This week, Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Daniel J. Hemel (NYU; Google Scholar), Phaseouts, 74 Tax L. Rev. __ (2024): Since the transition from class tax to mass tax in the Second World War, the U.S. income tax system has applied income-based limitations to tax expenditures. In Phaseouts, Daniel Hemel explores why…

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This week, Blaine Saito (Ohio State; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis; Google Scholar), Internal Revenue's External Borders, 112 Calif. L. Rev __ (2024). When asked does the IRS aid Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other authorities that seek to remove undocumented immigrants, my reflexive response is no. After all, that…

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This week, Michelle Layser (San Diego; Google Scholar) reviews Alex Zhang (Emory), Rethinking Eisner v. Macomber, and the Future of Structural Tax Reform, 92 Geo. Wash. L. Rev __ (2024). Eisner v. Macomber is a staple of introductory tax law courses. Like many professors, I assign Macomber to illustrate the realization requirement, while downplaying its…

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This week, Tracey Roberts (Cumberland; Google Scholar) reviews Amanda Parsons (Colorado; Google Scholar), Taxing Taxonomies. In  Taxing Taxonomies, Amanda Parsons introduces the concept of “legibility” into the analysis of tax rules. Joining H.L.A. Hart, Roscoe Pound, Roberto Unger, Ronald Dworkin, Duncan Kennedy, Louis Kaplow, and more recently, Lee Anne Fennell, Susie Morse, Dov Fox, and…

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This week, Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo; Google Scholar) reviews George K. Yin (Virginia), Of Blind Men, Elephants, and the Supreme Court's Misinterpretation of the FBAR Statute: The United States Supreme Court recently addressed whether a non‑willful penalty under FBAR accrues on a per‑report or per‑account basis in the case of Bittner v. United States. Bittner…

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This week, Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama; Google Scholar) reviews Doron Nissim (Columbia; Google Scholar), Normal Tax Rate: Can we predict a company’s effective tax rates? Estimating corporation tax rates is required for forecasting income taxes on operational profit, computing the aftertax cost of capital, estimating the income tax consequences of nonoperating and transitory items, and assessing anomalous…

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This week, David Elkins (Netanya; Google Scholar) reviews Mitchell Kane (NYU) & Adam Kern (NYU), The Use and Abuse of Location-Specific Rent, 76 Tax L. Rev. __ (2023). The authors of this week’s feature article begin with the premise that an ideal formula for allocating taxing rights among countries would be one that enables them to…

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This week, Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Kathleen Claussen (Georgetown; Google Scholar), Tax Intelligence, 72 Duke L.J. Online 155 (2023). The U.S. income tax system collects, alongside revenue, a vast trove of information about taxpayers’ assets, activities, and relationships. Kathleen Claussen, in a provocative essay, proposes that the federal government mobilize…

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This week, Blaine Saito (Northeastern; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Clint Wallace (South Carolina; Google Scholar), A Democratic Perspective on Tax Law, 98 Wash. L. Rev. __ (2023). Frequently, our tax discussion, and for that matter most of our legal-policy discourse, focuses on economics. In tax, we talk about efficiency often as the…

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This week, Michelle Layser (San Diego; Google Scholar) reviews John R. Brooks (Fordham; Google Scholar) and David Gamage (Indiana-Maurer; Google Scholar), Moore v. United States and the Original Meaning of Income.  One of the most fundamental concepts taught to income tax students is the realization requirement. In short, income generally is not subject to taxation…

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This week, Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo; Google Scholar) reviews Xuan-Thao Nguyen (Washington) and Jeffrey A. Maine (Maine), Crypto Losses 2024 U. Ill. L. Rev. __ . Recently the crypto industry has been hit hard by various market forces and scams, leaving investors with trillion-dollar losses. In January 2023, in response to confusion surrounding abandoned and…

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This week, Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Gregg D. Polsky (Georgia; Google Scholar) & Ethan Yale (Virginia; Google Scholar), A Critical Evaluation of the Qualified Small Business Stock Exclusion, 42 Va. Tax Rev. 353 (2023). After 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, some commentators predicted a renaissance in taxpayers’ use…

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This week, Blaine Saito (Northeastern; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Joshua D. Blank (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar) & Leigh Osofsky (North Carolina; Google Scholar), Automated Agencies, 107 Minn. L. Rev. 2114 (2023).  A lot of the news these days are around the rise of AI like ChatGPT. But already, we have weaker forms of virtual assistants. These…

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This week, Michelle Layser (San Diego) reviews Jay A. Soled (Rutgers; Google Scholar) and Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (UNC; Google Scholar), Predictive Analytics and the Tax Code, 51 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. __ (2023). I am obsessed with ChatGPT. If you haven’t seen it yet, I suggest that you finish grading and then go check…

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This week, Tracey Roberts (Cumberland; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Kimberly Clausing (UCLA; Google Scholar), Capital Taxation and Market Power. On Tuesday the Wall Street Journal reported that Americans are facing continued price increases, not because of pandemic-related supply-chain disruptions or because of rising energy costs following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but…

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