Author: Paul Caron
-
Leyden: What ‘Up in the Air’ Can Teach the IRS
Diana Leyden (UConn) has published What 'Up in the Air' Can Teach the IRS, 127 Tax Notes 93 (Apr. 5, 2010). Here is the abstract: George Clooney and Up in the Air have a lot to tell the IRS about the downside of reducing face-to-face contact. Efficiency and savings are often illusory when it comes to computerizing
-
Galle & Utset: Is Cap & Trade Fair to the Poor?
Brian D. Galle (Florida State; moving to Boston College) & Manuel A. Utset (Florida State) have posted Is Cap & Trade Fair to the Poor? Short-Sighted Households and the Timing of Consumption Taxes, 78 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. ___ (2010), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Many forms of consumption tax, including recent proposals to impose a
-
Boothe-Perry: The Legal Academy and Professionalism
Nicola A. Boothe-Perry (Florida A&M) has published Professionalism's Triple E Query: Is Legal Academia Enhancing, Eluding, or Evading Professionalism?, 55 Loyola L. Rev. 517 (2009). Here is the abstract: There is increasing discomfort in the legal community regarding the state of professionalism exhibited by members of the profession, and the widely held public perception of the
-
Slemrod Presents Buenas Notches and Car Notches Today at Penn
Joel Slemrod (University of Michigan, Ross School of Business) presents Buenas Notches: Lines and Notches in Tax System Design and Car Notches at Pennsylvania today as part of its Center for Tax Law and Policy Seminar Series hosted by Chris William Sanchirico and Reed Shuldiner. Here is the Conclusion of Buenas Notches: The primary objectives of this paper are to
-
NY Times: Treasury Department Plans to Review TurboTax After Retired Federal Worker Finds Double Deduction in Software
New York Times, Taxpayer Could Have Kept the $600, but He Put His Country First: A flaw in the most recent version of TurboTax, the nation’s most popular tax-preparation software, may have caused thousands of retired federal employees to overstate their medical deductions and unwittingly underpay the IRS, according to federal officials. The program error
-
Avi-Yonah: We Should Tax Banks on Risky Debt
National Law Journal op-ed, We Should Tax Banks on Risky Debts, by Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan): The Obama administration's proposal to tax banks on their risky debts has drawn predictable fire from banks and Republicans. They argue that such a tax is misguided because it uses the power of taxation for regulatory ends rather than to
-
Dozing Law Prof Gets Left on Plane, Wakes Up in Hangar
Chronicle of Higher Education, Law Prof Gets Left on the Plane: The head of sports law at England's Staffordshire University is fuming at Air Canada for leaving him asleep on a plane last month. The professor, Kris Lines, says he awoke in a hangar 90 minutes after the flight landed at Vancouver International Airport. "The
-
WaPo: The Rich Call for Higher Taxes — On Themselves
Washington Post, For the Wealthy, Less in Taxes Is Not Always More, by Dana Milbank: You thought only conservatives got mad about taxes? Tea partiers, eat your hearts out: A group of liberals got together Tuesday and proved that they, too, can have a tax rebellion. But theirs is a little bit different: They want
-
Report: Faculty Comfortable With Online Research, Not Online Publishing
Ithaka has released Faculty Survey 2009:Strategic Insights for Librarians, Publishers, and Societies, with these three key findings: Scholarly Workflows and the Evolving Role of the Academic Library: Basic scholarly information use practices have shifted rapidly in recent years and, as a result, the academic library is increasingly being disintermediated from the discovery process, risking irrelevance in
-
Is There a Religious Exemption to ObamaCare (Like Social Security)?
Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer (Notre Dame): Unless I missed it, there does not appear to be an exemption for churches or other religious organizations from the requirement that large employers provide an opportunity to enroll in the minimum required health insurance. This requirement is found in new I.R.C. § 4980H, enacted by § 1513 of the Patient Protection
-
Tax Teachers of the Year
The AALS has announced that the following Tax Profs have been selected as the Teachers of the Year for 2008-09 at their respective law schools: Mitchell M. Gans (Hofstra) Thomas D. Griffith (USC) Lily Kahng (Seattle) Kirk J. Stark (UCLA) Lee-ford Tritt (Florida) Larry D. Ward (Iowa)
-
National Tax Journal Publishes New Issue
The National Tax Journal has published Vol. 63, No. 1 (March 2010): Govind S. Iyer (University of North Texas, College of Business), Philip M.J. Reckers (Arizona State University, W.P. Carey School of Business) & Debra L. Sanders Washington State University, Department of Accounting), Increasing Tax Compliance in Washington State: A Field Experiment, 63 Nat'l Tax J. 7 (2010)
-
Moin: Guarantee Fees and Container Corp.
Andrew D. Moin (Sullivan & Cromwell, New York) has posted Guarantee Fees and Sourcing by Analogy: The Curious Case of Container Corporation on SSRN. Here is the abstract: The proper sourcing of payments to guarantee another’s obligations has long been ambiguous. The Tax Court, in its recent decision in Container Corp. v. Commissioner [134 T.C. No.
-
Shanske: An Agenda for a California Constitutional Convention?
Darien Shanske (UC-Hastings) has posted What Would the Delegates Talk About? A Rough Agenda for a Constitutional Convention, 38 Hastings Const. L.Q. ___ (2010), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This short article outlines a possible agenda for a California Constitutional Convention. The goal is not to achieve originality in the substance of each proposal so
-
Galle: The Constitutionality of Health Care Reform
Brian Galle (Florida State; moving to Boston College) has posted Conditional Taxation and the Constitutionality of Health Care Reform, 119 Yale L.J. Online ___ (2010), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This brief essay argues that the recently-enacted tax on individuals who fail to purchase health insurance is constitutional. Contrary to the claims of more
-
Tax Implications of Visits and Sabbaticals
John A. Miller (Idaho) & Robert Pikowsky (Georgia Institute of Technology) have posted Taxation and the Sabbatical: Doctrine, Planning, and Policy, 63 Tax Law. ___ (2010), on SSRN. Here is the abstract: It is common practice for faculty who go on sabbatical leave to take up temporary residence at another location during the sabbatical period.
-
Kirsch Presents The Role of Physical Presence in the Taxation of Cross-Border Personal Services Today at Michigan
Michael Kirsch (Notre Dame) presents The Role of Physical Presence in the Taxation of Cross-Border Personal Services, 51 B.C. L. Rev. ___ (2010), at Michigan today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series coordinated by Reuven S. Avi-Yonah. Here is the abstract: This Article addresses the role of physical presence in the taxation of cross-border personal services. For much
-
Why I Lost My Secretary: The Effect of Endowment Shocks on University Operations
Jeffrey Brown (University of Illinois, Department of Finance), Stephen G. Dimmock (Michigan State University, Department of Finance), Jun-Koo Kang (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) & Scott Weisbenner (University of Illinois, Department of Finance) have posted Why I Lost My Secretary: The Effect of Endowment Shocks on University Operations on NBER. Here is the abstract: Over the past
-
Chronicle: Outsourcing Grading
Chronicle of Higher Education, Some Papers Are Uploaded to Bangalore to Be Graded: Lori Whisenant knows that one way to improve the writing skills of undergraduates is to make them write more. But as each student in her course in business law and ethics at the University of Houston began to crank out—often awkwardly—nearly 5,000
-
Howie Carr: Why Don’t Pro-Tax Taxpayers Pay More Taxes?
Boston Herald, Moonbats Wing it When it Comes to Paying More Taxes, by Howie Carr: Hey moonbats of Massachusetts — why won’t you pay more taxes? You’re always lecturing the rest of us how taxes are an investment in the future, the price we pay for civilization, etc., etc. But when given the option of
-
SSRN Tax Professor Rankings
SSRN has updated its monthly rankings of 629 American and international law school faculties and 1,500 law professors by (among other things) the number of paper downloads from the SSRN data base. Here is the new list (through March 18, 2010) of the Top 25 U.S. Tax Professors in two of the SSRN categories: all-time downloads
-
The U.S. International Tax System at a Crossroads
Barbara Angus, Tom Neubig, Eric Solomon & Mark Weinberger (all of Ernst & Young and former officials in the Treasury Department's Office of Tax Policy) have published The U.S. International Tax System at a Crossroads, 127 Tax Notes 45 (Apr. 5, 2010). Here is the abstract: In a special report published exclusively in Tax Notes, four senior tax leaders
-
A Harvard 3L Refuses to Contribute to His Class Gift
A Harvard 3L has refused a request to donate $20.10 for his class gift for a variety of reasons, including: "[I]nstead of giving to some meaningless class gift where most of the money will surely be wasted, I think the best thing I can do is give nothing so that tuition will be raised and
-
WSJ: More Americans Are Fleeing U.S. to Avoid Rising Taxes, More Aggressive IRS
Wall Street Journal, More Americans Give Up Citizenship As IRS Gets Aggressive Overseas, by Martin Vaughan: The number of American citizens and green-card holders severing their ties with the U.S. soared in the latter part of 2009, amid looming U.S. tax increases and a more aggressive posture by the Internal Revenue Service towards Americans living
-
Bloomberg: Wealthy Lack Loopholes to Avoid Obama’s Tax Increases
Bloomberg, Wealthy Lack Loopholes to Offset Obama’s Taxes: Economist Arthur Laffer, 69, took a radical approach to rising income taxes four years ago: he moved to Tennessee from California Laffer, who was an adviser to former President Ronald Reagan, said he’ll stay in Nashville, Tennessee, which doesn’t tax earned income, offsetting U.S. tax rates that