Saturday, July 3, 2004 Showing once again that there is a tax angle to virtually everything, Laurence Tribe (Harvard) in an op-ed in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal compares Iraqi torture to tax: “[America’s world image is hurt] by Justice Department memoranda cynically dissecting the laws banning torture with a sensibility better suited to the parsing…

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Friday, July 2, 2004 The New York Post reports that Madonna, a devout follower of Kabbalah, is donating blocks of the best seats on her current concert tour to local Kabbalah centers so that her co-religionists can come and see her gratis, filling the front rows with like-minded folowers wearing red string bracelets. But the…

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Thursday, June 24, 2004 As Tax Prof Jack Bogdanski departs the blogosphere, we welcome to the ranks our newest blogger: President Clinton. Check out his blog here. (P.S. It’s a parody.)

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Friday, June 11, 2004 Who is this non-tax professor at Harvard? • From Brian Leiter: “Harvard Law School’s best-known and least accomplished faculty member. (Folks outside law don’t seem to know this, but [name] hasn’t made a substantive contribution to legal scholarship in two decades or more.)” • From Richard Posner: “Although [he/she] is a…

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Friday, June 11, 2004 Forgive the non-tax related nature of this post, but as one who has been to many law firm and law school retreats, the report of this Scotland law firm retreat gone awry (via lawschool.com) caught my eye: One of Edinburgh’s most prestigious legal firms has launched an investigation after trouble flared…

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Sunday, May 30, 2004 I saw The Day After Tomorrow with my 13-year old son. It is one of those movies that is so cheesy that, if you are in the right mood, can be a lot of fun. My favorite line was when Dennis Quaid’s son and others are trying to survive the coming…

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Tuesday, May 25, 2004 For a copy of the 106-page complaint filed by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer seeking to recover over $100 million of past compensation paid to former NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso, see here. For Mr. Grasso’s defense, see here. For some of the many press reports about the complaint, see here,…

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Sunday, May 23, 2004 Following up on last month’s post about George Yin’s article on the effective tax rates of the companies in the S&P 500: The Rocky Mountain News has an interesting article about the amount of corporate taxes paid by Aldolph Coors Co. in recent years: Year……Federal Income Tax…….State Income Tax……..Gross Profit………Gross Revenues…

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Friday, May 14, 2004 Following up on posts about the tax consequences of the Friends finale and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, I offer here a TaxProf Blog guide to tax issues raised in the Frasier finale last night: • Head of household filing status for Frasier while his father Martin lived with him? • Marriage…

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Wednesday, May 12, 2004 Other blogs have followed up on Monday’s TaxProf Blog piece on the tax consequences of ABC’s plan to help the recipients of home makeovers avoid tax on the value of the improvements by characterizing the items as short term rental payments within the meaning of Code section 280A(g): • The Volokh…

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Monday, May 10, 2004 This week’s Newsweek has a great article on the tax consequences of one of the hottest reality TV show crazes: the home-makeover. It is well-settled that TV game show participants must report their winnings as income, although valuation of in-kind prizes often proves troublesome. In one of my last cases in…

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Friday, May 7, 2004 There was an interesting discussion today on the TaxProf Discussion Group about the tax issues raised in the NBC television show “Friends” finale last night. (OK, it is Friday and we will do anything to avoid having to grade another exam!). Ted Seto (Loyola-L.A.) flagged the most tax issues regarding Chandler,…

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Wednesday, April 28, 2004 A cafeteria worker in Pennsylvania with less than $5,000 of annual income managed to get a $2.1 million tax refund check from the IRS. She used the social security number of a real Hawaiian princess (Abigail Kawananakoa) to get a refund check from money the princess deposited to cover her own…

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