This week, Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Israel Klein (Ariel University; Google Scholar), The Corporate Tax Paradox, 42 Va. Tax Rev. __ (2022). In The Corporate Tax Paradox, Israel Klein presents (and offers a resolution to) a puzzle: After the IRS began requiring certain corporate taxpayers to report uncertain tax…

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This week, Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by James Grimmelmann (Cornell; Google Scholar), Programming Languages and Law (2nd ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law, forthcoming 2022). Programming language and law are conceptually and methodologically similar. They both use words. Computer science and law are both linguistic professions whose practitioners…

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This week, Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama; Google Scholar) reviews Daniel Shaviro (NYU; Google Scholar), ‘Moralist’ Versus ‘Scientist’: Stanley Surrey and the Public Intellectual Practice of Tax Policy (July 2022). The dichotomy of tax—as pure scientific neutral field versus encompassing a moral and social agenda—received much attention with recent years’ renewed spotlight on critical tax theory. In…

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This week, David Elkins (Netanya, visiting NYU 2021-2023; Google Scholar) reviews a new paper by Daniel J. Hemel (NYU; Google Scholar), The Passthrough Entity Tax Scandal (2022). One of the more fascinating aspects of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act concerns the limitation on deducting state and local income taxes. Prior to the enactment of…

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This week, Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Linda Galler (Hofstra), Tax Opinion Policies and Procedures, 75 Tax Law. 443 (2022). In Tax Opinion Policies and Procedures, Linda Galler analyzes and discusses the results of a 2021 survey of tax professionals’ approaches to opinion practice. In this fourteen-question survey, the American…

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This week, Tracey Roberts (Cumberland; Google Scholar) reviews A Half Century with the Internal Revenue Code, The Memoirs of Stanley S. Surrey (Carolina Academic Press 2022), edited by Lawrence A. Zelenak (Duke) and Ajay K. Mehrotra (Northwestern; Google Scholar). Stanley Surrey devoted five decades to shaping and elucidating the structures of the income tax, to…

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This week, Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Utah, moving to Cardozo; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Steven A. Dean (Brooklyn), Filing While Black: The Casual Racism of the Tax Law, 2022 Utah L. Rev. __. In response to a growing recognition of the absence of demographic data in federal datasets, including tax data, President…

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This week, David Elkins (Netanya, visiting NYU 2021-2023; Google Scholar) reviews Noam Noked (Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK); Google Scholar) & Zachary Marcone (CUHK), International Response to the U.S. Tax Haven, 48 Yale J. Int’l L. ___ (2022): The term “tax haven” tends to evoke images of sparsely populated Caribbean islands with pristine beaches…

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This week, Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar) reviews new works by:  Benjamin Alarie (Toronto; Google Scholar) & Stefanie Di Giandomenico (Blue J Legal), Timing Is Everything: The Step Transaction Doctrine in GSS Holdings, 174 Tax Notes Fed. 1849 (Mar. 28, 2022) Benjamin Alarie (Toronto; Google Scholar) & Christopher Yan (Blue J Legal), Using Machine Learning…

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This week, Tracey Roberts (Cumberland; Google Scholar) reviews new works by: Jeremy Bearer-Friend (George Washington; Google Scholar) & Vanessa Williamson (Brookings; Google Scholar), Thomas Paine and Taxation as Freedom from Aristocracy, 26 Fla. Tax Rev. __ (2022) John R. Brooks (Fordham; Google Scholar) and David Gamage (Indiana; Google Scholar), Taxation and the Constitution, Reconsidered, 74…

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This week, Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Utah, moving to Cardozo; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Chris William Sanchirico (Penn; Google Scholar), A Game-theoretic Analysis of Global Minimum Tax Design (March 2022). In the globalized, open economy, multinational enterprises (MNEs) can easily shift their profits from high tax jurisdictions to low tax jurisdictions. Many…

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This week, Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama; Google Scholar) reviews Adam B. Thimmesch (Nebraska; Google Scholar), Tax, Incorporated: Dynamic Incorporation and the Modern Fiscal State, 53 Ariz. St. L. J. __ (2021): States’ fiscal stability is crucial to providing residents with health, economic security, and physical safety. Most states rely heavily on the personal income tax, which…

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This week, David Elkins (Netanya, visiting NYU 2021-2022; Google Scholar) reviews a new paper by Michael P. Devreux (Oxford; Google Scholar), John Vella (Oxford) & Heydon Wardell-Burrus (Oxford), Pillar 2: Rule Order, Incentives, and Tax Competition (2022). International taxation is undergoing a transformation the likes of which have not been seen for a century, responding…

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This week, Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Amanda Parsons (Columbia), Tax’s Digital Labor Dilemma, 71 Duke L.J. __ (2022). In Tax’s Digital Labor Dilemma, Amanda Parsons develops a compelling challenge to conventional frameworks for international tax reform by reconceptualizing traditional distinctions between consumers and workers in digital economy enterprises. Parsons…

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This week, Blaine Saito (Northeastern; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Tessa Davis (South Carolina), Taxing Choices, 15 Fla. Int'l U. L. Rev. __ (2022). Choice is often bandied about in tax discussion. Indeed, the very notion of marginal effects that taxation is based on the idea of either inducing or avoiding such inducement…

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This week, Tracey Roberts (Cumberland; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Michael Love (Berkeley), Where in the World Does Partnership Income Go? Evidence of a Growing Use of Tax Havens. In 2016, in The Hidden Wealth of Nations, UC Berkeley Associate Professor of Economics Gabriel Zucman quantified the amount of the world’s assets held…

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This week, Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Utah; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Alvin C. Warren Jr. (Harvard), Evaluating the Oxford Proposal for a Corporate Cash Flow Tax, 173 Tax Notes Fed. 1223 (Nov. 29, 2021).   Many tax commentators would remember the discourse on the proposed “destination-based cash flow tax (DBCFT)” during the…

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This week, Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama; Google Scholar) reviews Michelle D. Layser (Illinois; Google Scholar), Financing Affordable Housing Through Opportunity Funds, 19 Pitt. Tax Rev. __ (2022): Affordable housing is a national challenge, now more than ever. While the idea is not new, utilizing the tax system to incentivize creation of affordable housing has been endorsed…

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This week David Elkins (Netanya, visiting NYU 2021-2022; Google Scholar) reviews a new paper by Anthony C. Infanti (Pittsburgh; Google Scholar), Tax and Time: On the Use and Misuse of Legal Imagination (NYU Press 2022).  Time is one of the more perplexing phenomena of the universe. Astrophysicists distinguish between what they call “real time” (time…

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This week, Tracey Roberts (Cumberland; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Edward A. Zelinsky (Cardozo), Comments to the Department of Labor Proposed ERISA Regulations, “Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights,” amending and restating 29 CFR §2550.404a-1. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) protects retirement plan participants…

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This week, Blaine Saito (Northeastern; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Leandra Lederman (Indiana-Maurer; Google Scholar), Best Practices In Tax Rulings Transparency. Justice Brandeis once said that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Disclosure and transparency are often important for the legitimacy of government. In her article, Best Practices in Tax Rulings Transparency, Leandra Lederman…

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This week, Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Utah; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by Daniel J. Hemel (Chicago; Google Scholar) and Gregg D. Polsky (Georgia; Google Scholar), Taxing Buybacks, 38 Yale J. Reg. 246 (2021). Before the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the hottest topics in the U.S. capital market was the rise in the volume…

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