Author: Paul Caron
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CNN: ObamaCare’s Massive, Hidden Tax Change
CNN, Health Care Law's Massive, Hidden Tax Change: An all-but-overlooked provision of the health reform law is threatening to swamp U.S. businesses with a flood of new tax paperwork. Section 9006 of the health care bill — just a few lines buried in the 2,409-page document — mandates that beginning in 2012 all companies will
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Hotel WiFi Rankings
One of my biggest travel peeves is that the budget hotels I typically use on personal travel (e.g., Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Residence Inn) provide free WiFi access, while pricier hotels I am forced to use on business travel charge for WiFi — a recent egregious example is the Omaha Hilton ($14.95 per day). HotelChatter has published its Annual WiFi Report 2010: Best
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Lawksy: Tax Can Be Just as Emotional as Sports
Sarah B. Lawsky (George Washington; moving to UC-Irvine) offers this video repudiation of yesterday's post, Celebrating Athletes and Tax Lawyers, which included this excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article: One of the major differences between sports and tax law is raw emotion. Sports has it. Tax law is sorely lacking in it. As a result, tax
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Southern Federal Tax Institute Offers to Comp Tax Profs
The Board of Trustees of the Southern Federal Tax Institute invites all full-time tax professors to attend the Forty-Fifth Annual Institute in Atlanta on September 27 – October 1, 2010 as guests of the Trustees (the $895 registration fee will be waived). If you would like to attend, email here. If you would like a CD-Rom of this
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Wiedenbeck: ERISA — Principles of Employee Benefit Law
Peter J. Wiedenbeck (Washington University) has published ERISA: Principles of Employee Benefit Law (Oxford University Press, 2010): ERISA: Principles of Employee Benefit Law highlights the common themes, central principles, and competing policies of employee benefit law in a compact, accessible work. Case law interpreting and applying ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974,
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Faculty Pensions on the Chopping Block
Inside Higher Ed, Tough Times For Nest Eggs: At a time when tenure track jobs are drying up and faculty pay is mostly stagnant, some fear the latest threat to the professoriate will actually be realized years from now. As budgets tighten in states across the country, a number of legislatures are re-evaluating the popular
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Brunson: Rethinking Public Charities and Political Speech
Samuel D. Brunson (Loyola-Chicago) has posted Rethinking Public Charities and Political Speech on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In order to maintain their tax-exempt status, public charities are forbidden from campaigning for or against candidates for office. The ban originated in 1954, but was created from whole cloth, with no debate and no legislative history.
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WSJ: Criminal Tax Lawyers Accuse IRS of ‘Double-Cross’ in Prosecuting Taxpayers Who Voluntarily Disclosed Overseas Accounts
Wall Street Journal, IRS Faulted for Prosecuting Confessed Evaders of Taxes, by Laura Saunders & Arden Dale: An influential group of criminal tax lawyers is sharply criticizing the IRS for its decision to prosecute some people who came forward to confess that they had used foreign bank accounts to evade taxes, saying it goes against
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TRAC Accuses Treasury Department of Ignoring FOIA
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University today released a report, Treasury Ignores FOIA Despite Obama Open Government Initiative: The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) has accused the Treasury Department's Disclosure Services — the department unit that processes Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests — of secretly withholding government records about how it handles FOIA
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‘Right Now Is the Worst Time in History to be Graduating From Law School’
Wall Street Journal Law Blog, Were the ‘Good Old Days’ of BigLaw Better?, by Ashby Jones: If anyone out there had any question that now — right now — is just the worst time in history to be graduating from law school, take a look at this article written by Mayer Brown lawyer Robert Helman
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WSJ: Celebrating Athletes and Tax Lawyers
Wall Street Journal, The Hurt-Yourself Hall of Fame: Why Athletes Who Get Injured While Simply Showing Emotion Deserve Our Praise, Not Scorn, by Reed Albergotti: One of the major differences between sports and tax law is raw emotion. Sports has it. Tax law is sorely lacking in it. As a result, tax law will never
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Do Tenure Buyouts Warrant Unique Employment Tax Treatment?
Robert J. Tepper & Craig G. White (both of University of New Mexico, Anderson School of Management) have published Academic Early Retirement: Do Tenure Buyout Payments Warrant Unique Employment Tax Treatment?, 35 Oklahoma City U. L. Rev. 169 (2010). Here is the Conclusion: Generally, severance payments are treated as “wages” that result from the employer-employee relationship.
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Partnership Disguised Sales and G-1 Holdings
Blake D. Rubin, Andrea Macintosh Whiteway & Jon G. Finkelstein (all of McDermott Will & Emery, Washington, D.C.) have published Partnership Disguised Sales: G-1 Holdings Misses the Mark. 127 Tax Notes 553 (May 3, 2010). Here is the abstract: The authors analyze a recent unpublished district court opinion, which, in dicta, applies the partnership disguished sale of property
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Americans Are Ratting Out Their Neighbors to the IRS at a Record Pace to Reap Cash Whistleblower Rewards
Bloomberg, Americans Seeking Reward Money Inform IRS on Others, by Ryan J. Donmoyer: Americans seeking reward money are turning in neighbors, clients and employers they suspect of cheating on taxes to the IRS at a rate of nearly eight per day, the director of the agency’s whistleblower program said. Steve Whitlock, the director, told an
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NY Times: Museum of Sex Provides Tax Deductions for Erotic Donations
New York Times, Tax Break for Erotica? A Museum Favors It, by Robin Pogrebin: A few years ago, when Ann Marie Coughlin, a New York dominatrix also known as Domina M., donated her brushed-steel bondage machine to be shown at the Museum of Sex, many people benefited. Visitors to that Manhattan museum got a chance
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Segal Posts Tax Papers on SSRN
Terry Segal (Suffolk) has posted two tax papers on SSRN: Advice for Taxpayers with Undeclared UBS Swiss Bank Accounts As IRS Lifts Cloak of Swiss Bank Secrecy, Advice for Americans with Undeclared UBS Accounts
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Zolt Presents Charitable Deductions for Foreign Assistance Today at Hebrew University
Eric M. Zolt (UCLA) presents Charitable Deductions for Foreign Assistance at Hebrew University Law School today as part of its Tax Law & Policy Colloquium. Here is the abstract: Foreign charitable activities have increased substantially over the last 10 years. Large U.S. charitable foundations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, spend billions of dollars in
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Jones & Roberson: Can Treasury Overrule INDOPCO?
Roger J. Jones & Andrew R. Roberson (both of Latham & Watkins, Chicago) have published To What Extent Can Treasury Abandon or Overrule INDOPCO?, 127 Tax Notes 547 (May 3, 2010). Here is the Conclusion: Whether Brand X authorizes Treasury to overrule or disregard Supreme Court or other judicial precedent is the subject of significant dispute. Not
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Blank Presents Tax Enforcement Publicity Peaks April 1-15 Today at the Birmingham Tax Forum
Joshua D. Blank (NYU) presents When Is Tax Enforcement Publicized?, 30 Va. Tax Rev. __ (2010) (with Daniel Z. Levin (Rutgers Business School)) today at the Birmingham Tax Forum in Birmingham, Alabama. Here is the abstract: Every spring, the federal government appears to deliver an abundance of announcements that describe criminal convictions and civil injunctions involving taxpayers who have
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More on the VAT
Edward A. Zelinsky (Cardozo), Against a VAT (Oxford University Press Blog): A federal value-added tax (VAT) is today’s magic bullet for slaying the federal budget deficit. A federal VAT would be a veritable cash cow, obviating the need for painful measures like serious spending reductions and middle class income tax hikes. A VAT would be more regressive
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Drennan: Surnamed Charitable Trusts: Immortality at Taxpayer Expense
William A. Drennan (Southern Illinois) has published Surnamed Charitable Trusts: Immortality at Taxpayer Expense, 61 Ala. L. Rev. 225 (2010). Here is the abstract: Charitable trust law authorizes surnamed trusts, and provides no convenient mechanism to force a name change even hundreds of years after the founder’s death. Tax law treats the use of a
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Caron: The Costs of Estate Tax Dithering
I have posted The Costs of Estate Tax DIthering — the TePoel Lecture and Keynote Address that I gave at Creighton University School of Law on April 16, 2010 as part of the Creighton Law Review symposium on Estate Planning: Moral, Ethical and Religious Perspectives. Here is the abstract: President Obama was widely criticized for “dithering” over
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Geistfeld on Taxing Punitive Damages, by Markel & Polsky
I previously blogged the forthcoming article by Dan Markel (Florida State) & Gregg Polsky (Florida State; moving to North Carolina), Taxing Punitive Damages, 96 Va. L. Rev. ___ (2010). Mark Geistfeld (NYU) critiques the article on our sister TortsProf Blog They make the nice point that if punitive damages are not deductible, then plaintiffs and defendants
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District Court Rejects FOCus Tax Shelter
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi on Friday rejected a KPMG-marketed “family office customized” (FOCus) tax shelter used to evade taxes on $18 million in capital gains through foreign currency straddles and a three-tiered partnership structure. Nevada Partners Fund LLC v. United States, Nos. 3:06cv379 to 3:06cv390 (S.D. Miss. Apr. 30, 2010): FOCus,
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ABA Tax Section Submits Comment Letters
The ABA Tax Section has submitted comment letters on: Corrections of Failures of Nonqualified Deferred Compensation Plans to Comply with § 409A(a) Proposed Regs on Allocation of Consideration and Allocation and Recovery of Basis in Transactions Involving Corporate Stock or Securities Proposed § 509(a)(3) Regs on Type III Supporting Organizations Notice 2008-115 Reporting and Wage Withholding Requirements with Respect to Amounts