TaxProf Blog

Bill Henderson Reviews Brian Tamanaha's Failing Law Schools

On The Legal Whiteboard: a review by Bill Henderson (Indiana) of the new book by Brian Z. Tamanaha (Washington U.), Failing Law Schools (University of Chicago Press, 2012):

Many legal academics are going to dismiss Brian Tamanaha's book, Failing Law Schools, without ever reading a page.  A larger number may simply ignore it.  That is ironic, because this is the response one would expect if Tamanaha's account of a corrupt, self-indulgence academic culture were true. ...

For us law professors, here is our conundrum. From the outside looking in, things look bad, even corrupt.  Yet we don't feel we have done anything wrong.  We are certain that we lack the intent to cheat or defraud.  But that, unfortunately, is error #1.  As we all know, proving intent is always a matter of circumstantial evidence.  So let's review that evidence from the perspective of the neutral fact finder.

Life is objectively good for us:  We have high salaries, social prestige, lots of travel, job security, and near absolute freedom to organize our time outside the three to six hours a week we teach, 30 weeks a years.  Against this backdrop, there is consensus among legal employers that we are not very good at practical training including, in the eyes of many, basic legal writing.  Moreover, the overproduction of lawyers creates problems for the legal profession as a whole.  Similarly, our students  are saddled with enormous debt and nothing we are doing curricularly seems geared to solving their burgeoning unemployment  or underemployment problem.  The federal government finances this "system."  And through Income-Based Repayment programs, the U.S. taxpayers are backstopping our high costs.

Because law faculty seems to be getting the long end of the bargain here, our subjective feelings of honesty and rectitude are unlikely to be viewed by many students, practicing lawyers, or the broader public as credible.  In fact, they may be viewed as insincere or out of touch.  How did things get so badly out of kilter? ...

But for Tamanaha, some pesky journalists, angry students, and the ticking time-bomb of law students debt, I am confident that we law professors could coast along on our present track for another several decades.  As an insider, I can honestly testify that we believe--sincerely beheve--that we care about our students, the quality of their education, their debt loads, and their future job prospects.  But  looking at the same set of facts, history will draw its own conclusions. And Tamanaha, akin to a prosecutor arraying the evidence to prove intent, offers up a very compelling narrative that the dispassionate observer is likely to find convincing. ...

History is now playing out right before our eyes.  I believe there is a good chance that Brian Tamanaha's book will be viewed--by history at least--as a great act of courage.  The implication, of course, is that the rest of us will look foolish.

Other reviews of Failing Law Schools:

• Chronicle of Higher Education
• Stanley Fish (Florida International)
• Scott Greenwald (here and here)
• Orin Kerr (George Washington)
• Brian Leiter (Chicago)

New Greek Bestseller: Serial Killer Murders Rich Tax Cheats

The Guardian: This Greek Bestseller Stars A Serial Killer Who Murders Rich People Who Cheat On Their Taxes:

A serial killer is stalking the wealthy suburbs of Athens with an idiosyncratic choice of victims. They are all rich Greeks who have failed to pay their taxes, and their corpses have been left scattered among the ruins of the ancient city, dead of hemlock poisoning, the means of Socrates' execution.

Greece is going through a lot right now, including a significant surge in crime, but this particular horror is mostly fictional. It is the plot of the latest bestselling novel by Petros Markaris, who has combined the roles of thriller writer and social commentator in Greece to such an extent that he has become one of the most widely quoted voices in the crisis.

The murders at the heart of Markaris's new book, I Pairaiosi, or The Settlement, resonate strongly with a mass readership furious at the country's tax-dodging elite whose fecklessness has helped bring Greece to its knees. Many readers, like its hero-narrator, Inspector Costas Haritos, are torn between disgust and sneaking admiration for the murderer, who calls himself the National Tax Collector, and who is demanding money not for himself but for the national coffers. Such was the public sympathy for the killer that Markaris found it prudent to put a note on the book's back cover saying: "Warning: This novel is not to be imitated."

(Hat Tip: David Miller.)

Tax Cheating: Illegal -- But Is It Immoral?

Donald Morris (University of Illinois-Springfield, Department of Accounting), Tax Cheating:  Illegal -- But Is It Immoral? (SUNY Press, June 2012):

From unreported gambling winnings and inflated claims of the value of clothing donated to charity to money hidden in Swiss bank accounts and high-profile tax schemes plotted by celebrities and business leaders, the range of tax cheating opportunities is wide and the boundaries and moral status can be hazy. Considering the behavior of individuals and small businesses as well as the involvement of congress and the IRS, Donald Morris combines insights from law, psychology, sociology, criminology, accounting, economics, and philosophy to examine the ethical issues surrounding tax cheating and implications for tax policy.

“Morris gives us a thorough collection of thoughts and quotations about a sensitive subject—how do morals and ethics affect the completion of a tax return? Who is more unethical, Congress in writing the current tax law or the taxpayer in paying ‘too little’ tax? What motivates a citizen to ‘volunteer’ to pay a tax bill?  Does Congress really want to close the tax gap? Should a court apply only the letter of the law in a tax case, or should a higher moral principle also apply? By approaching the term ‘cheating’ in a morally neutral manner, Morris removes much of the baggage that restricts the usual talk about taxes—the book allows for a more fruitful review of the economics of the deal between the citizen and the government, that we call taxation. Intriguing, fresh, accessible, up to date.” — William A. Raabe, coauthor of Federal Tax Research, Ninth Edition

Carroll & Viard: Progressive Consumption Taxation: The X-Tax Revisited

Robert Carroll (Ernst & Young, Washington, D.C.) & Alan D. Viard (American Enterprise Institute), Progressive Consumption Taxation: The X-Tax Revisited (AEI Press June 2012):

The United States is alone among industrialized countries in having no broad-based consumption tax at the national level. Yet, economic analysis suggests that consumption taxation is likely to be superior to income taxation, because it does not penalize saving and investment. This book proposes to completely replace the income tax system with a progressive consumption tax. This approach avoids the problems arising from the adoption of a consumption tax alongside the income tax and also avoids the distributional problems posed by regressive consumption taxes, such as the VAT.

This book argues that the Bradford X tax, developed by the late David Bradford, offers the best form of progressive consumption taxation. The X tax modifies the VAT, so that it no longer imposes a flat-rate tax on all consumption. It splits the value-added tax base, which equals aggregate consumption, into two components, wages and business cash flow. The X tax achieves progressivity by applying graduated tax rates to wages and a high flat tax rate to business cash flow, which reflects consumption financed from wealth accumulated prior to the reform and from above-normal business investment returns, which largely accrue to well-off households.

Because the X tax is relatively unfamiliar, however, there is concern about how it can be implemented. This book sets forth solutions to commonly perceived problems concerning the taxation of pensions and fringe benefits, business firms, financial intermediaries, international transactions, owner-occupied housing, state and local governments, and nonprofit institutions, and the transition. By adopting these approaches, the United States can move to a progressive tax system that no longer penalizes saving and investment.

Daniel Shaviro (NYU), Excellent New Book on Progressive Consumption Taxation:

This book does a great job of explaining both the rationale for enacting an X-tax, and how it might actually work.

In some other universe, or perhaps some other part of our universe, perhaps in the far end of the Gamma Quadrant, I would like to think that there is a world much like our own, except that enacting a progressive consumption tax is actually a feasible left-right compromise that one could imagine really happening. It truly has potential Clintonian Third Way merits, although it has never gotten very far politically. The left gets progressivity comparable to that under present law, but much more transparently and at a far lower efficiency cost. The right gets exemption for the part of capital income that it may be sensible to want to exempt that is, for the "normal" return to waiting. Everyone ought to be happy.

But here on planet Earth things took a very different turn, perhaps starting in the early 1990s. Plus, despite its considerable policy merits, the X-tax may somehow fail to be sufficiently salient and reasonable-looking to an ill-informed public. So I personally believe that it is not going anywhere, and I have not for several years devoted significant intellectual effort to examining or emphasizing it.

Still, this is an excellent book that deserves a wide readership. Special comment to readers on the left: however suspicious you might be of other publications emanating from AEI and/or the Tax Foundation, this is one that you should classify as straight-shooting and worthy of your time.

More Reviews of Brian Tamanaha's Failing Law Schools

More Reviews of the forthcoming book by Brian Z. Tamanaha (Washington U.), Failing Law Schools (University of Chicago Press, 2012):

Chronicle of Higher Education, Law Professor Gives Law Schools a Failing Grade:

Law schools are bloated with too many underworked, overpaid professors whose salaries are supported by tuition increases that are making law school a losing bet for many students, a forthcoming book argues. ...

Some have praised the new book as a long-overdue wake-up call for law schools, while others have dismissed it as an ill-conceived formula to radically restructure an education system that is basically sound. ...

"Law schools at every level have been failing their ethical responsibilities while pointing the finger at others rather than themselves," Mr. Tamanaha writes. He wrote the book, he says, "to expose the disconnect between the cost of a legal education and the economic return it brings" and to find ways to fix the problem. Annual tuition has climbed to $50,000 at a half-dozen law schools, and, adding in living expenses, a law degree can cost $200,000, he writes. Meanwhile, the median starting salary of 2010 law graduates in private practice was less than $63,000, too little to manage debts that average around $100,000, he says.Meanwhile, many graduates are struggling to find work in "the worst job market in decades." ... "Law schools are thriving, kept afloat by students making poor judgments to attend, while the federal government obligingly supplies the money to support their folly," he writes.

Legal academics who reviewed "Failing Law Schools" reacted with mixed responses.

Mr. Tamanaha's book "should shake up legal academia," says Paul F. Campos, a professor of law at the University of Colorado and author of a blog called Inside the Law School Scam. "The critique he puts forward is really quite devastating," Mr. Campos said in an interview. "Legal academics are going to have to pull their heads out of the sand and recognize that we are all part of a model that doesn't work anymore."

Paul S. Berman, dean of law at George Washington University, says there is some truth to Mr. Tamanaha's arguments about the economic consequences of attending law school, particularly when students attend expensive, low-ranked schools in weak job markets. But he says Mr. Tamanaha exaggerates the extent of the problem, in part by failing to adequately consider the flexibility that federal income-based loan-repayment plans offer students. "Too much of the debate has focused on employment nine months after graduation," he says, arguing that if a law degree bumps up a graduate's income by $20,000 a year, the cost of earning the degree will be paid off over the course of a career.

Michael A. Olivas, a professor of law at the University of Houston and a past president of the Association of American Law Schools, says relaxing accreditation standards to allow more-diverse education models, which Mr. Tamanaha calls for, could lead law schools in the direction of for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix, which critics contend shortchange students. As Mr. Olivas puts it, the result could be "the Phoenix-ation of law schools, churning students through, having a contingent and transient faculty, and none of the institutional investment in the broad roles of legal education." ...

Mr. Tamanaha argues that law professors are, by and large, underworked and overpaid. Citing recent studies, he says that law professors at elite law schools today teach courses worth about eight credits a year, compared with 15 credits for most of the 20th century. That trend is due largely, he says, to recruiting wars for top professors who would rather spend their time researching than teaching. Meanwhile, salaries have skyrocketed, with senior professors at elite schools earning more than $300,000 a year. Law students have shouldered the burden of much of the added cost through escalating tuition, Mr. Tamanaha writes.

And in a section that is sure to get some law professors' blood boiling, he takes on tenure, which he calls "costly and inflexible for schools—a lifetime marriage with a professor with almost no possibility of a divorce (except paying a ransom to purchase their departure)." 

Brian Leiter's Law School Reports, CHE Write-up on Tamanaha's Forthcoming Book on Law Schools:

If there's one theme that runs through his book it is that we need more *kinds* of law schools out there, that the "Chicago model" or the "Harvard model" shouldn't be the only one. And that will require the ABA to loosen up some of its accreditation requirements. Given the neoliberal paradigm in which we live, the only 'solutions' are going to come through the marketplace--no one can just mandate that faculty teach more and write less. Some institution has to show that there's an actual market for a cheaper law degree delivered by faculty who emphasize teaching over research.

A lot of the book is clearly a fair description of the current state of legal education in America, and a useful compendium of data. ... Although he gives sustained attention to the perverse influence of the U.S. News rankings, in some ways he still understates their impact. For example, he notes, correctly, that schools have been expanding their faculties, but notes that this is unlikely to improve academic reputation as measured by U.S. News. But that's not the issue:  the issue is that, all else being equal, the U.S. News rank of a law school is a function of per capita expenditures, and almost nothing else. The most profligate spender per capita is the "best" law school--that's why Yale always tops Harvard. While many of the trends in legal education are just part of broader trends in higher education over the last generation (as he sometimes notes), there's no doubt that the U.S. News "incentives" have pushed law schools further in the wrong directions.

Orin Kerr Reviews Brian Tamanaha's Failing Law Schools

Orin Kerr (George Washington), Brian Tamanaha’s Failing Law Schools:

Brian’s basic argument is that law schools have been on an unsustainable path fueled by the ready availability of student loans, the cartel power of the ABA, and the influence of the U.S. News rankings, all of which have led schools to adopt policies that help law professors more than they serve students. In most states, you can’t be a lawyer unless you graduated from an ABA-accredited school. Law professors have run the ABA accreditation process, however, and have done so in ways that ensure that all ABA-accredited schools treat professors extremely well and that law schools are quite nice places to work. This has led to a surprisingly uniform educational system in which nearly every school adopts a high tuition model that gives professors low teaching loads, nice salaries, and lots of time for research. Some professors work extremely hard and produce important scholarship, which is the goal. But many other professors just coast and take advantage of their good fortune after making it [past] the (typically low) tenure hurdle. And Deans generally can’t treat the hard workers and productive scholars better than the dead wood because Deans generally require faculty support to stay in office: A Dean who favors the productive scholars and top teachers too much may not stay in office long. So salaries for all professors are high and course loads are low, whether the professors work 80 hours a week or 20.

While this is a great situation for law professors who want a cushy life, it doesn’t serve students. The high cost model of legal education means that students are mostly denied ways of obtaining low-cost legal educations, which has led to spiraling costs for legal education that make law school best suited for the wealthy, those on scholarship, and those able to compete successfully for corporate or public-interest jobs. Some applicants don’t realize this, in part because loans are so easy to obtain and schools are in no hurry to point out the economics of legal education. And even while law school is so expensive, the obsessive focus by law school applicants and alumni on the U.S. News ranking has led schools to change their programs and their admission standards to whatever helps their U.S. News ranking, even if it hurts the quality of their educational programs. Maximizing U.S. News rankings has led schools to restructure their admissions standards, limit part-time programs, raise the number of transfers, and raise tuitions to make room for scholarships that can be used to maximize the numbers of the entering class. A Dean who doesn’t do this won’t stay a Dean long; the U.S. News rankings are so widely considered authoritative that a Dean whose school falls in the ranking is considered a failure. So even at the high dollar figure of most law schools, the focus is on making changes that maximize rankings, not delivering the most effective education for students. The model is unsustainable, Brian argues, and we have begun to see that already with the recent drop in law school applications that may soon threaten the viability of a number of law schools.

LexisNexis Graduate Tax Series

LexisNexis has produced this cool flyer to publicize our Graduate Tax Series. I am delighted to serve as the Series Editor and work with our Board of Editors (Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.), Elliott Manning (Miami), Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern) & David Richardson (Florida)) in producing the first and only series of course materials designed for use in tax LL.M. programs:

• More focus on Internal Revenue Code and regulations, less on case law
• Analysis of complex, practice-oriented problems of increasing sophistication
• Teacher’s manual with solutions to problems and other guidance
• On-line access to the comprehensive and current Code and regulations, designed to complement the book

All eleven books in the Series were designed from the ground-up with the needs of graduate tax faculty and students in mind:

• Civil Tax Procedure (2d ed. 2007 & 2011 Supp.), by David Richardson (Florida), Jerome Borison (Denver) & Steve Johnson (Florida State)
• Corporate Taxation (2012), by Charlotte Crane (Northwestern) & Linda Beale  (Wayne State)
• Employee Benefits Law: Qualification and ERISA Requirements (2d ed. 2012), by Kathryn Kennedy (John Marshall) & Paul Shultz (Former Director, IRS Employee Plans Rulings & Agreement).
• Estate and Gift Taxation (2011), by Robert Danforth (Washington & Lee) & Brant Hellwig (South Carolina)
• Federal Tax Accounting (2d ed. 2011), by Michael Lang (Chapman), Elliott Manning (Miami) & Mona Hymel (Arizona)
• Federal Taxation of Property Transactions (2012), by Elliott Manning (Miami) & David Cameron (Northwestern)
• Partnership Taxation (2d ed. 2008), by Richard Lipton (Baker & McKenzie, Chicago), Paul Carman (Chapman & Cutler, Chicago), Charles Fassler (Greenebaum, Doll & McDonald, Louisville) & Walter Schwidetzky (Baltimore)
• Regulation of Tax Practice (2010), by Linda Galler (Hofstra) & Michael Lang (Chapman)
• Tax Crimes (2008), by Steve Johnson (Florida State), Scott Schumacher (Washington), Larry Campagna (Adjunct Professor, Houston) & John Townsend (Adjunct Professor, Houston)
• Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions (2012), by Bradley Borden (Brooklyn)
• United States International Taxation (2d ed. 2011), by Allison Christians (Wisconsin), Samuel Donaldson (U. Washington) &  Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern)

Delgado: The Happy Lawyer -- Making a Good Life in the Law

Richard Delgado (Seattle), Recent Writing on Law and Happiness, 97 Iowa L. Rev. 913 (2012) (reviewing Nancy Levit & Douglas O. Linder (both of Missouri-Kansas City), The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law (Oxford University Press, 2010)):

Are lawyers happy? If not, what can they do about it? Is unhappiness an inherent risk in the practice of law—at least as carried out today?

Lately, these questions and ones like them have been very much in the public eye. A 2011 Gallup Poll asked Americans if they were happy and ranked the results state-by-state on a numerical scale. Perhaps sensing a scoop, the New York Times displayed Gallup's information in the form of a map of the entire country showing happy states in a cheerful orange, middling-happy states in pale yellow, and glum or miserable ones in gray or black. An accompanying article identified America's happiest man: a five-foot-ten, sixty-nine-year-old, Chinese-American, Kosher-observing Jew, married with children, and living in Honolulu.

Drawing on a different set of studies, another New York Times writer concluded that those who waited longest to have sex and took the smallest number of partners were happier than their precocious or bed-hopping counterparts, while a third analyzed whether Internet searching made one happy or unhappy. (Answer: It depends.) On the other side of the Atlantic, England's Prime Minister David Cameron announced the creation of a national happiness index that would provide quarterly measures of how his countrymen were feeling about their lives.

Not to be outdone, a number of legal writers, including Deborah Rhode, Mary Ann Glendon, and Anthony Kronman, have weighed in with books on happiness and its opposite in the legal profession. Perhaps sobered by some of their findings, students at one top law school took things into their own hands and signed a pledge refusing to work for law firms that overwork associates and make them miserable. As though sensing a trend, the ABA Journal devoted several pages of a recent issue to the “happiness movement,” while two sections of the AALS weighed in with a joint session at its 2011 annual meeting on this very subject, drawing an overflow crowd.

In short, people are talking about happiness and its opposite. The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law ... thus arrives at a propitious moment when many lawyers, as well as ordinary citizens, are considering the hedonic quality of their work lives and what can be done to improve them.

Part II of this essay outlines the Levit and Linder book, paying particular attention to its treatment of topics that other books on the subject rarely cover, including the social-scientific and neurological foundation of happiness, as well as prescriptions for a happy life in the law. Part III critiques the book, while Part IV puts forward my own analysis of what the debate on lawyers’ happiness needs to include in order to secure lasting gains.

Festschrift in Honor of Paul McDaniel: The Proper Tax Base--An International and Comparative Perspective

The Proper Tax Base: Structural Fairness from an International and Comparative Perspective - Essays in Honour of Paul McDaniel (Yariv Brauner & Martin J. McMahon Jr., eds. Wolters Kluwer 2012):

Virtually all objections to taxation schemes spring from perceptions of unfairness. Is tax fairness possible? The question is certainly worth investigating in depth, and that is the purpose of this book. Today, as governments are busily making new tax rules in the wake of staggering budget deficits, is perhaps an appropriate time to pay heed to fairness so it can be incorporated as far as possible into tax reform. With twelve contributions from some of the world’s most respected international tax experts—including the late Paul McDaniel, in whose honor these essays were assembled—this invaluable book focuses on tax expenditure analysis, the quest for a just income tax, and division and/or harmonization of the income tax base among jurisdictions. Among the areas of taxation ripe for reform from a fairness point of view the authors single out the following:

• tax expenditure reporting
• modern welfare economics as a driver of tax reform
• grantor trust rules
• the notion of “horizontal equity”
• the international tax norm of “income source”
• transfer pricing
• jurisdictional application of VAT

Specific ongoing reforms in the United States, Australia, and other countries—as well a detailed analysis of the EU’s proposed common consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB)—are also examined for fairness. As a timely, high-quality resource that effectively tackles an array of salient issues, this is a book that will be read and studied by tax practitioners, corporate tax experts, government tax policy makers, advisers and consultants on the reform and design of tax systems, and international organizations involved in standard setting related to tax administration, as well as academics and researchers.

Part I:  Tax Expenditures
Ch. 1: The Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation Revision of Tax Expenditure Classification Methodology: What Is To Be Made of a Change That Makes No Changes?, by Paul R. McDaniel
Ch. 2:  Taxing Tax Expenditures?, by Martin J. McMahon, Jr. (Florida)
Ch. 3:  The Tax Expenditure Concept Globally, by Miranda Stewart
Ch. 4:  Tax Reform and Tax Expenditures in Australia, by Richard J. Vann
Ch. 5:  Tax Reform Paul McDaniel Style: The Repeal of the Grantor Trust Rules, by Laura E. Cunningham & Noel B. Cunningham

Part II:  The Fair Tax Base and International Tax Reform
Ch. 6:  Horizontal Equity Revisited, by James Repetti & Diane Ring
Ch. 7:  What Is This Thing Called Source?, by Lawrence Lokken
Ch. 8:  Formula Based Transfer Pricing, by Yariv Brauner

Part III:  A Comparative Perspective
Ch. 9:  The EU proposed CCCTB—Some Tax Treaty Issues, by Kees van Raad
Ch. 10:  Shared Legal Orders: Some Thoughts about the Influence of EU Case Law on International Tax Law Rules of the EU Member States, by Irene J.J. Burgers
Ch. 11:  Intra Group Loans—A Swedish Perspective, by Bertil Wiman
Ch. 12:  European VAT and Jurisdiction to Tax, by Antonio Vázquez del Rey.

Zelenak: The Great American Tax Novel

Lawrence Zelenak (Duke), The Great American Tax Novel, 110 Mich. L. Rev. 969 (2012) (reviewing David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (April 15, 2011)):

David Foster Wallace — author of the celebrated novel Infinite Jest and among the most acclaimed American fiction writers of his generation — killed himself in 2008 at the age of forty-six. He left in his office hundreds of pages of The Pale King, an unfinished novel set in the fictional Peoria, Illinois, regional examination center ("REC") of the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS" or "the Service") in 1985. Although many chapters of the novel were seemingly complete, Wallace left no indication (other than what could be gleaned from the chapters themselves) of the order of the chapters (pp. vi-vii). Michael Pietsch, who had served as the editor of Infinite Jest, assembled the chapters into a surprisingly coherent — although more or less plotless — novel, and the book was published to considerable critical acclaim in early 2011.

As assembled by Pietsch, The Pale King focuses on a dozen or so income tax examiners — including a fictional David Foster Wallace — working at the Peoria REC. The examiner's job is to decide whether income tax returns (selected for the examiner's consideration by computers) should be referred for audit (Chapter Twenty-Seven). The novel describes how the featured employees came to work for "the Service," as it is generally referred to by its employees (p. 244), and how they deal with the boredom of their jobs, as well as their attitudes toward the Service and toward the tax system itself. Although some of the chapters can stand on their own as self-contained stories, the book as a whole has no real plot. Some of Wallace's notes, included by Pietsch as "Notes and Asides" at the end of the book, suggest Wallace had plans for an overarching plot, based on a power struggle between IRS traditionalists favoring the continued use of human examiners and reformers wanting to replace human examiners with computers, but only a few hints of this conflict appear in the published novel. It is possible that even a completed version of The Pale King would have been essentially plotless. As Pietsch points out in his "Editor's Note," one of Wallace's notes describes the book as "a series of setups for things to happen but nothing ever happens."

I am not a literary scholar or critic, nor am I pretending to be one in this Review. Rather, I am an academic tax lawyer (and a former temporary employee of the Internal Revenue Service), and the Review is written from that perspective. For many creative works, a review of this sort would be inappropriate. It does not much matter, for example, whether the film version of The Wizard of Oz accurately depicts life on a Kansas farm in the 1930s. But The Pale King is different. The book devotes a significant percentage of its pages to detailed explanations and discussions of tax civics, tax policy, and tax administration, and it is every bit as serious about those topics as Moby-Dick is about whaling. The Pale King is not merely set in a tax administration facility; it is also, in very significant part, about taxes and tax administration. It is a Moby-Dick of taxes, aiming to educate its readers about a highly specialized field of endeavor, and using that field of endeavor to explore some of the profoundest themes. On the assumption that a whaler’s review of Moby-Dick would have served a useful purpose, I offer this tax lawyer’s review of The Pale King.

Bartlett & Johnston: Real Tax Reform -- Eliminate 100 Million Unnecessary Returns

• New York Times: How to Really Simplify the Tax Code, by Bruce Bartlett:

This week millions of Americans will be rushing to calculate and file their income taxes — and probably cursing whoever invented this confusing, complicated monstrosity.

Many people will spend money on accountants, tax software or storefront tax-preparation services. The cost in terms of time alone runs to the tens of billions of dollars, with billions more spent out of pocket. The aggravation factor is beyond calculation.

Politicians often rail against the complexity of the tax system as the key source of taxpayer frustration. Historically, however, voters have been unwilling to support meaningful simplification efforts and happily put up with complexity if it saves them in taxes. They seem always to fear that “simplification” is some sort of code word for raising their taxes while reducing someone else’s.

Another barrier to simplification is a loss of privacy. In 2003, the Treasury Department put forward a proposal to create a return-free tax system for most taxpayers, as many other countries have. In essence, the IRS would calculate your taxes for you and send you a bill or a refund. The Treasury proposal went nowhere, for two reasons.

First, reporting of income and tax withholding would have to increase to provide the IRS with the data needed to accurately calculate people’s taxes. But people have been highly resistant to additional withholding; a law requiring it on interest income was enacted in 1982 but almost immediately repealed after widespread complaints.

The second problem is that the tax system would have to be radically simplified to allow the return-free system to operate. Radical simplification sounds nice in theory; just wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. ... Talk is cheap when it comes to eliminating tax expenditures, but when it comes to actually naming specific preferences that would be eliminated, few are willing to step up to the plate. Politicians hide behind grandiose plans for wiping the slate clean because they know that support for every specific tax expenditure is very high. In practice, saying that one would eliminate all tax expenditures is meaningless, nothing more than a gesture that avoids confrontation with the constituencies supporting tax expenditures. ...

So how do we get out of this mess? One idea is to do what Gen. Douglas MacArthur did during World War II — bypass enemy strongholds, leaving them isolated and relatively harmless.

Prof. Michael Graetz of Columbia Law School has proposed what I believe is a MacArthur-like solution to tax reform. He would abolish the income tax for the vast bulk of Americans and replace the revenue with a 12.5% value-added tax. People would pay their taxes when they buy things and wouldn’t need to worry about keeping records or filing tax returns at all.

The brilliance of the Graetz plan is that no tax expenditures need to be repealed. He would simply give every family a tax exemption of $100,000, which would eliminate the income tax for 90% of those now filing returns. For lower-income people who currently have no net income tax burden or who earn an income tax credit, Professor Graetz proposes a rebate (too complex in its details to spell out here). ...

Professor Graetz first laid out his plan in a 2002 Yale Law Journal article, which was expanded into a book in 2007, “100 Million Unnecessary Returns.” A popular explanation of his plan appeared in the November/December issue of The American Interest, and a detailed analysis by the Tax Policy Center was published in January.

I think this is a viable proposal that ought to be the starting point for a real debate on tax reform.

• Reuters, Eliminating 100 Million Tax Returns, by David Cay Johnston:

Congress could easily eliminate fraud by abusive tax preparers ... and save taxpayers billions of dollars annually, by simply ending mandatory filing of tax returns for most taxpayers.

About 100 million taxpayers — those whose income is entirely from wages and retirement funds, and who do not itemize deductions — should not have to file returns. The government already has the information it needs to calculate the taxes these people owe, once they supply their marital status and number of dependents. It would not take much to automate their income tax payments, as many other modern countries do. ...

Congress will not act because individual income tax returns, which for most people are make-work that creates a drag on the economy, provide tidy revenues for Intuit, the maker of TurboTax software, H&R Block and other legitimate corporations that profit from preparing tax returns. These companies have considerable resources at their disposal to spend on lobbying politicians to keep the tax filing requirement. One sign of their determination: Intuit in 2006 donated $1 million in support of an unsuccessful candidate for California state controller who opposed optional state-prepared returns in California. Intuit has said there are serious problems with the program, which remains in operation, but in my view none of Intuit’s criticisms stands up to scrutiny.

Intuit, H&R Block and other tax firms say that they help people pay the least tax and avoid costly mistakes. But these concerns would be easily addressed by simplifying the tax code. In my view, any business that depends on government-induced inefficiency should be swept into the dustbin of history.

Kenworthy Presents Progress for the Poor Today at NYU

Lane Kenworthy (University of Arizona, Department of Sociology) presents Progress for the Poor (Oxford University Press, 2011) at NYU today as part of its Colloquium Series on Tax Policy and Public Finance convened by Daniel Shaviro (NYU) & Alan Aurbach (UC-Berkeley; visiting at NYU):

One of the principal goals of antipoverty efforts should be to improve the absolute living standards of the least well-off. Progress for the Poor aims to enhance our understanding of how to do that, drawing on the experiences of twenty affluent countries since the 1970s. The book addresses a set of questions at the heart of political economy and public policy: How much does economic growth help the poor? When and why does growth fail to trickle down? How can social policy help? Can a country have a sizeable low-wage sector yet few poor households? Are universal programs better than targeted ones? What role can public services play in antipoverty efforts? What is the best tax mix? Is more social spending better for the poor? If we commit to improvement in the absolute living standards of the least well-off, must we sacrifice other desirable outcomes?

The Delicate Balance – Tax, Discretion and the Rule of Law

The Delicate Balance – Tax, Discretion and the Rule of Law (Chris Evans (University of New South Wales), Judith Freedman (Oxford University) & Richard Krever (Monash University), eds.) (IBFD 2011):

Few aspects of revenue law generate stronger feelings than the exercise of discretionary power by tax administrations. A delicate balance often needs to be struck between the legitimate needs of revenue authorities and the equally legitimate interests and rights of taxpayers. On the one hand, the executive and administration need to have sufficient capacity to apply the law; on the other, there is a need to maintain the principle of the rule of law that it is the elected legislature, and not the executive or tax administration, that establishes tax burdens. The chapters in this volume explore that delicate balance.

The Delicate Balance - Tax, Discretion and the Rule of Law considers the critical questions that arise from the intersections of tax, discretion and the rule of law in modern common and civil law jurisdictions: What do we mean by tax discretion and how does it vary in conceptual and practical terms in different tax regimes? What role should discretion play in tax systems that operate under the rule of law and how large should that role be? What are the legal, political, institutional and other constraints that can prevent abuse of discretion? To what extent can, and should, the legislature safely delegate discretionary powers to tax administrations?

Table of Contents:

1. Tax, Discretion and the Rule of Law, by Dominic De Cogan
2. The Delicate Balance: Revenue Authority Discretions and the Rule of Law – Some Thoughts in a Legal Theory and Comparative Perspective, by Ana Paula Dourado
3. The Promise and the Reality of U.S. Tax Administration, by Kristin E. Hickman
4. A Reasonable Balance: Revenue Authority Discretions and the Rule of Law in Canada, by Kim Brooks
5. HMRC’s Management of the U.K. Tax System: The Boundaries of Legitimate Discretion, by Judith Freedman & John Vella
6. The Delicate Balance: Revenue Authority Discretions and the Rule of Law in Australia, by Michael Walpole & Chris Evans
7. Revenue Authority Discretions and the Rule of Law in New Zealand, by Shelley Griffiths
8. Revenue Authority Discretions and the Rule of Law: South Africa, by Ernest Mazansky
9. Revenue Authority Discretions and the Rule of Law in Hong Kong, by Andrew Halkyard
10. Balancing of Powers in Dutch Tax Law: General Overview and Recent Developments, by Richard Happé & Melvin Pauwels
11. The Delicate Balance Between Revenue Authority Discretions and the Rule of Law in France, by Christophe Grandcolas
12. Revenue Authority Discretions and the Rule of Law: The Quest for a Recta Ratio, by Marco Greggi
13. Tax Discretion in Hungary, by Borbála Kolozs & Richard Krever
14. The Rule of Law in Chinese Tax Administration, by Wei Cui

LexisNexis Publishes Employee Benefits Law

On behalf of LexisNexis and the Graduate Tax Series Board of Editors (Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.), Elliott Manning (Miami), Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern) & David Richardson (Florida)), I am delighted to announce the publication of Employee Benefits Law: Qualification and ERISA Requirements (2d ed. 2012), by Kathryn Kennedy (John Marshall) & Paul Shultz (Director, IRS Employee Plans Rulings & Agreement).

The Graduate Tax Series is the first and only series of course materials designed for use in tax LL.M. programs. Like all books in the Series, Employee Benefits Law was designed from the ground-up with the needs of graduate tax faculty and students in mind:

• More focus on Internal Revenue Code and regulations, less on case law
• Analysis of complex, practice-oriented problems of increasing sophistication
• Teacher’s manual with solutions to problems and other guidance
• On-line access to the comprehensive and current Code and regulations, designed to complement the book

Employee Benefits Law differs from other employee benefits casebooks and practicing legal education materials because it teaches the materials using a series of problems that begin with the basic concept and build upon those concepts in order to teach sophisticated legal issues. the material is also discusses in the context of how ERISA and the applicable sections of the Internal Revenue Code have evolved over time in reaction to different public policy considerations and changing employee benefits needs.

Employee Benefits Law is divided into two sections. Part 1 addresses qualification rules generally applicable to employee retirement plans. Part II addresses tax rules applicable to welfare benefits and nonqualified deferred compensation plans and ERISA rules applicable generally to all employee benefits plans. Sophisticated realistic problems are an integral part of the materials, and are included throughout. These problems will require careful analysis and application of code and regulation provisions, administrative pronouncements, case law, and other relevant sources. Perhaps more important for a graduate tax program, the problems not only require careful analysis, but the application requires dealing with situations when the most careful reading of the materials does not supple an answer.

Ten other books in the Series also are available for adoption:

• Civil Tax Procedure (2d ed. 2007) & 2011 Supp.), by David Richardson (Florida), Jerome Borison (Denver) & Steve Johnson (Florida State)
• Corporate Taxation, by Charlotte Crane (Northwestern) & Linda Beale  (Wayne State).
• Estate and Gift Taxation (2011), by Robert Danforth (Washington & Lee) & Brant Hellwig (South Carolina)
• Federal Tax Accounting, by Michael Lang (Chapman), Elliott Manning (Miami) & Mona Hymel (Arizona)
• Federal Taxation of Property Transactions (2011), by Elliott Manning (Miami) & David Cameron (Northwestern)
• Partnership Taxation (2d ed. 2008), by Richard Lipton (Baker & McKenzie, Chicago), Paul Carman (Chapman & Cutler, Chicago), Charles Fassler (Greenebaum, Doll & McDonald, Louisville) & Walter Schwidetzky (Baltimore)
• Regulation of Tax Practice (2010), by Linda Galler (Hofstra) & Michael Lang (Chapman)
• Tax Crimes (2008), by Steve Johnson (Florida State), Scott Schumacher (Washington), Larry Campagna (Adjunct Professor, Houston) & John Townsend (Adjunct Professor, Houston)
• Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions (2012), by Bradley Borden (Brooklyn)
• United States International Taxation (2d ed. 2011), by Allison Christians (Wisconsin), Samuel Donaldson (Washington) &  Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern)

Other information:

• For more details about the Graduate Tax Series, see here.
• Click on these links to purchase a copy of Civil Tax Procedure, Corporate Taxation, Employee Benefits Law, Estate and Gift Taxation, Federal Tax Accounting, Partnership Taxation, Regulation of Tax Practice, Tax Crimes, Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions, and United States International Taxation.  Faculty can request a complimentary review copy by emailing here (in the body of your email, note the title of the book you are requesting and your contact information).
• Email me if you would like more information about the Series or if you would like to submit a book proposal.

The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia

Carmen G. Gonzalez (Seattle) & Angela P. Harris (UC-Davis), Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia (Utah State University Press, June 2012):

Presumed Incompetent is a pathbreaking account of the intersecting roles of race, gender, and class in the working lives of women faculty of color. Through personal narratives and qualitative empirical studies, more than 40 authors expose the daunting challenges faced by academic women of color as they navigate the often hostile terrain of higher education, including hiring, promotion, tenure, and relations with students, colleagues, and administrators. The narratives are filled with wit, wisdom, and concrete recommendations, and provide a window into the struggles of professional women in a racially stratified but increasingly multicultural America.

The downloadable document contains the Introduction to Presumed Incompetent.

LexisNexis Publishes Corporate Taxation

On behalf of LexisNexis and the Graduate Tax Series Board of Editors (Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.), Elliott Manning (Miami), Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern) & David Richardson (Florida)), I am delighted to announce the publication of Corporate Taxation, by Charlotte Crane (Northwestern) & Linda Beale (Wayne State). 

The Graduate Tax Series is the first and only series of course materials designed for use in tax LL.M. programs. Like all books in the Series, Corporate Taxation  was designed from the ground-up with the needs of graduate tax faculty and students in mind:

• More focus on Internal Revenue Code and regulations, less on case law
• Analysis of complex, practice-oriented problems of increasing sophistication
• Teacher’s manual with solutions to problems and other guidance
• On-line access to the comprehensive and current Code and regulations, designed to complement the book

Part I of Corporate Taxation covers the fundamentals of corporate taxation such as the corporate tax base; distributions from corporations; shareholder transfers of property to corporations; liability assumptions in connection with those transactions; corporate liquidations; the DRD and liquidations of controlled subsidiaries; redemptions; stock distributions and similar transactions such as recapitalizations; subchapter S concepts; choice of entity and capital structure issues; taxable asset and stock acquisitions; § 338 recharacterization of stock acquisitions as asset acquisitions; the rules for carryovers; boot in reorganizations; B reorgs; C reorgs; triangular mergers; F reorgs; and an extensive discussion of § 355, including the post-General Utilities anti-abuse rules.

Part II provides a discussion of advanced topics that some instructors may wish to incorporate along with one of the earlier chapters or pick and choose for a few advanced topics at the end of the course. It deals with debt and equity issues of particular interest in the corporate context, including § 1032 and the use of a corporation's own stock, options, or tracking stock; transactions involving debt of related parties; and a brief introduction to consolidated returns, as a means of exploring advanced topics in entity organization.

Each chapter ends with comprehensive sets of Discussion and Practice Problems.

Ten other books in the Series also are available for adoption:

• Civil Tax Procedure (2d ed. 2007) & 2011 Supp.), by David Richardson (Florida), Jerome Borison (Denver) & Steve Johnson (Florida State)
• Employee Benefits Law: Qualification Rules and ERISA Requirements (2d ed. 2012), by Kathryn Kennedy (John Marshall) & Paul Shultz (Director, IRS Employee Plans Rulings & Agreement
• Estate and Gift Taxation (2011), by Robert Danforth (Washington & Lee) & Brant Hellwig (South Carolina)
• Federal Tax Accounting (2d ed. 2011) by Michael Lang (Chapman), Elliott Manning (Miami) & Mona Hymel (Arizona)
• Federal Taxation of Property Transactions (2012), by Elliott Manning (Miami) & David Cameron (Northwestern)
• Partnership Taxation (2d ed. 2008), by Richard Lipton (Baker & McKenzie, Chicago), Paul Carman (Chapman & Cutler, Chicago), Charles Fassler (Greenebaum, Doll & McDonald, Louisville) & Walter Schwidetzky (Baltimore)
• Regulation of Tax Practice (2010), by Linda Galler (Hofstra) & Michael Lang (Chapman)
• Tax Crimes (2008), by Steve Johnson (Florida State), Scott Schumacher (Washington), Larry Campagna (Adjunct Professor, Houston) & John Townsend (Adjunct Professor, Houston)
• Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions (2012), by Bradley Borden (Brooklyn)
• United States International Taxation (2d ed. 2011), by Allison Christians (Wisconsin), Samuel Donaldson (Washington) &  Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern)

Other information:

• For more details about the Graduate Tax Series, see here.
• Click on these links to purchase a copy of Civil Tax Procedure, Corporate Taxation, Employee Benefits Law, Estate and Gift Taxation, Federal Tax Accounting, Partnership Taxation, Regulation of Tax Practice, Tax Crimes, Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions, and United States International Taxation.  Faculty can request a complimentary review copy by emailing here (in the body of your email, note the title of the book you are requesting and your contact information).
• Email me if you would like more information about the Series or if you would like to submit a book proposal.

NY Times: Stanley Fish Reviews Brian Tamanaha's New Book, Failing Law Schools

New York Times, The Bad News Law Schools, by Stanley Fish:

Uneasiness about the state of legal education has been around for some time, but in the wake of the financial meltdown of 2008, uneasiness ripened into a conviction that something was terribly wrong as law school applications declined, thousands of lawyers lost their jobs, employers complained that law school graduates had not been trained to practice law, and law school graduates complained that they had been led into debt by false promises of employment and high salaries. And while all this was happening, law schools continued to raise tuition, take in more and more students, and construct elaborate new facilities.

That at least is the story told in a book to be published later this year, Failing Law Schools, by Brian Tamanaha. Tamanaha is a law professor, a former law school dean, a prolific legal theorist and, by his own account, a malefactor who in the past did some of the things he now criticizes. Having seen the light, he feels compelled to spread and document the bad news. ... He catalogs a large number of failings on the part of law schools, but his emphasis is less on particular bad actors (although he names more than a few) than on the structural conditions — conditions put in place by no one, but affecting everyone — that generate and drive their behavior.

Two such conditions can be colloquially named “the ABA made me do it” and “the rankings made me do it.” ...

Tamanaha does not spare the internal practices of law schools and is particularly distressed about the amount of debt incurred by those least able to get out from under it — graduates of lower-ranked schools. He also takes aim at the claim of law professors that their high salaries and low teaching loads (relative to other academics) are justified by the revenue they forgo when they enter the academy. No, he replies. Not only is “our pay far better than that of other professors,” not only do we have lifetime security and hours of work that are “whatever we want them to be,” but “our quality of life is far better than that of lawyers and we make more money than most lawyers.”

Will these fortunate conditions persist? Can law schools keep doing what they’re doing? Not according to the statistics Tamanaha marshals, statistics that show, among other things, that while law schools produce annually 45,000 new graduates, only 25,000 openings for lawyers are projected “each year through 2018.” ...

[T]he solution? In a word, differentiation. Don’t let the ABA and U.S. News call the tune. Instead, take a good look at the educational landscape, at the market, at the costs, at the demographics and come up with a flexible system that matches law school graduates to needs. ...

Will it happen? Tamanaha is not optimistic, and he cites the (to him) discouraging example of the new law school at the University of California at Irvine, which, he says, chose “elite status” over “affordability,” chose to enter the “ranking sweepstakes” rather than opting for a “different design.” Still, he finds hope in a number of public law schools that do “charge tuition well below $20,000.” He’s just not generally hopeful.

(Hat Tip: Bill Turnier.)

99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality Is Wrecking the World

Chuck Collins (Institute for Policy Studies), 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality Is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It? (Berrett-Koehler Publishers (April 2, 2012)):

The focus of the worldwide Occupy protests is creating a world that works for 99% of people and businesses, not just the richest and most powerful 1%. But who are the 99%? Who are the 1%? How extensive and systemic is inequality in different areas of society? What are its causes and consequence? How is inequality changing in our world? And what can be done about it?

For many years Chuck Collins has been a top leader in studying, speaking about, and writing about these questions. In this book he brings together in one place, for the first time, information that has been widely scattered in many different articles, reports, and websites. He provides revealing and powerful information about inequality in all realms of today’s world, including individual wealth and power, corporate wealth and power, media control, political influence, and other areas. He then describes the functioning of the Wall Street Inequality Machine and describes how inequality wrecks everything we care about. And he tells how people and groups are pushing back against inequality and taking action to reduce inequality and create a world that works for the many and not just the few.

LexisNexis Publishes Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions

On behalf of LexisNexis and the Graduate Tax Series Board of Editors (Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.), Elliott Manning (Miami), Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern) & David Richardson (Florida)), I am delighted to announce the publication of Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions, by Bradley Borden (Brooklyn)

The Graduate Tax Series is the first and only series of course materials designed for use in tax LL.M. programs. Like all books in the Series, Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions was designed from the ground-up with the needs of graduate tax faculty and students in mind:

• More focus on Internal Revenue Code and regulations, less on case law
• Analysis of complex, practice-oriented problems of increasing sophistication
• Teacher’s manual with solutions to problems and other guidance
• On-line access to the comprehensive and current Code and regulations, designed to complement the book

Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions uses a single, complex problem to replicate a real estate tax practice.

Ten other books in the Series also are available for adoption:

• Civil Tax Procedure (2d ed. 2007) & 2011 Supp.), by David Richardson (Florida), Jerome Borison (Denver) & Steve Johnson (Florida State)
• Employee Benefits Law: Qualification Rules and ERISA Requirements (2d ed. 2011), by Kathryn Kennedy (John Marshall) & Paul Shultz (Director, IRS Employee Plans Rulings & Agreement
• Estate and Gift Taxation (2011), by Robert Danforth (Washington & Lee) & Brant Hellwig (South Carolina)
• Federal Corporate Income Taxation (2011), by Charlotte Crane (Northwestern) & Linda Beale (Wayne State)
• Federal Tax Accounting, by Michael Lang (Chapman), Elliott Manning (Miami) & Mona Hymel (Arizona)
• Federal Taxation of Property Transactions (2011), by Elliott Manning (Miami) & David Cameron (Northwestern)
• Partnership Taxation (2d ed. 2008), by Richard Lipton (Baker & McKenzie, Chicago), Paul Carman (Chapman & Cutler, Chicago), Charles Fassler (Greenebaum, Doll & McDonald, Louisville) & Walter Schwidetzky (Baltimore)
• Regulation of Tax Practice (2010), by Linda Galler (Hofstra) & Michael Lang (Chapman)
• Tax Crimes (2008), by Steve Johnson (Florida State), Scott Schumacher (Washington), Larry Campagna (Adjunct Professor, Houston) & John Townsend (Adjunct Professor, Houston)
• United States International Taxation (2d ed. 2011), by Allison Christians (Wisconsin), Samuel Donaldson (Washington) &  Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern)

Other information:

• For more details about the Graduate Tax Series, see here.
• Click on these links to purchase a copy of Civil Tax Procedure, Employee Benefits Law, Estate and Gift Taxation, Federal Tax Accounting, Partnership Taxation, Regulation of Tax Practice, Tax Crimes, Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions, and United States International Taxation.  Faculty can request a complimentary review copy by emailing here (in the body of your email, note the title of the book you are requesting and your contact information).
• Email me if you would like more information about the Series or if you would like to submit a book proposal.

Studies in the History of Tax Law

John Tiley (Queen's College, Cambridge) has published Volume 5 of Studies in the History of Tax Law (Hart Publishing, Dec. 2011):

These are the papers from the 2010 Tax law History Conference. The papers reflect an even wider range of topics, including problems in defining and taxing Companies from 1799 to 1965, the Window tax from a Public Health perspective, the development of the tax profession, Montesquieu and ERA Seligman, taxing charities in Australia, Charitable Purposes Exemption from Income Tax: Pitt to Pemsel 1798 – 1891 and Australian perspectives on avoiding evasion. Turning to international tax there are essays on the history of the international taxation of income from enterprise services, the Negotiation and Drafting of the 1967 United Kingdom Australia Taxation Treaty and on art 7 (3) of the OECD Model Treaty.

Bartlett: Tax Reform -- Why We Need It and What It Will Take

Bruce Bartlett, The Benefit and The Burden: Tax Reform-Why We Need It and What It Will Take (Simon & Schuster, Jan. 24, 2012):

The United States Tax Code has undergone no serious reform since 1986. Since then, loopholes, exemptions, credits, and deductions have distorted its clarity, increased its inequity, and frustrated our ability to govern ourselves.

At its core, any tax system is in place to raise the revenue needed to pay the government’s bills. But where that revenue should come from raises crucial questions: Should our tax code be progressive, with the wealthier paying more than the poor, and if so, to what extent? Should we tax income or consumption or both? Of the various ideas proposed by economists and politicians—from tax increases to tax cuts, from a VAT to a Fair Tax—what will work and won’t? By tracing the history of our own tax system and by assessing the way other countries have solved similar problems, Bartlett explores the surprising answers to all of these questions, giving a sense of the tax code’s many benefits—and its inevitable burdens.

Tax reform will be a major issue debated in the years ahead. Growing budget deficits and the expiration of various tax cuts loom. Reform, once a philosophical dilemma, is turning into a practical crisis. By framing the various tax philosophies that dominate the debate, Bartlett explores the distributional, technical, and political advantages and costs of the various proposals and ideas that will come to dominate America’s political conversation in the years to come.

Financial Times, Book Review: Myths, Loopholes and a Case for Reform:

Bruce Bartlett’s lucid analysis of the politics and economics of the broken US tax system makes for a provocative election year read.

Please Stop by Today at AALS Annual Meeting

I will be at the LexisNexis booth in the Exhibit Hall at the AALS Annual Meeting today from 3:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. as part of its "Meet the Author" program. Please stop by if you would like to chat about our LexisNexis Graduate Tax Series or Foundation Press Law Stories Series. In light of the queue at past AALS annual meetings, please be sure to get to the booth early (by 3:29 p.m.).

Call for Tax Book Reviews: Oxford University Press

Daniel Solove (George Washington) has issued a call for book reviews (here and here) of new Oxford University Press books to be published on Concurring Opinions.  Two of the books are about tax:

• Edward McCaffery (USC), The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Income Tax Law (Dec. 2011):

In The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Income Tax Law, Edward McCaffery presents an accessible introduction to the major topics in the field of federal income taxation, such as income, deductions, and recognition of gains and losses. After discussing central rules and doctrines individually, Edward McCaffery offers a very sophisticated yet clear explanation of the interplay among them, carefully describing how they work together to carry out the policy goals of the U.S. tax system.

Professor McCaffery describes, for example, how the current income tax in the United States has increasingly become a wage tax that favors those with capital rather than those whose money comes from labor. In explaining the consequences of tax policy on individuals, he also considers important possible alternatives for income taxation in the U.S.

The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Income Tax Law sets forth the 'who,' 'what,' 'when,' and 'why' of income tax law and describes the essential concepts of the field in a clear and concise manner that helps students and non-experts increase their understanding of the policies behind modern tax law and the ways in which these policies affect different types of individuals.

• A leading expert in tax law provides students with a clear and concise approach to the major topics in the field of federal income taxation
• This book synthesizes the key doctrines, cases, evolution, and policies of tax law in a clear yet sophisticated manner
• An indispensable supplement to casebook and tax code for students studying federal income taxation
• Provides an overview of the major developments in tax reform and a framework in which these efforts can be better evaluated
• Provides a framework to tax law that is accessible to beginners by continually offering a view of the "big picture" so that students do not feel overwhelmed by intricate tax detail
• Covers the leading cases and concepts, and includes numerous real-world and hypothetical illustrations to ensure that students can grasp the otherwise complicated rules

• Camilla E. Watson (Georgia), Federal Income Taxation: Model Problems and Outstanding Answers (Dec. 2011):

Tax law is a daunting subject for many law students. It requires a firm grasp of the Internal Revenue Code provisions, the reasoning behind them, the way they interact, and the way courts have interpreted them. Students must also acquire a brand new vocabulary of tax terms.

For the first time, Oxford University Press equips students with an accessible guide to acing this most challenging of law school tests. In Federal Income Taxation: Model Problems and Outstanding Answers, Camilla E. Watson helps students demonstrate their knowledge of federal income tax law in the structured and sophisticated manner that professors expect on law school exams.

This book includes clear introductions to the major topics in tax law, provides hypothetical's similar to those that students can expect to see on an exam, and offers model answers to those hypothetical's. Professor Watson then gives students the opportunity to evaluate their own work with a comprehensive self-analysis section. This book prepares students by challenging them to use the law they learn in class while also explaining the best way to express an answer on law school exams.

• Each problem/test question is separated into components so students can easily identify the key concepts in Federal Income Taxation and learn how to apply those concepts in a sophisticated manner on law exams
• Helps students identify the deficiencies in their own answers, allowing them to refine their writing and provide the answers law professors expect on Federal Income Taxation exams
• A self-evaluation section identifies which issues are most often missed on exams, allowing students to master the answers to challenging test questions

Christmas Gifts for that Special Tax Person

Tax Lawyer, Dude ($2.99 digital book):

Taxes for individuals are more complicated than ever. American lifestyles include changing jobs, being more mobile and selling homes more often. Companies are more complex with mergers, multinational systems, and takeovers. And to fill the need, came individuals with an assortment of training and backgrounds to help individuals and corporations with taxes.

Tax preparers who can range from having no training to extensive training, accountants and CPAs, and tax attorneys all help individuals and corporations with taxes, both national and state. Those who help with taxes range from the individual sitting at a folding table in Wal-Mart or Sears to tax attorneys who can earn up to more than a million dollars per year practicing tax law. The tax attorneys are at the top of the professionals doing tax work.

You get the impression from skits on TV that those who deal with taxes whether from the IRS side or representing individuals and business are heavy handed brutes, but in fact this occupation requires a keen and subtle mind. While tax attorneys make up only a small percentage of practicing attorneys, this specialized field is highly respected. It takes an astute person to understand the complicated and ever changing tax codes. It is a personally and professionally challenging field.

Tax attorneys whether they do actual litigation or in-court representation, work for large corporations as in house counsel, represent clients in a private practice, or work for the government all do basically the same things:

• Clarify tax laws for the interests of the client.
• Represent the government or the client in dealing with tax issues.
• Make recommendations and develop strategies optimizing tax savings.

This report will introduce you to this personally and financially rewarding field. You will be able to see if this intellectually challenging vocation is the place for you.

Now would be a good time to find out if you have the aptitude, intellect, and personality traits to become a tax attorney. Many are lured by the movie and TV images of lawyers and go into the field only to find they are not suited to the career. Before you invest a minimum of seven years in college getting a bachelor's degree and a law degree, you should participate in some exploring and self-discovery.

Harvard Law Review on Nancy Staudt's How Courts Fund National Defense in Times of Crisis

The Harvard Law Review has published a review of the new book by Tax Prof Nancy Staudt (USC), The Judicial Power of the Purse: How Courts Fund National Defense in Times of Crisis (University of Chicago Press. 2011), 125 Harv. L. Rev. 378 (2011):

Congressional declarations of war, troop deployments, and revenue-raising laws are familiar legislative and executive responses to foreign policy crises. According to this innovative study of judicial decisionmaking, they also function as cues to Supreme Court Justices, who strategically adjust federal budgetary constraints in pursuit of the optimal level of national defense consumption. Investigating thousands of Supreme Court and lower federal court opinions, courtroom filings, and law clerk memoranda, Professor Nancy Staudt exposes the implicit judicial power of the purse, presenting compelling evidence that in fiscal and tax matters between the government and private parties, Justices support the government when cues from the elected branches indicate that costly military activities are necessary for national security but side with private parties when credible cues signal that military activities are excessive. Staudt’s thesis dynamically expands the scholarly understanding of the macro-level factors that influence judicial decisionmaking. This book challenges conventional perceptions of federal power dynamics and revives the debate over the extent to which considerations of national interests should sway judicial preferences.

Newman Reviews Chasing Aphrodite

Tax Prof Joel Newman (Wake Forest), Book Review, Tex. L. Rev. Dicta (2011) (reviewing Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum (2011)):

Chasing Aphrodite is mostly a story of law—laws ignored, laws finessed, and ultimately, laws triumphant. Necessarily, it is a story about lawyers and legal process. Penny Cobey, the Getty’s acting general counsel, spent two days prepping Marion True for her interview with Italian authorities, only to be blindsided when True disclosed all sorts of things to the Italians that she had neglected to mention the day before. Later, Cobey gave her superiors an honest assessment of the illegality of what they were doing and of the likely legal consequences. Of course, she lost her job.

Chasing Aphrodite is a rollicking good yarn, well told by two Los Angeles Times reporters. There are very few heroes, and many villains. At least, the villains are interesting.

John Steines Is New Author of Bittker & Eustice Corporate Tax Treatise

John P. Steines, Jr. (NYU) has been named the new author of the classic treatise, Federal Income Taxation of Corporations and Shareholders, by the late  Boris Bittker and James Eustice. From the press release:

“We’re very pleased to welcome Professor Steines as one of our WG&L authors,” said Linda Scheffel, vice president and Publisher, the Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters. ““With his background, our Federal Income Taxation of Corporations and Shareholders subscribers can be assured that the treatise will maintain the same high level of expertise they have relied on over the past 50 years.”

In addition to preparing regular updates to the treatise, Professor Steines will immediately begin work on the 8th Edition, which will consolidate and realign developments that have occurred over the twelve years since the 7th Edition was published. ...

John P. Steines, Jr. holds an undergraduate degree in engineering and a Juris Doctor degree from Ohio State University. After practicing law in Michigan for three years, he earned an LL.M in Taxation from New York University, where Steines eventually became a permanent faculty member, teaching a variety of courses in corporate and partnership taxation, consolidated tax returns, tax accounting, international aspects of U.S. taxation, and tax policy. He served as Counsel for many years to Weil, Gotshal & Manges, and, since 2004, has been Counsel to Cooley LLP (formerly Kronish, Lieb, Weiner & Hellman), where his practice has mirrored his teaching. Steines frequently testifies as an expert in U.S. and foreign tax or tax-related controversies and teaches courses to IRS personnel. A former editor-in-chief of the Tax Law Review, his written scholarship includes his casebook, International Aspects of U.S. Income Taxation, in addition to articles on corporate, partnership, and international issues.

Foundation Press Publishes First Amendment Stories

Foundation Press has published First Amendment Stories, by Richard W Garnett (Notre Dame) & Andrew Koppelman (Northwestern):

First Amendment Stories goes behind the scenes of landmark, foundational cases involving the fundamental freedoms of speech, religion, and the press. By filling in the details, setting the stage, and presenting fully the context, the text provides readers with a richer understanding of these cases, the people involved in them, and their implications for the future. Considered together, these stories highlight the leading themes and questions that have animated our legal doctrines, and our public conversations, about the conflicts that arise between the power and goals of government, on the one hand, and the liberty and conscience of the individual, on the other.

This Law Stories title will enrich First Amendment courses and help students appreciate the premises that animate the cases and the values that are at stake in religious-liberty and free-speech controversies, rarely captured fully by doctrinal presentations. This collection offers carefully selected and rich cases that involve real stories, which can themselves serve as points-of-entry to the many great, ongoing debates that run through our free-speech and religious-liberty traditions. These case stories offer the historical and political contexts and engage with the theoretical and practical implications, giving an understanding essential for any First Amendement student, practitioner, or scholar.

Other titles in the Law Stories Series (for which I serve as Series Editor) are:

• Administrative Law Stories (2006), edited by Peter L. Strauss (Columbia)
• Antitrust Stories (2007), edited by Eleanor M. Fox (NYU) & Daniel A. Crane (Cardozo)
• Bankruptcy Law Stories (2007), edited by Robert Rasmussen (Dean, USC)
• Business Tax Stories (2005), edited by Steven A. Bank (UCLA) & Kirk J. Stark (UCLA) 
• Civil Procedure Stories (2d ed. 2008), edited by Kevin M. Clermont (Cornell)
• Civil Rights Stories (2008), edited by Myriam Gilles (Cardozo) & Risa Goluboff (Virginia)
• Constitutional Law Stories (2d ed. 2009), edited by Michael C. Dorf (Cornell)
• Contracts Stories (2006), edited by Douglas G. Baird (Chicago)
• Corporate Law Stories (2009), edited by J. Mark Ramseyer (Harvard)
• Criminal Procedure Stories (2006), edited by Carol S. Steiker (Harvard)
• Death Penalty Stories (2009), edited by John H. Blum (Cornell) & Jordan M. Steiker (Texas)
• Education Law Stories (2008), edited by Michael A. Olivas (Houston) & Ronna Greff Schneider (Cincinnati)
• Employment Discrimination Stories (2006), edited by Joel William Friedman (Tulane)
• Employment Law Stories (2007), edited by Samuel Estreicher (NYU) & Gillian Lester (UC-Berkeley)
• Environmental Law Stories (2005), edited by Richard J. Lazarus (Harvard) & Oliver A. Houck (Tulane)
• Evidence Stories (2006), edited by Richard O. Lempert (Michigan)
• Family Law Stories (2008), edited by Carol Sanger (Columbia)
• Federal Courts Stories (2010), edited by Vicki C. Jackson (Georgetown) & Judith Resnik (Yale)
• Human Rights Advocacy Stories (2008), edited by Deena R. Hurwitz (Virginia) & Margaret L. Satterthwaite (NYU), with Doug Ford (Virginia)
• Immigration Stories (2005), edited by David A. Martin (Virginia) & Peter H. Schuck (Yale)
• Indian Law Stories (2011), edited by Carole E. Goldberg (UCLA), Kevin K. Washburn (Dean, New Mexico) & Philip P. Frickey (UC-Berkeley):
• Intellectual Property Stories (2005), edited by Jane C. Ginsburg (Columbia) & Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss (NYU)
• International Law Stories (2007), edited by John Noyes (California Western), Mark Janis (Connecticut) & Laura Dickinson (Connecticut)
• Labor Law Stories (2005), edited by Laura J. Cooper (Minnesota) & Catherine L. Fisk (Duke)
• Legal Ethics Stories (2005), edited by Deborah L. Rhode (Stanford) & David Luban (Georgetown)
• Presidential Power Stories (2008), edited by Christopher H. Schroeder (Duke) & Curtis A. Bradley (Duke)
• Property Stories (2d ed. 2009), edited by Gerald Korngold (New York Law School) & Andrew P. Morriss (Alabama)
• Race Law Stories (2008), edited by by Rachel F. Moran (UC-Berkeley) & Devon Carbado (UCLA)
• Statutory Interpretation Stories, (2011), edited by William N. Eskridge, Jr. (Yale), Philip P. Frickey (UC-Berkeley) & Elizabeth Garrett (USC): 
• Tax Stories (2d ed. 2009), edited by Paul L. Caron (Cincinnati)
• Torts Stories (2003), edited by Robert L. Rabin (Stanford) & Stephen D. Sugarman (UC-Berkeley)
• Trial Stories (2008), edited by Michael E. Tigar (American) & Angela J. Davis (American)
• Women and the Law Stories (2011), edited by Elizabeth M. Schneider (Brooklyn) & Stephanie M. Wildman (Santa Clara)

Yin & Burke: Corporate Taxation

George K. Yin (Virginia) & Karen C. Burke (San Diego), Corporate Taxation (Aspen, 2011):

By focusing attention on core principles and policies, Corporate Taxation reveals all of the major patterns and themes in the field. Students learn the law from basic source material – the Code and regulations – with concise explanations to supplement the presentation. Many problems, questions, and examples help lead students through challenging material. Cases and other source materials are edited concisely, and note material is kept to a manageable length. An effective organizational structure bridges introductory concepts with those presented in advanced tax classes. The text begins with subchapter S – an area of growing, practical significance – which links individual and separate entity taxation. Using a “building-block” approach from basic to complex transactions, students grasp the notion that many complex transactions are merely combinations of simpler ones, and that transactions may be structured in different ways to achieve varied tax consequences.

Corporate Taxation is solidly up-to-date. The structure and text integrate current developments, including codification of the economic substance doctrine; the impact of corporate tax shelters and application of substance-over-form doctrine; the increased importance of pass-through tax principles; the comparable treatment of dividends and long-term capital gain; recent changes affecting acquisitive and divisive reorganizations; and policy implications of current corporate tax reform options. A comprehensive Teacher’s Manual accompanies the text.

Sullivan: Corporate Tax Reform -- Taxing Profits in the 21st Century

Martin A. Sullivan (Tax Analysts), Corporate Tax Reform: Taxing Profits in the 21st Century (Apress, Oct. 24, 2011):

Corporate tax reform is in the air. Competitive pressures from globalization, as well as skyrocketing budget deficits, are forcing lawmakers to rethink how America’s largest businesses are taxed. Some want to close “loopholes.” Others want to end all U.S. tax on foreign profits. Some want to lower rates, while still others want to abolish the corporate tax altogether and replace it with an entirely new system. Unlike many other books on tax policy, Corporate Tax Reform: Taxing Profits in the 21st Century is not selling an idea or approaching the issue from a particular political slant. It boils down the complexity of corporate taxation into simple language so readers can make up their own minds about the future of this controversial tax. For too long, the issue of corporate tax reform has been the exclusive domain of lawyers and economists who devote their entire adult lives to studying the tax. Corporate Tax Reform: Taxing Profits in the 21st Century opens the door on these issues to all concerned citizens by providing a compact guide to the economics and politics of the current debate on corporate tax reform.  

• Provides an overview of the corporate tax and the possibilities for reform
• Discusses the impact on businesspeople and individual taxpayers
• Boils down complex tax concepts boiled into simple language
• Spurs lively discussion of the political issues without political bias
• Includes a discussion of ideas for revamping taxes for individuals, since the corporate and individual tax codes are interrelated

LexisNexis Publishes Estate & Gift Taxation

On behalf of LexisNexis and the Graduate Tax Series Board of Editors (Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.), Elliott Manning (Miami), Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern) & David Richardson (Florida)), I am delighted to announce the publication of Estate and Gift Taxation (2011), by Robert Danforth (Washington & Lee) & Brant Hellwig (South Carolina).

The Graduate Tax Series is the first and only series of course materials designed for use in tax LL.M. programs. Like all books in the Series, Estate and Gift Taxation was designed from the ground-up with the needs of graduate tax faculty and students in mind:

• More focus on Internal Revenue Code and regulations, less on case law
• Analysis of complex, practice-oriented problems of increasing sophistication
• Teacher’s manual with solutions to problems and other guidance
• On-line access to the comprehensive and current Code and regulations, designed to complement the book

Ten other books in the Series also are available for adoption:

• Civil Tax Procedure (2d ed. 2007) & 2011 Supp.), by David Richardson (Florida), Jerome Borison (Denver) & Steve Johnson (Florida State)
• Employee Benefits Law: Qualification Rules and ERISA Requirements (2d ed. 2011), by Kathryn Kennedy (John Marshall) & Paul Shultz (Director, IRS Employee Plans Rulings & Agreement
• Federal Corporate Income Taxation (2011), by Charlotte Crane (Northwestern) & Linda Beale (Wayne State)
• Federal Tax Accounting, by Michael Lang (Chapman), Elliott Manning (Miami) & Mona Hymel (Arizona)
• Federal Taxation of Property Transactions (2011), by Elliott Manning (Miami) & David Cameron (Northwestern)
• Partnership Taxation (2d ed. 2008), by Richard Lipton (Baker & McKenzie, Chicago), Paul Carman (Chapman & Cutler, Chicago), Charles Fassler (Greenebaum, Doll & McDonald, Louisville) & Walter Schwidetzky (Baltimore)
• Regulation of Tax Practice (2010), by Linda Galler (Hofstra) & Michael Lang (Chapman)
• Tax Crimes (2008), by Steve Johnson (Florida State), Scott Schumacher (Washington), Larry Campagna (Adjunct Professor, Houston) & John Townsend (Adjunct Professor, Houston)
• Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions, by Bradley Borden (Brooklyn)
• United States International Taxation (2d ed. 2011), by Allison Christians (Wisconsin), Samuel Donaldson (Washington) &  Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern)

Other information:

• For more details about the Graduate Tax Series, see here.
• Click on these links to purchase a copy of Civil Tax Procedure, Employee Benefits Law, Estate and Gift Taxation, Federal Tax Accounting, Partnership Taxation, Regulation of Tax Practice, Tax Crimes, and United States International Taxation.  Faculty can request a complimentary review copy by emailing here (in the body of your email, note the title of the book you are requesting and your contact information).
• Email me if you would like more information about the Series or if you would like to submit a book proposal.

NY Review of Books: Michael Graetz, The End of Energy

The New York Review of Books reviews the new book by Tax Prof Michael Graetz (Columbia), The End of Energy: The Unmaking of America's Environment, Security, and Independence (MIT Press, 2011):

The tangled history of energy policy is admirably described in the new book by legal scholar Michael Graetz, The End of Energy. Graetz is a professor of tax law at Columbia University and a major thinker about the design of our current tax system. He was at the Yale Law School for almost twenty-five years before that. He also was deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for tax policy in 1990–1991. His earlier works include proposals to simplify the tax system and an influential book on the inheritance tax. ...

Energy policy is a good case study for politics in modern America, and Graetz’s book is a sobering reminder of the shortcomings of our political system. He shows that the ability of the federal government to respond to long-term challenges is very limited when a good policy will impose short-term costs. The need for taxes on energy externalities such as carbon emissions is central to our ability to reduce the harmful side effects of economic growth. It is striking how the political dialogue in the US has ignored a policy that has so many desirable features. Perhaps, in the near future, faced with the deadline of a dire economic situation, negotiators will formulate such a policy. It would generate substantial revenues while bringing so many long-run economic and environmental benefits. Simply put, externality taxes are the best fiscal instrument to employ at this time, in this country, and given the fiscal constraints faced by the US.

Kentucky Hosts Conference Today on Politics, Taxes, and the Pulpit

Kentucky hosts a conference today on the new book by Nina J. Crimm (St. John's) & Laurence H. Winer (Arizona State), Politics, Taxes, and the Pulpit: Provocative First Amendment Conflicts (Oxford University Press, 2011):

As the nation’s presidential and congressional campaigns heat up and the Kentucky gubernatorial campaign is in full swing, the authors of Politics, Taxes, and the Pulpit: Provocative First Amendment Conflicts and invited panelists will engage in a timely and thought-provoking dialogue. The controversy is whether a spiritual leader, acting in his or her official capacity as representative of a house of worship, should be able to support or oppose a political candidate from the pulpit, or in another private or public forum, without loss of the institution’s federal tax-exempt status and many accompanying tax benefits.

Such religious voices in the political arena are applauded by some people but are deeply troublesome to others. At issue are the federal tax subsidies benefiting houses of worship that are available only if they completely refrain from explicit or implicit partisan, political speech, a condition in tension with all protections of the First Amendment – freedom of speech and press, the free exercise of religion, and the avoidance of government establishment of religion.

In addition to the authors, other speakers are:

• David A. Brennen (Dean, Kentucky)
• Joshua A. Douglas (Kentucky)
• Reverend Nancy Jo Kemper (Interim Associate Dean for Interreligious Life, Transylvania University)
• Paul E. Salamanca (Kentucky)

Brunori: State Tax Policy -- A Political Perspective

David Brunori (Executive Vice President of Editorial Operations, Tax Analysts), State Tax Policy: A Political Perspective (Urban Institute, 3d ed. 2011):

State tax systems are in trouble. Revenue collecting methods developed more than a half century ago are straining to deal with 21st century economies. Globalization and e-commerce are changing the way people work and purchase goods; devolution has steadily shifted responsibility from the federal government to the states; tax incentives have become the weapon of choice in the battle to attract business investment. All of this, in an environment where antitax messages have become a staple of political campaigns, has made creating tax policy more challenging than ever before. In the updated third edition of State Tax Policy: A Political Perspective, David Brunori analyzes these and other critical challenges facing state governments. He identifies the important issues, and examines possible solutions in formulating and implementing state tax policy.

Bank: Anglo-American Corporate Taxation

Steven Bank (UCLA), Anglo-American Corporate Taxation: Tracing the Common Roots of Divergent Approaches (Cambridge University Press, 2011):

The UK and the USA have historically represented opposite ends of the spectrum in their approaches to taxing corporate income. Under the British approach, corporate and shareholder income taxes have been integrated under an imputation system, with tax paid at the corporate level imputed to shareholders through a full or partial credit against dividends received. Under the American approach, by contrast, corporate and shareholder income taxes have remained separate under what is called a 'classical' system in which shareholders receive little or no relief from a second layer of taxes on dividends. Steven A. Bank explores the evolution of the corporate income tax systems in each country during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to understand the common legal, economic, political and cultural forces that produced such divergent approaches and explains why convergence may be likely in the future as each country grapples with corporate taxation in an era of globalization.

The Introduction is available on SSRN.

LexisNexis Publishes Federal Tax Accounting

On behalf of LexisNexis and the Graduate Tax Series Board of Editors (Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.), Elliott Manning (Miami), Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern) & David Richardson (Florida)), I am delighted to announce the publication of the second edition of Federal Tax Accounting, by Michael Lang (Chapman), Elliott Manning (Miami) & Mona Hymel (Arizona).

The Graduate Tax Series is the first and only series of course materials designed for use in tax LL.M. programs. Like all books in the Series, Federal Tax Accounting was designed from the ground-up with the needs of graduate tax faculty and students in mind:

• More focus on Internal Revenue Code and regulations, less on case law
• Analysis of complex, practice-oriented problems of increasing sophistication
• Teacher’s manual with solutions to problems and other guidance
• On-line access to the comprehensive and current Code and regulations, designed to complement the book

Ten other books in the Series also are available for adoption:

• Civil Tax Procedure (2d ed. 2007) & 2011 Supp.), by David Richardson (Florida), Jerome Borison (Denver) & Steve Johnson (Florida State)
• Employee Benefits Law: Qualification Rules and ERISA Requirements (2d ed. 2011), by Kathryn Kennedy (John Marshall) & Paul Shultz (Director, IRS Employee Plans Rulings & Agreement
• Estate and Gift Taxation (2011), by Robert Danforth (Washington & Lee) & Brant Hellwig (South Carolina) 
• Federal Corporate Income Taxation (2011), by Charlotte Crane (Northwestern) & Linda Beale (Wayne State)
• Federal Taxation of Property Transactions (2011), by Elliott Manning (Miami) & David Cameron (Northwestern)
• Partnership Taxation (2d ed. 2008), by Richard Lipton (Baker & McKenzie, Chicago), Paul Carman (Chapman & Cutler, Chicago), Charles Fassler (Greenebaum, Doll & McDonald, Louisville) & Walter Schwidetzky (Baltimore)
• Regulation of Tax Practice (2010), by Linda Galler (Hofstra) & Michael Lang (Chapman)
• Tax Crimes (2008), by Steve Johnson (Florida State), Scott Schumacher (Washington), Larry Campagna (Adjunct Professor, Houston) & John Townsend (Adjunct Professor, Houston)
• Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions, by Bradley Borden (Brooklyn)
• United States International Taxation (2d ed. 2011), by Allison Christians (Wisconsin), Samuel Donaldson (Washington) &  Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern)

Other information:

• For more details about the Graduate Tax Series, see here.
• Click on these links to purchase a copy of Civil Tax Procedure, Employee Benefits Law, Federal Tax Accounting, Partnership Taxation, Regulation of Tax Practice, Tax Crimes, and United States International Taxation.  Faculty can request a complimentary review copy by emailing here (in the body of your email, note the title of the book you are requesting and your contact information).
• Email me if you would like more information about the Series or if you would like to submit a book proposal.

Lexis Nexis Publishes U.S. International Taxation

On behalf of LexisNexis and the Graduate Tax Series Board of Editors (Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.), Elliott Manning (Miami), Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern) & David Richardson (Florida)), I am delighted to announce the publication of the second edition of United States International Taxation, by Allison Christians (Wisconsin), Samuel Donaldson (Washington) & Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern).

The Graduate Tax Series is the first and only series of course materials designed for use in tax LL.M. programs. Like all books in the Series, United States International Taxation was designed from the ground-up with the needs of graduate tax faculty and students in mind:

• More focus on Internal Revenue Code and regulations, less on case law
• Analysis of complex, practice-oriented problems of increasing sophistication
• Teacher’s manual with solutions to problems and other guidance
• On-line access to the comprehensive and current Code and regulations, designed to complement the book

Ten other books in the Series also are available for adoption:

• Civil Tax Procedure ((2d ed. 2007) & 2011 Supp.), by David Richardson (Florida), Jerome Borison (Denver) & Steve Johnson (Florida State)
• Employee Benefits Law: Qualification Rules and ERISA Requirements (2d ed. 2011), by Kathryn Kennedy (John Marshall) & Paul Shultz (Director, IRS Employee Plans Rulings & Agreements)
• Estate and Gift Taxation (2011), by Robert Danforth (Washington & Lee) & Brant Hellwig (South Carolina) 
• Federal Corporate Income Taxation (2011), by Charlotte Crane (Northwestern) & Linda Beale (Wayne State)
• Federal Tax Accounting (2d ed. 2011), by Michael Lang (Chapman), Elliott Manning (Miami) & Mona Hymel (Arizona).
• Federal Taxation of Property Transactions (2011), by Elliott Manning (Miami) & David Cameron (Northwestern)
• Partnership Taxation (2d ed. 2008), by Richard Lipton (Baker & McKenzie, Chicago), Paul Carman (Chapman & Cutler, Chicago), Charles Fassler (Greenebaum, Doll & McDonald, Louisville) & Walter Schwidetzky (Baltimore)
• Regulation of Tax Practice (2010), by Linda Galler (Hofstra) & Michael Lang (Chapman)
• Tax Crimes (2008), by Steve Johnson (Florida State), Scott Schumacher (Washington), Larry Campagna (Adjunct Professor, Houston) & John Townsend (Adjunct Professor, Houston)
• Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions (2011), by Bradley Borden (Brooklyn)

Other information:

• For more details about the Graduate Tax Series, see here.
• Click on these links to purchase a copy of Civil Tax Procedure, Employee Benefits Law, Federal Tax Accounting, Partnership Taxation, Regulation of Tax Practice, Tax Crimes, and United States International Taxation.  Faculty can request a complimentary review copy by emailing here (in the body of your email, note the title of the book you are requesting and your contact information).
• Email me if you would like more information about the Series or if you would like to submit a book proposal.

Tax For Grownups

Huffington Post, USA Today Fails 'Math For Grownups':

Laura Laing is the author of a book called Math For Grownups. Gregory Connolly is an ostensibly grown-up journalist, tasked by USA Today to summarize some "tips" from Laing's book. In his summary, Connolly gets one thing very wrong:

That raise actually might not be as good as it looks. The extra money is nice, but it could very well bump you into the next tax bracket, possibly leaving you with less money than you had before the raise. Better benefits, such as medical, can save you money while keeping you in the same tax bracket.

Gads. We need a remedial lesson in what "marginal tax rates" are. ... [T]he failure to understand the nature of marginal tax rates is something that occurs far too often in lay journalism, to the extent that you do, from time to time, encounter stories about people artificially restraining their own income out of terror that they'll end up on the losing end of a tax rate deal.

(Hat Tip: Josh Blank, Francine Lipman.)

Foundation Press Publishes 2011 Supplement to Federal Wealth Transfer Taxation

The late Paul McDaniel (Florida), Jim Repetti (Boston College), and I have published a 2011 Supplement (111 pages) to our two Federal Wealth Transfer Taxation (Foundation Press, 6th ed. 2009) books: our casebook and study problems book. Faculty, students, and other interested readers are welcome to download a free copy. Here is the Preface:

This supplement is designed to update our Casebook and accompanying Study problems book: Federal Wealth Transfer Taxation: Cases and Materials (6th ed. 2009), and Federal Wealth Transfer Taxation: Study Problems (6th ed. 2010). We hereby grant permission to users of Federal Wealth Transfer Taxation to distribute copies of this supplement to students, either in hard copy or in electronic form.

This supplement is current through July 15, 2011 and incorporates The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 (Pub. L. No. 111-312, 124 Stat. 3296 (2010)), passed by Congress on December 16, 2010, and signed into law by President Obama on December 17, 2010. We want to thank Jack Bogdanski (Lewis & Clark) for his detailed comments on the prior edition of these books.

This is the first update to Federal Wealth Transfer Taxation since the July 16, 2010 death of our lead author, mentor, and dear friend, Paul McDaniel [blogged here and here]. Paul was a co-author of the original edition of this book in 1977, with Hank Gutman, Stanley Surrey, and Bill Warren, and remained as co-author of the five subsequent editions of the book. Being asked to join Paul as a co-author on this book was one of the proudest (and most intimidating) moments of our careers. In working with Paul through the years, we have been repeatedly struck by his encyclopedic knowledge of the tax law, clear yet elegant prose, and organizational genius. But what stands out most for us has been Paulʹs incredible grace and patience in nurturing two junior co-authors. In this supplement and in future new editions, we will do our best to match the high standards he set. To recognize the continuing influence of Paul’s work, we have listed him as co-author.

We also have published a 2011 Supplement (66 pages) to our teacher's manual accompanying our Federal Wealth Transfer Taxation casebook and study problems book. The 2011 Supplement provides detailed answers to the new and revised study problems, as well as commentary on new and revised material in the casebook. Faculty who would like a free copy of the 2011 Supplement to our Teacher's Manual can email Jim or me.

It's Time to Deregulate the Practice of Law

Wall Street Journal op-ed, Time to Deregulate the Practice of Law, by Clifford Winston & Robert Crandall (both of Brookings Institution; co-authors, First Thing We Do, Let's Deregulate All the Lawyers (2011)):

The job market is not looking bright for Americans of all walks of life, even Ivy League college graduates and those with advanced degrees. For example, a new wave of law school graduates has just taken state bar examinations, which they must pass to obtain a license to practice law. But after accumulating as much as $150,000 in law school debt (likely on top of undergraduate debt), many of those test-takers are concerned that jobs in their field are vanishing.

Is there really an excess supply of lawyers? The Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating the subject while the New York Law School and the Thomas Cooley Law School in Michigan are being hit with class action suits claiming that they fraudulently inflated employment statistics to lure prospective students. But the solution proffered by many in the legal community—to put new limits on entry into the legal profession—is not the answer and will make the problem worse over the long term.

The reality is that many more people could offer various forms of legal services today at far lower prices if the ABA did not artificially restrict the number of lawyers through its accreditation of law schools—most states require individuals to graduate from such a school to take their bar exam—and by inducing states to bar legal services by non-lawyer-owned entities. It would be better to deregulate the provision of legal services. This would lower prices for clients and lead to more jobs.

Occupational licensing limits competition and raises the cost of legal services. But those higher costs are not justified when the services provided by lawyers do not require three years of law school and passing a particular test. One example is LegalZoom.com, an online company which sells simple legal documents—documents that should not require pricey lawyers to prepare—like do-it-yourself wills, uncontested divorce documents, patent applications and the like. ...

Every other U.S. industry that has been deregulated, from trucking to telephones, has lowered prices for consumers without sacrificing quality. ... Entry by new firms—sometimes from other industries—spurs innovation. ... Allowing accounting firms, management consulting firms, insurance agencies, investment banks and other entities to offer legal services would undoubtedly generate innovations in such services and would force existing law firms to change their way of doing business and to lower prices.

Supporters of occupational licensing to restrict the number of lawyers in the U.S. are wrong to assert that deregulation would unleash a wave of unscrupulous or incompetent new entrants into the profession. Large companies seeking advice in complex financial deals would still look to established lawyers, most of whom would probably be trained at traditional law schools but may work for a corporation instead of a law firm.

Others, seeking simpler legal services such as a simple divorce or will, would have an expanded choice of legal-service providers, which they would choose only after consulting the Internet or some other modern channel of information about a provider's track record. Just as the medical field has created physician assistants to deal with less serious cases, the legal profession can delegate simple tasks.

Kahn & Kahn Post Book Chapters on SSRN

Jeffrey H. Kahn (Florida State) & Douglas A. Kahn (Michigan) have posted on SSRN chapters from their books:

• Distribution of Stock and Section 306 Stock, in Principles of Corporate Taxation (West 2010):  "The material explains what is meant by a 'stock dividend' and explores the historical tax treatment of those dividends as well as the current treatment. The chapter notes how alternative devices might be used to accomplish consequences that are effectively the same as those that flow from a stock dividend and how the tax laws deal with those equivalent transactions. The several exceptions to exclusion from income are described and illustrated by the use of examples. The rules regarding the determination of the basis of both the old and new stock are examined. The previous use of preferred stock to bail out a corporation’s earnings is demonstrated, and the current rules to prevent the abusive use of so-called 'preferred stock bailouts' are examined and illustrated."
• Federal Income Tax -- Gifts and Inheritances, in Federal Income Tax (Foundation Press, 6th ed. 2011):  "The chapter discusses the oft-quoted Duberstein standard for determining what is a gift and questions the actual usefulness of that standard. The tax treatment of gifts is examined, and the authors suggest a rationale for the exclusion of gifts from the donee’s income. Exceptions to income exclusion are noted. In connection with considering the exclusion of inheritances from income, attention is given to the treatment of the settlement of an estate controversy. The special treatment of a gift or devise to an employee is examined. The manner for determining the basis of gifted and inherited property is explained, and attention is given to the effect that the payment of a gift tax has on a donee’s basis. Illustrations are provided to help the reader see how the tax rules operate."

Wood Reviews Innocent Spouse

Robert W. Wood (Wood & Porter, San Francisco) has published Spousal Tax Secrets Exposed: A Review of Innocent Spouse, 132 Tax Notes 635 (Aug. 8, 2011) (reviewing Innocent Spouse: A Memoir (Crown, 2011), by Carol Ross Joynt):

Innocent spouse claims are much in the tax news lately, primarily because of the timing of those claims and the IRS’s controversial two-year deadline, which it recently abandoned. But there is a much larger canvas of those claims and their realworld impact. Wood reviews Carol Ross Joynt’s book, Innocent Spouse, finding that tax professionals and the public can both benefit from reading about the real-life nightmare it recounts.

All Tax Analysts content is available through the LexisNexis® services.

The Fall of the Faculty

Benjamin Ginsberg (David Bernstein Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University), The Fall of the Faculty The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters (Oxford University Press, 2011):

Until very recently, American universities were led mainly by their faculties, which viewed intellectual production and pedagogy as the core missions of higher education. Today, as Benjamin Ginsberg warns in this eye-opening, controversial book, "deanlets"--administrators and staffers often without serious academic backgrounds or experience--are setting the educational agenda.

The Fall of the Faculty examines the fallout of rampant administrative blight that now plagues the nation's universities. In the past decade, universities have added layers of administrators and staffers to their payrolls every year even while laying off full-time faculty in increasing numbers--ostensibly because of budget cuts. In a further irony, many of the newly minted--and non-academic--administrators are career managers who downplay the importance of teaching and research, as evidenced by their tireless advocacy for a banal "life skills" curriculum. Consequently, students are denied a more enriching educational experience--one defined by intellectual rigor. Ginsberg also reveals how the legitimate grievances of minority groups and liberal activists, which were traditionally championed by faculty members, have, in the hands of administrators, been reduced to chess pieces in a game of power politics. By embracing initiatives such as affirmative action, the administration gained favor with these groups and legitimized a thinly cloaked gambit to bolster their power over the faculty.

As troubling as this trend has become, there are ways to reverse it. The Fall of the Faculty outlines how we can revamp the system so that real educators can regain their voice in curriculum policy.

Reviews:

• Amazon
• Inside Higher Ed
• InstaPundit

Hatfield: Teaching Tax Lawyer Ethics

Michael Hatfield (Texas Tech) has published Teaching Tax Lawyer Ethics, 132 Tax Notes 87 (July 5, 2011), reviewing:

• Donald B. Tobin (Ohio State), Richard Lavoie (Akron) & Richard E. Trogolo (IRS Office of Chief Counsel), Problems in Tax Ethics (West 2009)
• Linda Galler (Hofstra) & Michael B. Lang (Chapman), Regulation of Tax Practice (LexisNexis 2011)

[T]he best description of the differences between the two casebooks may be that Problems in Tax Ethics is structured like a typical casebook while Regulation of Tax Practice is structured more like a treatise. Casebooks typically involve excerpts from cases, statutes, and articles, followed by comments and broad questions but no authoritative statement by the authors on the state of the law. In a casebook, the emphasis is often on the ambiguities and differences between the authorities. Problems in Tax Ethics follows that format by using excerpts and emphasizing multiple authorities. ... In contrast, Regulation of Tax Practice analyzes the relevant authorities and explicitly concludes what is required in various situations. ...

Either of these casebooks would be an excellent choice for a one- or two-hour law school course in tax ethics. Problems in Tax Ethics provides a format familiar to law students, underscoring the ethical principles of the bar to which the students have been exposed in other courses, but requiring the application of the principles in tax-specific situations. Offering more questions than answers, both explicitly and implicitly, the casebook seems especially useful for discussion-centered courses. Regulation of Tax Practice’s more treatise-like approach may at first seem less useful for classroom discussion. However, the treatise-like analysis of many issues may serve as a foundation for a higher-order discussion. ... [G]iven the more treatiselike style of Regulation of Tax Practice, many practicing tax lawyers may find it a handy addition to the firm’s bookshelves. Both are valuable additions to the body of work on tax lawyer ethics, and I commend their authors for their contributions to what is an increasingly complex set of concerns.

Jay A. Soled (Rutgers Business School) previously reviewed Regulation of Tax Practice in 131 Tax Notes 201 (Apr. 11, 2011).

Regulation of Tax Practice is part of the Lexis/Nexis Graduate Tax Series, for which I serve as Series Editor.  The Graduate Tax Series is the first and only series of course materials designed for use in tax LL.M. programs:

• More focus on Internal Revenue Code and regulations, less on case law
• Analysis of complex, practice-oriented problems of increasing sophistication
• Teacher’s manual with solutions to problems and other guidance
• On-line access to the comprehensive and current Code and regulations, designed to complement the book

There are ten other books in the Graduate Tax Series:

• Civil Tax Procedure (2d ed. 2007), by David Richardson (Florida), Jerome Borison (Denver), and Steve Johnson (Florida State)
• Employee Benefits Law: Qualification Rules and ERISA Requirements (2d ed. 2011), by Kathryn Kennedy (John Marshall) & Paul Shultz (Director, IRS Employee Plans Rulings & Agreement
• Estate and Gift Taxation (2011), by Robert Danforth (Washington & Lee) & Brant Hellwig (South Carolina)
• Federal Tax Accounting (2d ed. 2011), by Mona Hymel (Arizona), Michael Lang (Chapman) & Elliot Manning (Miami)
• Federal Corporate Income Taxation (2011), by Charlotte Crane (Northwestern) & Linda Beale (Wayne State)
• Federal Taxation of Property Transactions (2011), by Elliott Manning (Miami) & David Cameron (Northwestern)
• Partnership Taxation (2d ed. 2008), by Richard Lipton (Baker & McKenzie, Chicago), Paul Carman (Chapman & Cutler, Chicago), Charles Fassler (Greenebaum, Doll & McDonald, Louisville) & Walter Schwidetzky (Baltimore)
• Tax Crimes (2008), by Steve Johnson (Florida State), Scott Schumacher (Washington), Larry Campagna (Adjunct Professor, Houston) & John Townsend (Adjunct Professor, Houston)
• Taxation and Business Planning for Real Estate Transactions, by Bradley Borden (Brooklyn)
• United States International Taxation (2d ed. 2011), by Allison Christians (Wisconsin), Samuel Donaldson (Washington) &  Philip Postlewaite (Northwestern)

All Tax Analysts content is available through the LexisNexis® services.

Haile Reviews Shaviro's Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax

Andy Haile (Elon) has published Book Review, 2 Elon L. Rev. 287 (2011) (reviewing Daniel N. Shaviro (NYU), Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax (Urban Institute Press, 2009)):

Is it possible to make a book about reforming the U.S. corporate tax accessible and interesting? Daniel Shaviro does a credible job of both in Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax. While tax policymakers and professors constitute the most likely audience to read and appreciate the book, Professor Shaviro’s entertaining writing style makes the book a useful primer for anyone interested in understanding the theoretical foundations (or lack thereof) of the existing corporate tax as well as possible future directions for the tax.

Summer Reading: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids

Bryan Caplan (George Mason University, Department of Economics), Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think (Basic Books 2011):

We've needlessly turned parenting into an unpleasant chore. Parents invest more time and money in their kids than ever, but the shocking lesson of twin and adoption research is that upbringing is much less important than genetics in the long run. These revelations have surprising implications for how we parent and how we spend time with our kids. The big lesson: Mold your kids less and enjoy your life more. Your kids will still turn out fine.

Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids is a book of practical big ideas. How can parents be happier? What can they change--and what do they need to just accept? Which of their worries can parents safely forget? Above all, what is the right number of kids for you to have? You'll never see kids or parenthood the same way again.

The Guardian, Is Strict Parenting Better for Children?:

Amy Chua's memoir about her super-strict parenting style gave us the Tiger Mother; but professor Bryan Caplan is not convinced it's the best way.

Yale law professor, and mother of two girls, Amy Chua gave the world a new type of mother role model in her memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother: someone who insisted on several hours of music practice every day, banned sleepovers and wasn't happy with anything less than an A+ for schoolwork. Bryan Caplan, economics professor and father-of-three, whose new book says nature will always win over nurture, is an exponent of "serenity parenting", the belief that parents should stop hothousing their children. Can either of them change the other's mind?

Abuse of Law in Tax Cases

Rita de la Feria & Stefan Vogenauer (both of the University of Oxford) have published Prohibition of Abuse of Law:  A New General Principle of EU Law? (Hart Publishing, June 2011). Here is the publisher's description:

The Court of Justice has been alluding to 'abuse and abusive practices' for more than thirty years, but for a long time the significance of these references has been unclear. Few lawyers examined the case law, and those who did doubted whether it had led to the development of a legal principle. Within the last few years there has been a radical change of attitude, largely due to the development by the Court of an abuse test and its application within the field of taxation. In this book, academics and practitioners from all over Europe discuss the development of the Court's approach to abuse of law across the whole spectrum of European Union law, analysing the case-law from the 1970s to the present day and exploring the consequences of the introduction of the newly designated 'principle of prohibition of abuse of law' for the development of the laws of the EU and those of the Member States.

Hart Publishing is offering a 20% discount to TaxProf Blog readers: to receive the discount, enter TAXBLOG in the special instructions field.

Challenging Gender Inequality in Tax Policy Making: Comparative Perspectives

Kim Brooks (Dean, Dalhousie University, Schulich School of Law, Canada), Åsa Gunnarsson (Umeå University, Department of Law, Sweden), Lisa Philipps (York University, Osgoode Hall Law School, Canada) & Maria Wersig (Freie Universität Berlin, Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Germany) have published Challenging Gender Inequality in Tax Policy Making Comparative Perspectives (Hart Publishing, June 2011). Here is the publisher's description:

This volume takes a critical look at the gender of tax policy around the world. Contributors based in eight different countries examine the profound effects that gender norms and practices have had in shaping tax law and policy, and how taxation in turn impacts upon the possibilities for equality along gender, race, class, sexuality and other lines. Chapters explore how the gendered fiscal state might be theorised; how structural choices about rates and bases in tax policy design contribute to gender inequality; how tax policy affects family configurations and perceptions of what constitutes family; how fiscal systems impact on savings and wealth accumulation by women and men; and the role of different policy-making processes and institutions in occluding and sometimes challenging these patterns. Most significantly, perhaps, the book explores these questions in an international frame, traversing countries and continents. The conclusion: fiscal policy has deep rooted, long standing gender implications that affect virtually every aspect of our social, political, and economic lives whether we live in Canada, Australia or Kenya.

Hart Publishing is offering a 20% discount to TaxProf Blog readers: to receive the discount, enter TAXBLOG in the special instructions field.

West Publishes New Edition of Federal Estate & Gift Taxation

West has published Federal Estate and Gift Taxation (10th ed. June 10, 2011), by the late Boris I Bittker (Yale), Elias Clark (Yale) & Grayson M.P. McCouch (San Diego). Here is the publisher's description:

The Tenth Edition continues to provide an engaging and insightful introduction to the federal estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes, placing leading cases in historical context and exploring their practical significance and policy implications. It reflects statutory changes in rates and exemptions under the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, including the introduction of "portability" of the unified credit between spouses. The new edition also addresses recent amendments to estate tax regulations concerning the deductibility of claims and administration expenses, as well as judicial decisions concerning defined value formula gifts, transfers with retained life estates, and family limited partnerships.

Texas Law Review: Call for Tax Book Reviews

The Texas Law Review asked me to post this announcement:

Today, the Texas Law Review launched a website to publish reviews of legal books, Dicta. This website—the first devoted only to legal book reviews—responds to the observed decline in law review publication of legal book reviews. This void was illustrated by Professor Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas School of Law in his essay, The Vanishing Book Review in Student-Edited Law Reviews and Potential Responses, (87 Texas L. Rev. 1205 (2009)). While the top twenty law reviews devoted over 2,200 pages to book reviews in 1987–1988, they devoted less than half of this space to book reviews in 2007–2008.

The new Dicta website is designed to alleviate this problem, allowing professors and practitioners to share their thoughts and recommendations about legal books of interest through short reviews published online. Dicta is currently accepting proposals for online book reviews to be edited and published online during the 2011–2012 school year. Proposals, including a short abstract and CV, may be submitted to Stephen Fraser. More information about submissions is available at Dicta’s Guidelines page.