage of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which included new reporting and withholding requirements.

None of those changes were lost on practitioners, and the debate over the UTP program and preparer registration initiative dominated tax conferences and forums throughout the year. The former was heavily criticized all year, while the latter elicited a more measured (and mixed) reaction. At the front lines defending the IRS’s UTP program and its policy on guidance was Tax Notes 2010 person of the year: Heather Maloy, the commissioner of LB&I.

Tax Prof Kristin Hickman (Minnesota) was one of nine other notable tax folks who were considered for Person of the Year:

If a labor of love can be counted by the number of hours spent educating courts in a non-party capacity, then 2010 was a banner year for University of Minnesota Law Prof. Kristin E. Hickman. Hickman’s academic specialty — the intersection of administrative law and the tax code — has become an area of increasing focus for courts. In judicial proceedings at all levels of the federal court system, taxpayers and the government have been arguing over the scope and form of IRS guidance on several important issues.

A prominent question courts grapple with is what level of deference to give the government’s administrative rulemaking. Hickman’s scholarly writings, which have netted her the distinction as a leading academic in the field, have proved influential as judges sort through decades of conflicting and sometimes misleading case precedent on the issue of statutory interpretation. She participated in several cases in 2010 by filing amicus briefs espousing functional adherence to the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act in Neiland Cohen in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and the proper scope of judicial deference for regulations in Mayo before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2010 Hickman was appointed the Julius E. Davis chair in law and coauthored a new casebook, Federal Administrative Law, Cases and Materials, with Richard J. Pierce Jr.

The other eight nominees were:

• Caroline Ciraolo (Partner, Rosenberg Martin Greenberg LLP, Baltimore)
• G. Michelle Ferreira (Partner, Greenberg Traurig LLP, San Francisco)
• Karen Hawkins (Director, IRS Office of Professional Responsibility)
• Lisa A. Levy (Partner, Fried Frank LLP, New York)
• Stuart Mann (Program Manager, IRS Foreign Payments and Information Reporting Group)
• Paul McKenney (Partner, Varnum, Riddering, Schmidt & Howlett LLP, Grand Rapids)
• Hans-Rudolf Merz (Head, Switzerland’s Federal Department of Finance)
• Paul Ryan (Chair, House Budget Committee)

For Tax Analysts’ 2010 Person of the Year (and the nine nominees), see here. 

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