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Paul L. Caron
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Pepperdine Caruso
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  • Deanna Newton

    Repetti Presents “Private Equity, Health Calamity: How Our Tax Laws Aid Private Equity Investment in Hospitals and Nursing Homes” Today at Irvine

    James R. Repetti (Boston College) presents Private Equity, Health Calamity: How Our Tax Laws Aid Private Equity Investment in Hospitals and Nursing Homes at Irvine, as part of its Graduate Tax Policy Colloquium:

    The social welfare impact of investments by Private Equity funds (PEs) in various sectors of our economy is mixed due to the significant debt imposed on PE target companies and the short investment horizon of PE funds. With respect to PE investments in hospitals and nursing homes, however, most empirical studies suggest that PE investments significantly harm welfare. The large amounts of debt incurred by the targets of PE acquisitions increase the risk of default and contribute to excessive cost-cutting measures that harm patients. 

    Our tax system contains two features that significantly promote PE acquisitions. First, our tax system exempts gain realized by charitable organizations from the sale of their hospitals and nursing homes to for-profit purchasers. Theory predicts, and empirical evidence suggests, that tax-exempt sellers are willing to sell hospitals for less than a taxable seller would be due to this tax exemption. Given that these assets will no longer be deployed in the charitable sector, our tax system should not subsidize transfers to for-profit purchasers that reduce social welfare by exempting the gain from taxation. Even if the tax-exempt seller is not sharing its exemption with the for-profit buyer, policy considerations suggest that gain from such a sale should not be exempt. Since the tax-exempt seller has chosen to stop participating in the health-related activity, this is an appropriate time to return the foregone tax revenue to the government for a determination of its future best use, rather than allowing the tax-exempt to unilaterally make that decision. 

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  • Michael Hunter Schwartz

    AALS Webinar: AI Tools for Law Faculty

    On April 15, 2026, from 2 PM – 3:30 PM Eastern/11 AM – 12:30 PM Pacific, the AALS will host AI Tools for Law Faculty, the second installment of its recently-launched “AALS/West Academic AI in Legal Education Webinar Series.” The webinar will feature an all-star team of expert panelists, Alexandria Serra of UMKC, Tracy Norton of LSU, and Jack Graves of Syracuse, who will share how they have used AI to enhance student learning in their courses while reducing, in the long run, their workloads. The panelists are aiming their presentations at faculty across the AI expertise spectrum, from novice to advanced AI users, and they have reserved plenty of time for questions.

    Here is a link to the AALS Webpage for the webinar series so you can register for this webinar.

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  • Jon Endean

    Avi-Yonah: Taxation and Citizenship

    Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan) has posted two new pieces on SSRN regarding taxation and citizenship. The first is titled “Taxation and Birthright Citizenship.” Here is the abstract:

    Individuals who are born in the US are citizens of the US and of the state where they reside if they are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US.  The debate focuses on the meaning of jurisdiction in this context. The majority view is that it just means territoriality jurisdiction, so that anyone born within the US is automatically a citizen regardless of the immigration status of her parents.  The minority view is that jurisdiction is related to political allegiance (nationality jurisdiction), which is why children born to diplomats, invading armies, and Indian tribes are excluded. This issue is currently before the Supreme Court. This paper argues that worldwide taxation of citizens as adopted by the US since 1861 is based on the right to entry and supports the minority view.

    The second is titled “Citizenship and Nationality Law,” which discusses the relationship between citizenship based taxation and nationality law, and argues that the main reason to tax citizens living permanently abroad on worldwide income is the right of entry.

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  • Jon Endean

    NY Times: Justice Dept. Struggles to Respond to Trump’s Suit Against I.R.S.

    In a previous post on TaxProf Blog, we had highlighted President Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS. In an article in The New York Times, Andrew Duehren and Alan Feuer report:

    The Justice Department is struggling to decide how to respond to President Trump’s lawsuit demanding at least $10 billion from the I.R.S., as the department’s lawyers try to resolve by a mid-April deadline the profound ethical questions the case raises, according to two people familiar with the dynamic. . . .

    While former Justice Department officials see clear flaws in the president’s case, some Trump administration officials worry that assigning a lawyer to contest it would pose an unworkable conflict, given that such a person ultimately works for the president, according to the two people. Defending the case could also contradict a White House executive order that binds all government lawyers to the president’s interpretation of the law. . . .

    In a normal proceeding, the Justice Department would likely start by trying to throw out the case because it came too late, former department attorneys said. In other cases stemming from the leaks, government lawyers have also said the I.R.S. could not be blamed for Mr. Littlejohn’s actions, since he was a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton and not an I.R.S. employee.

    Mr. Trump’s demand for at least $10 billion in damages for the leak struck several former tax lawyers at the Justice Department as outlandish.

    The article notes that a group of former government officials filed an amicus brief, arguing, among other things, that the lawsuit has significant defects in it. The brief can be read in its entirety here.

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  • Austen Parrish

    2026 QS World University Rankings: Law and Legal Studies

    QS World University rankings have released their 2026 rankings of universities for law and legal studies. Below are the top ten in the world. On the next page are the top 25 in the United States.

    RankingUniversity
    1Harvard University
    2University of Oxford
    3University of Cambridge
    4Yale University
    5Stanford University
    6National University of Singapore
    7New York University
    8Columbia University
    9The London School of Economics and Political Science
    10University of California, Berkeley
    2026 QS World University Rankings

    Pages: 1 2

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  • Austen Parrish

    New Law Student Loan Programs

    From Inside Higher Ed – more on how law schools are responding to the new student loan legislation that goes into effect on July 1.

    Two law schools are launching new loan programs to help close funding gaps created by new limits to federal graduate student loans. 

    The University of Kansas and Washington University in St. Louis both plan to lend money at favorable rates to law students who have already exhausted their federal student loan options and might not meet the requirements for private loans.

    Read the complete article here: Johanna Alonso, Law Schools Launch Loan Programs to Fill Graduate Funding Gap, Inside Higher Ed, March 26, 2026.

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  • Jon Endean

    Derek Thompson: America’s Tax System Is Broken

    On Derek Thompson’s Plain English podcast, he interviews Gabriel Zucman (Paris School of Economics, UC Berkeley) about the current state of the American tax system and on how a wealth tax might address some of the concerns raised. From the podcast’s summary:

    If you’re a typical worker with a salary, you have almost no control over how much tax you owe. But if you own a company worth billions of dollars, the income tax is, in the words of my guest today, “largely optional.” Countries around the world struggle to get billionaires to pay a higher tax rate than middle-income families.

    Gabriel Zucman is one of the world’s leading experts on tax inequality, the economist who first rigorously measured what U.S. billionaires actually pay—and he found that it’s less, as a share of income, than what a middle-class American pays. He’s advised Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on wealth tax proposals and recently published sweeping new research showing that the problem is global. Today, we get into the mechanics of billionaire tax avoidance, the history of failed wealth taxes, and whether the AI era is about to make all of this dramatically worse.

    You can watch or listen to the episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

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  • Austen Parrish

    Innovative Teaching – Magic: The Gathering

    From a recent piece in the ABA Journal describing a new court at the University of Iowa College of Law that will be based on a card game.

    In the popular fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering, players act as wizards who cast spells that summon creatures to defeat their opponents in strategic combat while they obey intricate laws set forth in a 300-page rule book.

    Playing the game has many parallels to practicing law, says Mihailis Diamantis, a constitutional professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and a lifelong enthusiast of the card game.

    In the next academic year, he plans to launch Introduction to Interpreting Text, a one-week, elective intersession class for 2L and 3L students that will emphasize close reading of texts, such as statutes, rules and regulations—an essential skill for future attorneys, he says. The course reading is not a case book but the game’s “Comprehensive Rules,” which provides detailed definitions of all game mechanics and card interactions governing the players’ acceptable moves.

    Read more here. Julianne Hill, Law Students Can Get a Clue to Close Reading in Fantasy Card Game-Inspired Class, ABA Journal, March 31, 2026.

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  • Michael Madison

    SALLD Statement on Role of Academic Law Library Directors

    The Society of Academic Law Library Directors (SALLD) has published a “Statement on the Role, Qualifications, and Institutional Protections of Academic Law Library Directors” in response to events at Yale Law School, which I posted about here.

    From the Statement:

    As academic law library directors, we write to reaffirm the accreditation principles. The Standards provide clear expectations for law library leadership, governance, and institutional responsibility. Faithful adherence to the ABA Standards is critical to maintaining the integrity of legal education.

    We urge law schools to:

    • Honor the security of position protections required by ABA Standard 603(d) and follow appropriate process in personnel matters;
    • Ensure that law library leadership appointments satisfy ABA Standard 603(c) or, in interim circumstances, are arranged in a way that preserves compliance and the effective operation of the law library; and
    • Preserve the administrative autonomy of the law library as required by Standard 605.

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  • Conor Clarke

    Murphy: The Capital Gains Preference, Women, and Persons of Color

    Ann M. Murphy (Gonzaga), has published Nothing to Gain: The Disparate Impact of the Capital Gains Tax Preference on Women and Persons of Color, 26 Nev. L.J. 1 (2025). Here is the abstract:

    Tax preference provisions are scattered across the Internal Revenue Code, and the capital gains tax rate offers an enormous advantage for wealthy taxpayers. When first enacted, it was touted as eliminating the “lock-in effect” which caused investors to hold on to their investment property. Today, it is justified as encouraging investment and eliminating gains produced merely by the passage of time. The provision’s unequal benefits are hidden from the picture. Although not overtly discriminatory, the preference operates as a tax cut for the wealthy. Women and persons of color see little benefit from the lower tax rate. The difficulty of comparing tax data by gender, race, and ethnicity exacerbates this inequity. The exclusion of women and persons of color from the reduced tax rate contributes to the overall inequality of wealth, a situation that must be remedied. Historically, Congress has been reluctant to make meaningful adjustments to eliminate this built-in inequality, such as taxing unrealized gains or providing comparable benefits to women and persons of color. This Article provides a brief history of the capital gains preference, examines statistical income and wealth disparities based on gender and race, and proposes solutions to reduce the negative impact of the capital gains preference that leaves behind women and persons of color.

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