Tax Prof Spotlight: Linda Beale

Saturday, July 24, 2004

Linda Beale (Illinois) came to tax law late in her career, having spent much of her time in the sciences. Born in Tennessee, she’s lived in Mississippi, Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Texas, Washington D.C., and, most recently before her move to Illinois, New York. She completed a B.S. degree in chemistry at Duke University, planning at that time to work in a research lab! After a two-year stint in the Peace Corps in Colombia, South America working with impoverished local farmers reignited her interest in languages, she was named a Herbert Lehman fellow by New York State and received her PhD in linguistics from Cornell.

She was a member of Matt McHugh’s congressional staff for a period during the early eighties (working in his district office in Ithaca, New York), taught Spanish and linguistics as a visiting assistant professor at Temple University, and served as a university administrator and adjunct assistant professor of linguistics at Binghamton University. It was the frequent forays into legal issues as a university administrator that enticed her to return to Cornell to earn her J.D, where she graduated summa cum laude and was a member of Order of the Coif in 1994.

After a wonderful clerkship year with Judge Dorothy Nelson on the Ninth Circuit, Linda joined Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York as a tax associate. Her work with Cleary’s many financial institution and multinational corporate clients included a wide range of tax issues such as securitizations (including REMICs and FASITs), partnerships, and cross-border corporate mergers and acquisitions. While with Cleary, Linda completed an LLM in taxation at New York University. Linda left Cleary to join the Illinois faculty in 2001.

Linda’s developing scholarship reflects her recent practice dealing with issues of importance to financial institutions, her background in the study of language, and her fundamental interest in the ways that democratic societies can achieve greater social justice. Her work with financial institutions underlies several of her articles and commentary that explore concerns regarding the reliability of information and the relationship between financial statement income and tax income. She is interested in the roles of auditors and tax practitioners in designing, implementing or participating as accommodation parties in aggressive tax shelters, and argues for a more comprehensive approach to corporate tax shelters that acknowledges the importance of tax to corporate governance. She has also grappled with the normative and pragmatic criteria that might be used to evaluate “book-tax conformity” proposals, a research topic begun as a short paper on the seminal Bank One case regarding mark-to-market valuation of swaps and continued in a forthcoming Virginia Tax Review article. That article considers what generally applicable criteria might be used to evaluate particular conformity proposals and asks whether there are ultimately any contexts where the convenience of conformity is sufficient to override concerns about taxpayer manipulation of income. Her interest in language and social justice are the foundation for two articles currently in progress—one that looks at the role of statutory interpretation in the context of specialized securitization vehicles and another that considers how best to reinforce liberal egalitarian values while solving the alternative minimum tax problem. Here's a sample of Linda's work:

• Book-Tax Conformity and the Corporate Tax Shelter Debate: a Mark-to-Market Safe Harbor? Va. Tax Rev. (forthcoming Sept. 2004).

• Putting SEC Heat on Audit Firms and Corporate Tax Shelter: Responding to Tax Risk with Sunshine, Shame and Strict Liability, 29 J. Corp. L. 219 (2004).

• February 15, 2004 Letter to George Yin, reprinted as Law Professor Offers Suggestions for Fighting Shelters, 103 Tax Notes 125 (April 5, 2004).

• Tax Court’s Decision in Bank One Raises More Questions Than It Answers, 21 J. Tax'n Investments 3 (Autumn 2003).

• Developments May Lead SEC to Ban Certain Tax Services Under Sarbanes-Oxley Independence Rules, 16 J. Tax'n Financial Institutions 5 (May 2003).

• January 10, 2003 Letter to Jonathan Katz from Professor Linda Beale as Principal Drafter with Six Co-signers, reprinted as Tax Profs Urged SEC to Take Tough Stance on Auditor Independence, 98 Tax Notes 765 (Feb. 3, 2003).

• An Overview of the U.S. Federal Income Tax Treatment of Collateralized Debt Obligation Transactions, 14 J. Tax'n Financial Institutions 27 (July/August 2001) (with David Miller & Paul Wysocki).

Linda has found teaching an especially rewarding experience that permits professor and students to question and consider many diverse aspects of American life while learning the intricacies of the tax code. Linda has particularly enjoyed offering her students a perspective on the many opportunities and challenges of multinational tax practice in a large law firm. She teaches the basic federal income tax course, corporate tax, international tax, and a seminar in "advanced tax practice" that is intended to offer her students both in-depth knowledge of more advanced tax topics and leadership opportunities that simulate the kinds of experiences they will have as new associates in a competitive firm environment. Several of her seminar students are working for the IRS in Chicago this summer, and others have gone to law firms where they hope to specialize in tax practice.

Linda also takes her broader responsibilities to the university community seriously, serving since 2001 as a member of the University’s faculty senate, where she is or has been a member of the Equal Opportunity Committee and the Statutes and Procedures Committee. In addition, she has participated in university-wide committees, such as the Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Women and the University Criminal Case Review Committee.

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