Wells: Revisiting the Interest Expense Deduction and the Foreign Tax Credit

Bret Wells (Houston; Google Scholar), Revisiting the Interest Expense Deduction and the Foreign Tax Credit, 26 Fla. Tax Review ___ (2022):

When the deduction allowance rules and the foreign tax credit limitation rules work appropriately, these two regimes work in combination to avoid a double benefit: the benefit of a U.S. deduction to reduce U.S. taxation of gross foreign income and then a foreign tax credit benefit on the very same gross foreign income. To prevent the allowance of both a deduction benefit and a foreign tax credit benefit on the generation of the same item of gross foreign income, appropriate matching is required of the U.S. interest expense disallowance/allowance regime with the foreign tax credit limitation regime. The design challenge for the tax system is to coordinate the interest deduction allowance/disallowance regime with the foreign tax credit limitation regime so that the two regimes create harmonized and appropriate results. Unfortunately, the current interaction of these two regimes fails to achieve appropriate outcomes.

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What’s (Race In) The Law Got To Do With It: Incorporating Race In Legal Curriculum

Sonia Gipson Rankin (New Mexico; Google Scholar), What’s (Race in) the Law Got to Do With It: Incorporating Race in Legal Curriculum, 54 Conn. L. Rev. 923 (2022):

Gen Z is defined as including persons born after 1996 and, in 2018, the first Gen Z would have been twenty-two years old, the historically traditional age that many complete undergraduate studies and enter law school. With Gen Z entering law schools, the legal academy has been wholeheartedly preparing for the arrival of the first truly digital native generation in a myriad of ways. However, law training has been slow to progress in addressing the unspoken complexities of context and unconscious bias in the classroom with this population. Today’s Gen Z students were predominately raised in de facto segregated schools and communities reminiscent of the Silent Generation of those born between 1920s and 1940s. The legal academy now has a critical opportunity to educate future attorneys, legal scholars, executives, judges, and legislators through guided classroom discussions on systemic racism and unconscious bias beginning in their first year of law school. By embedding these conversations in legal education, students can shape their understanding of the cases they study and learn additional nuances to address in the law. 

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Wells: Reform Of Section 367(a) And Section 367(b) For A Post-TCJA Era

Bret Wells (Houston; Google Scholar), Reform of Section 367(a) and Section 367(b) for a Post-TCJA Era, 22 Hous. Bus. & Tax L.J. __ (2022):

Section 367 grants regulatory authority for the Treasury Department to divine whether and to what extent the normal Subchapter C rules should be modified in order to prevent tax avoidance when nonrecognition transactions involve a foreign corporation. But even though these policy goals are left for the Treasury Department to divine, it is still incumbent upon the Treasury Department to divine these goals in light of the design parameters that Congress has set forth in existing law. The Treasury Department has been diligent in its usage of Section 367(a) and Section 367(b) to protect the U.S. tax base from inappropriate tax avoidance transactions. Throughout that effort, the Treasury Department has rightly recognized that the normal Subchapter C rules might not adequately address tax avoidance concerns when nonrecognition transactions involve foreign corporations. So, when those nonrecognition provisions of Subchapter C intersect with a foreign corporation, Section 367 provides broad authority to the Treasury to turn off the nonrecognition provisions when appropriate.

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The Nation's First ABA-Accredited Fully Online Law School Attracts 791 Applicants For Its Inaugural Class; 9% Acceptance Rate Yields 27 1Ls

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  Reuters, First-of-Its-Kind Online Law School Draws Big Applicant Pool:

A group of 27 aspiring lawyers beat long odds to land spots this fall in the first fully online Juris Doctor program to be accredited by the American Bar Association.

St. Mary’s University School of Law, which also offers a traditional J.D. program on its San Antonio campus, had 791 applicants for its first all-remote cohort. The online program offered admission to 71 applicants, a 9% acceptance rate that falls close to top-ranked Yale Law School.

The ABA in May 2021 granted St. Mary’s permission to offer its fully online part-time J.D. as a five-year pilot program. That approval came after law schools were quickly forced to switch to remote classes by the COVID-19 pandemic, giving them more experience with distance education. ...

About a dozen law schools also offer hybrid J.D. programs in which part-time students complete the bulk of their coursework online but come to campus several times a year for in-person instruction. Another three schools have pending applications with the ABA to launch hybrid J.D.s. ...

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Blue J Predicts: Tax Credits That Bond A Partnership

Benjamin Alarie (Osler Chair in Business Law, University of Toronto; CEO, Blue J Legal) & Bettina Xue Griffin (Senior Legal Research Associate, Blue J Legal), Tax Credits That Bond a Partnership: Revisiting Cross Refined Coal, 176 Tax Notes Fed. 2069 (Sept. 26, 2022):

In this article, Alarie and Griffin revisit Cross Refined Coal, a case for which they used Blue J’s analytical software to successfully predict in June 2021 that the IRS’s appeal would be decided in favor of the taxpayer.

In our monthly Blue J Predicts column, we use Blue J’s tax research software to analyze pending or recently decided federal income tax cases. This month we consider the judgment of the D.C. Circuit in Cross Refined Coal, which addressed whether a business venture that was guaranteed to be unprofitable pretax could still be considered a bona fide partnership for federal income tax purposes. ...

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NALP: Disparities In Employment Outcomes By Race/Ethnicity Persist For The Class Of 2021

NALP, Disparities in Employment Outcomes by Race/Ethnicity Persist for the Class of 2021; Particularly for Black, Native American, and Native Hawaiian Graduates:

New employment findings from the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) show that Black and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander graduates were employed in bar passage required jobs at rates 15 and 23 percentage points, respectively, below that of white graduates. The employment rate for Native Hawaiian graduates was also 12 percentage points lower as compared to white graduates. Of employed graduates, Black, Native American, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander graduates were the least likely to be employed in private practice. These findings are part of NALP’s Jobs & JDs, Employment and Salaries of New Graduates, Class of 2021

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Walker: Donor-Advised Funds In The Wake Of The Tax Cuts And Jobs Act

David I. Walker (Boston University; Google Scholar), Donor-Advised Funds in the Wake of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act:

Donor-advised funds (DAFs) are conduits for charitable giving that support immediate tax deductions while creating a reservoir of assets for subsequent disposition to end-use charities. The number of new DAF accounts has skyrocketed in the wake of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). This Article presents evidence suggesting that bunching charitable contributions to game the TCJA-enhanced standard deduction likely motivates much of the onslaught of new DAF accounts established since 2016 and argues that the typical buncher is likely to differ from other DAF account holders in ways that matter from a policy perspective. Thus, while DAF critics have generally focused on the unproductive accumulation of assets in DAF accounts and have advanced reforms aimed at speeding up DAF payouts, this Article argues that in the context of bunchers, unproductive accumulation of assets in DAF accounts is unlikely to be a major problem.

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How Santa Clara Law's 'Tech Edge JD' Program Improves Admissions Yield, Diversity & Employment Outcomes

Laura Norris (Santa Clara) & Eric Goldman (Santa Clara; Google Scholar), How Santa Clara Law's 'Tech Edge JD' Program Improves the School's Admissions Yield, Diversity, & Employment Outcomes, 26 Marq. Intell. Prop. L. Rev. __ (2022):

In 2018, Santa Clara Law launched an innovative new certificate, called the “Tech Edge JD” (TEJD), for JD students who know when they apply to law school that they want to pursue technology law. TEJD students acquire valuable professional skills by completing milestones, not just specific courses, with support from a faculty/staff advisor and two practitioner mentors. This paper describes how the certificate works and highlights some program outcomes, including the program’s success at simultaneously improving the law school’s admissions statistics and yield, diversity, and employment outcomes.

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NY Times: When The Tax Agency Won’t Let You Deduct Your Reindeer-Herding Dog

New York Times, When the Tax Agency Won’t Let You Deduct Your Reindeer-Herding Dog:

Svonni v. the Swedish Tax Agency (5:15 video)

Indigenous Sami tradition v. Swedish bureaucracy — who wins this dogfight?

I learned about Ida-Maria Svonni’s struggle against Sweden’s tax agency while researching a film about my late grandmother. Like my grandmother, Ms. Svonni is Sami, an Indigenous people who reside in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia.

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More On The Boycott Of Yale Grads For Judicial Clerkships

Newsweek, Canceling the Cancelers at Yale Law School:

Last month at the Sixth Annual Kentucky Chapters Conference of the Federalist Society, Judge James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (disclosure: my former boss) issued a call to arms. Ho, who earlier this year ruffled feathers at Georgetown University Law Center by using the occasion of his own talk at Georgetown to defend then-embattled Georgetown scholar Ilya Shapiro from the school's own pusillanimous dean, announced in the Bluegrass State that "starting today," he would not hire future law clerks who matriculate at Yale Law School. (Current Yale Law students and Yale Law alumni are unaffected.)

The reasons for the law clerk hiring moratorium are fairly straightforward: "Cancel culture" and, more specifically, a hostility to religious and conservative viewpoints and a demonstrated willingness to "shout down" such speakers, are disproportionately pervasive at Yale Law; Yale Law consistently ranks as, and holds itself as, the single preeminent institution of legal education in America; because of that perceived perch, Yale Law is more capable of influencing other legal institutions to denounce "cancel culture" and make itself genuinely open to "dissident" speech from the "deplorable" half of the American citizenry.

Ho's critics immediately swarmed from every possible direction. The Left was predictably apoplectic. On the Right, some, such as the purportedly right-of-center Dispatch podcaster Sarah Isgur, have complained that it is not clear what Yale could actually do to effectuate meaningful change. Such defeatism is unwarranted; one clear first step would be for Yale to embrace the Chicago Principles, a product of the University of Chicago, which would have the effect of protecting conservative students, conservative speech, and conservative programming. ...

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Gamage & Shanske: Phased Mark-To-Market For Billionaire Income Tax Reforms

David Gamage (Indiana; Google Scholar) & Darien Shanske (UC-Davis; Google Scholar), Phased Mark-to-Market for Billionaire Income Tax Reforms, 176 Tax Notes Fed. 1875 (Sept. 19, 2022):

In this installment of Academic Perspectives on SALT, Gamage and Shanske advocate for phased mark-to-market as a mechanism for reforming the taxation of investment gains of billionaires and megamillionaires. ...

Conclusion
As the recent passage of the federal Inflation Reduction Act (H.R. 5376) demonstrates, one never knows when the stars might align for a policy proposal.

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Exploring Recent Law School Diversity Initiatives

Christine Charnosky (Law.com), Ahead of the Curve: Exploring Recent Law School Diversity Initiatives:

This week, we’re digging further into five unique law school diversity initiatives that I wrote about so far this month. ...

On Oct. 4, I wrote about Yale Law School launching a new initiative called the Launchpad Scholars Program, which is in partnership with Latham & Watkins. ...

Also on Oct. 4, I reported on Texas-based law firm Vela Wood partnering with Kaplan to offer free Law School Admission Test (LSAT) prep courses to Black aspiring lawyers. ...

On Oct. 10, I published a story about The Pepperdine University Rick J. Caruso School of Law signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Tuskegee University, one of the 104 accredited Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the United States, for a new accelerated 3+3 degree program.

This 3+3 degree program allows for Tuskegee students to attend their first year of law school after finishing their junior year at Tuskegee, thereby earning a bachelor’s degree, followed by a juris doctor in six years instead of seven, Paul L. Caron, the Duane and Kelly Roberts dean and professor of law at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, wrote in his Oct. 10 Tax Prof Blog.

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Tax Law Review Publishes New Issue

The Tax Law Review has published a new issue (Vol. 75, No. 1 (Fall 2022)):

• Jordan Barry (USC; Google Scholar) & Ariel Jurow Kleiman (Loyola-L.A.; Google Scholar), Rationalizing the Arbitrary Foreign Tax Credit, 75 Tax L. Rev. 1 (2022) (reviewed by Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis; Google Scholar) here)
• Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.; Google Scholar), Modeling the Welfare Effects of Advertising: Preference-Shifting Deadweight Loss, 75 Tax L. Rev. 55 (reviewed by Blaine Saito (Northeastern; Google Scholar) here)

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This Is Not A Drill: The War Against Antiracist Teaching In America

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (UCLA, Columbia), This Is Not A Drill: The War Against Antiracist Teaching in America, 68 UCLA L. Rev. 1702 (2022):

On January 5, 2022, Professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw received the 2021 Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and the Legal Profession from the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). In this modified acceptance speech delivered at the 2022 AALS Awards Ceremony, she reflects on the path that brought her to this moment and the crisis over antiracist and social justice education that is unfolding today. 

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An In-Depth Analysis Of The PGA's Controversial Nonprofit Status

Laurel C. Montag (J.D. 2022, Marquette), Comment, It's (Not) All Par for the Course: An in-Depth Analysis of the PGA's Controversial Nonprofit Status, 32 Marq. Sports L. Rev. 569 (2022):

Conclusion
In the context of Carnegie’s prescription for millionaires to act as trustees for the poor, the PGA Tour has met this challenge in some ways (such as giving over $3 billion to charity). However, on a larger scale, some members of the public criticize the organization for not being a trustee for the rest of society, specifically by enjoying a seemingly unnecessary tax break. 

The PGA has given billions of dollars to charity over its existence, yet nonprofit watchdogs and some taxpayers are not satisfied. Although, overall, most of the PGA Tour’s funds do not go directly to charity, as they are used to compensate employees, fund tournaments, and furnish prizes, its practices are still within the confines of §501(c)(6).

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Law School Admissions, U.S. News Rankings, And 'Splitters'

One of the perverse incentives in the U.S. News law school rankings involves "splitters." In a non-U.S. News world, a hypothetical law school with an admissions goal of 164 LSAT|3.85 UGPA medians (which has a 227 index score (based on a hypothetical 60% LSAT|40% UGPA weighting)) would jump at the chance to admit and scholarship an applicant from MIT with a 163|3.84 (226 index) over a "splitter" applicant from a far less selective college with a 164|3.25 (220 index) or a "reverse splitter" applicant from a far less selective college with a 158|3.85 (220 index).

The ABA does not collect this data, but a Reddit user posted an interesting chart on the use of splitters by some top law schools, based on applicant data from LSD.Law for the Fall 2022 admissions season:

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Hickman: The Federal Tax System's Administrative Law Woes Grow

Kristin E. Hickman (Minnesota; Google Scholar), The Federal Tax System's Administrative Law Woes Grow, 41 A.B.A. Tax Times __ (2022):

Recent court decisions have substantial implications for litigation over past tax regulatory actions and for future tax administrative practices. This article describes a circuit split between the Eleventh Circuit in Hewitt v. Comm'r and the Sixth Circuit in Oakbrook Land Holdings, LLC v. Comm'r over whether longstanding conservation easement regulations under section 170A were procedurally flawed under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) because the IRS failed to respond adequately to taxpayer comments. The article also discusses Sixth Circuit and federal district court decisions in Mann Construction, Inc. v. United States and CIC Services, LLC v. IRS invalidating IRS Notices that imposed information reporting requirements on private parties under section 6707A because the IRS did not use APA notice-and-comment rulemaking procedures in issuing them.

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Happiness And The Law: Lifelong Learning As A Path To Meaning And Purpose

Isaac Mamaysky (Albany), Happiness and the Law: Lifelong Learning as a Path to Meaning and Purpose, 62 Santa Clara L. Rev. __ (2022):

We begin with the premise that the happiest and most fulfilled attorneys are those who live a life of meaning and purpose. While many in the legal profession have achieved this goal, many others are unsatisfied with their career trajectories but feel, for a variety of reasons, that they aren’t empowered to make a change. The article argues that it’s not just possible—but, for many attorneys, should be the goal—to merge personal and professional interests to achieve a career filled with meaning and purpose.

The article goes on to argue that lifelong learning is the path to getting there. As every practitioner knows, law school taught us an analytical framework—how to "think like a lawyer"—which is reinforced in all aspects of legal practice. Relying on those analytical skills, it's entirely possible to learn new practice areas, write on new topics, and continually evolve one's legal career to align with personal goals.

The concept of a continuous evolution is important because meaning and purpose change over time, so even the most fulfilled attorneys need to make adjustments throughout their career to hit this mark. While these types of career adjustments certainly may entail significant transitions, they more commonly entail micro-adjustments to one's trajectory and current role that are minor in the moment but can have a significant impact over time.

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Kane & Kern Present The Use And Abuse Of Location-Specific Rent Today At Loyola-L.A.

Mitchell Kane (NYU) & Adam Kern (Law Clerk, Judge Jed Rakoff, Southern District of New York) present The Use and Abuse of Location-Specific Rents at Loyola-L.A. today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by Theodore Seto:

Many tax scholars believe the concept of location-specific rent (LSR) is a guide to an ideal allocation of taxing rights. We show that it is not. We provide the first rigorous definition of LSR to appear in the legal or economic literature. Drawing on this definition, we show that LSR does not have the features it is claimed to have. LSR often is not measurable, and it is not made possible by one particular society. More positively, we identify a modest role for using LSR in certain contexts of tax policy.

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• ABA Journal, Is Forever Really Forever? Question May Be Answered In Lawsuit Over UC Hastings Name Change
• ABA Journal, Second Federal Appeals Judge Boycotts Yale Law School Grads; Others Anonymously Indicate Plans To Do So
• ABA Journal, Yale Law School Touts Dedication To A ‘Vibrant Intellectual Environment’ After Complaints Of Cancel Culture
• Above the Law, Boycotting Yale Law Clerkship Candidates Could Seriously Backfire For This Appellate Judge
• Above the Law, I Went To My Law School Reunion, And It Was Awesome!
• Above the Law, Law Student's Epic Cheating Plot Goes Viral
• Above the Law, Other Shoe Drops As Bar Exam Cheating Confession Sparks Investigation
• Law.com, '1,520 Days or Nearly 50 Months' From Arrest to Jury: Duke Law Students Help Overturn Convictions for Speedy Trial Delays

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ABA Tax Section 2022 Fall Meeting

The ABA Tax Section held an in person 2022 Fall Tax Meeting in Dallas last week (program). A highlight was the Teaching Taxation program on Classification of Tax Regulations and the APA:

For many administrative agencies, external sources of law, such as the Administrative Procedure Act, have played a key role in rulemaking. The APA has had an increasingly important role in tax administration. One key aspect is its relationship to tax regulations. Most tax regulations that interpret statutory text have historically been viewed by the tax community as interpretive rules under the APA, thus not requiring notice and comment (although tax regulations have historically been issued with notice and comment). One panelist reads some recent Tax Court and circuit court cases to have implicitly or explicitly held that regulations interpreting statutory text are considered legislative for APA purposes; another panelist does not read those cases as authoritative or persuasive on the issue. The current state of this issue will be discussed to inform the audience as to the issues involved. In addition, regulatory practices have changed significantly over time, yet litigants have raised procedural challenges to older regulations. This panel will consider the historical approach to tax regulations, review the arguments concerning the proper classification of those regulations, and address cases that have struggled to situate tax regulations under the APA. In addition, the panel will address the significance for tax administration of West Virginia v EPA, where the Supreme Court struck down emission caps and relied on the “major questions” doctrine, which requires agencies to demonstrate “clear congressional authorization” when taking actions of political or economic significance.

Chair: Michelle Drumbl (Washington & Lee)
Moderator: Leslie Book (Villanova; Google Scholar)
Panelists:

• Kristin Hickman (Minnesota; Google Scholar)
• Gilbert Rothenberg (American)
• Jack Townsend (Houston)

Other Tax Profs with speaking roles included:

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Lesson From The Tax Court: The Reduce-To-Basis Rule For §170 Deductions

Basis is probably the most important concept I teach in my intro income tax course.  I like thinking of basis as the tax history of a piece of property.  It tracks what ought not to be taxed upon eventual sale or exchange of that property under the calculations required by §1001.  But a proper understanding and tracking of basis can also be important for other reasons, such as determining the amount of a §165 loss ... or calculating the amount of a §170 deduction for  charitable donations.

Donald Furrer and Rita Furrer  v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2022-100 (Sept. 28, 2022) (Judge Lauber), teaches a lesson on the importance of basis in determining the amount of a §170 deduction for the donation of property to charity.  We also learn a cautionary lesson on the use and mis-use of Charitable Remainder Annuity Trusts (CRATs).  The taxpayers here were farmers who donated crops to a CRAT and then attempted to claim a §170 deduction based on the fair market value of the donated crops.  That ran afoul of the reduce-to-basis rule.  Details below the fold.

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More On The Free Speech Scandal At UC-Berkeley Law School

Following up on last week's post, UC-Berkeley Law Faculty Statement In Support Of Jewish Students:  Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed:  A Free-Speech Scandal at Berkeley Law, by Steven Lubet (Northwestern):

The University of California’s Berkeley campus has been a hotbed of leftist politics since at least the early 1960s, so it is unsurprising that students at its prestigious law school have long embraced the cause of Palestinian rights. It was shocking, however, when the latest expression of anti-Israel sentiment veered into territory so extreme that even the law school’s progressive dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, observed that it could be seen as antisemitic. Although the students had not in any sense established “Jewish-free zones,” as some overheated commentaries called them, what they did was bad enough. Nine law-school affinity organizations, nominally representing a majority of the student body, adopted a bylaw providing that they will not “lend platforms to speakers” who “have professed or continue to hold” Zionist views.

Yes, you read that correctly. The bylaw does not simply prohibit pro-Israel presentations at the organizations’ events. It bans speakers on any topic who happen to support the existence of Israel — a category that encompasses more than 80 percent of the world’s Jews, and includes many Berkeley Law students and faculty. As Chemerinsky remarked in an email to students, “Indeed, taken literally, this would mean that I could not be invited to speak because I support the existence of Israel, though I condemn many of its policies.” For the same reason, I would also be unable to speak to the student groups about my research on 19th-century abolitionist lawyers, notwithstanding my decades of support for the anti-occupation movement within Israel. ...

The sweeping prohibition — enacted by the Muslim Student Association, Queer Caucus at Berkeley, Women of Berkeley Law, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Law Students of African Descent, and others — violates the basic values of free speech and open inquiry, which lie at the heart of law practice and legal education.

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Law Prof Bemoans His Experience Publishing An Article In The Iowa Law Review

In The Author as Adversary at Iowa Law Review, University of Kentucky Law School Assistant Professor Ramsi Woodcock delivered a blistering critique of his experience in publishing The Efficient Queue and the Case Against Dynamic Pricing, 105 Iowa L. Rev. 1759 (2020). I won't attempt to summarize or excerpt his 3,000 word harangue, which begins:

If there were a law professor named Frankenstein, what would his creation be?

Maybe Iowa Law Review.

Rather than treat me as a partner in publishing an article of mine that the journal accepted back in 2019, the journal treated me as an adversary.

Several Law Prof luminaries have weighed in on the saga:

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• 2022-23 Law School Admission Cycle Starts Out With A Whisper
• Ruth Mason Named Director Of Virginia Center For Tax Law
• Law School Shredding Of Notes To Be Shared With Jury In Law Prof's Discrimination Lawsuit

Sunday:

• NY Times: Why Religious Freedom Matters, Even If You’re Not Religious
• WSJ Op-Ed: St. Thérèse's 'Little Way' To Heaven — Small Deeds Done With Great Love
• NY Times Op-Ed: Humility Is A Virtue. But Can Humble People Succeed In The Modern World?
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

NY Times Op-Ed: Why Religious Freedom Matters, Even If You’re Not Religious

New York Times Op-Ed:  Why Religious Freedom Matters, Even if You’re Not Religious, by Tish Harrison Warren (Priest, Anglican Church; Author, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (2021) (Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year)):

When David French and I first met around 2010, our friendship felt unlikely. He was deeply involved in Republican politics and had served in Iraq. I had never voted Republican and was committed to nonviolence. But his courage of conviction and kindness amid disagreement made us fast friends. (David became an independent in 2016, after Donald Trump received the Republican presidential nomination.)

When I met him, David was a religious liberty and free speech litigator, a role he held for over two decades. He is now a senior editor for The Dispatch and a contributing writer to The Atlantic. Some of the most discussed Supreme Court cases last year involved religious liberty disputes. As a new Supreme Court term [began] on Oct. 3, I asked David to speak to me about the state of religious freedom in America. ...

Beto O’Rourke, who is currently running for governor in Texas, where I live, has said that religious institutions — including schools and charities — should be stripped of their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage.

How would you reply to him?

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WSJ Op-Ed: St. Thérèse's 'Little Way' To Heaven — Small Deeds Done With Great Love

Wall Street Journal Op-Ed:  A Canonized Saint Who Began as an Everyday One, by Mike Kerrigan (Hunton Andrews Kurth, Charlotte, NC):

I am apparently called to be a saint. That was a somewhat disconcerting revelation for a cradle Catholic in his late 40s. But according to a homily during Mass some years back, this is the purpose for which I was born.

With further reading, I learned this vocation doesn’t require me to be declared a capital-S Saint by the Catholic Church. I just need to be holy, or set apart for God—a lowercase-s saint. It’s no simple task, though, to close the gap between who I am and who I am called to be. This is where the wondrous St. Thérèse of Lisieux, or the “Little Flower,” has shown me a way.

Before dying of tuberculosis in 1897 at 24, the cloistered Carmelite nun pledged to spend her time in heaven doing good on the earth. ... The Little Flower left assurance for all who feel, as she did, they lack the heroic excellence in their own littleness. She looked at the saints who went before her and felt herself a grain of sand in comparison to the towering mountains of their lives. St. Thérèse of Lisieux needed another way to get to heaven, so she prayerfully came up with one: the “Little Way.”

Perfecting her Little Way to sanctity amounts to remembering that “our Lord does not so much look at the greatness of our actions, or even their difficulty, as the love with which we do them.” The occasion to do great deeds, after all, may never come to pass, or when it does it may find us wanting in courage. Small deeds, on the other hand, are everywhere, and when done with great love, they cease to be small.

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NY Times Op-Ed: Humility Is A Virtue. But Can Humble People Succeed In The Modern World?

New York Times Op-Ed:  Humility Is a Virtue. But Can Humble People Succeed in the Modern World?, by Peter Coy:

The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, a friend of Adam Smith, called humility one of the “monkish” virtues, and he didn’t mean that as a compliment. ... I kind of see Hume’s point. If progress in capitalism is fueled by people’s pursuit of their self-interest, we’re not going to get very far if everyone is into mortification, self-denial and so on.

On the other hand, we are taught from childhood to be humble. Humility is a core virtue in Christianity, Islam, Judaism and other religions. From Tuesday evening until Wednesday evening is the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, which includes the prayer “Here I am, poor in deeds.”

I did some reading and came to the conclusion that humility and capitalism aren’t necessarily in conflict. They can actually go together quite well. Although it partly depends on what you mean by humility.

Humility is a tricky virtue to talk about. If you say you’re not humble, you’re probably telling the truth. On the other hand, if you say you are humble, you’re probably not, because people who are humble don’t go around bragging about it. Then there’s the paradox that to be humble is good but to be humbled is really bad. Tricky, right? ...

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

There is a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with  a new paper debuting on the list at #5:

1. [354 Downloads]  The Passthrough Entity Tax Scandal, by Daniel Hemel (NYU; Google Scholar) (reviewed by David Elkins (Netanya; visiting NYU 2021-23; Google Scholar) here)
2. [336 Downloads]  Federal Tax Procedure (2022 Practitioner Ed.), by John Townsend (Houston)
3. [216 Downloads]  Standing On the Shoulders of LLCs: The Tax Entity Status and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, by Samuel Brunson (Loyola-Chicago; Google Scholar)
4. [205 Downloads]  International Tax Reform: Challenges to Multilateral Cooperation, by Assaf Harpaz (Drexel; Google Scholar)
5. [146 Downloads]  Out of Time? APA Challenges to Old Tax Guidance and the Six-Year Default Limitations Period, by Susan Morse (Texas; Google Scholar)

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

1. Nate Hochman (National Review), 14th Federal Judge Join Boycott, Refuses To Hire Yale Students As Law Clerks
2. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: Know Your TMP
3. U.C. Berkeley School of Law, Faculty Statement in Support of Jewish Law Students
4. Roundup, Professors, Judges Speak Out Against Boycott Of Yale Grads For Judicial Clerkships
5. Reuters, Yale Law Dean Trumpets Free Speech Stance Amid Federal Judges' Clerk Boycott
6. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 14% Of The Way Through The Fall 2023 Law School Admissions Cycle: Applicants Are Down -14%, With Biggest Decline (-25%) Among The Top 160-180 LSAT Band
7. Steve Epstein (Poyner Spruill (Raleigh, NC)), Extreme Punishment: The Chilling True Story Of Dan Markel's Murder
8. Bloomberg Law, Tweedy Law School Deans Break Out Calculator
9. San Francisco Chronicle, Hastings Descendants Dispute Law School Name Is Racist. They Want The Name Kept — Or A $1.7 Billion Payout
10. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Pepperdine Caruso Law School And Tuskegee University Launch 3+3 Accelerated BA|BS-JD Degree Program

2022-23 Law School Admission Cycle Starts Out With A Whisper

Following up on Monday's post, 14% Of The Way Through The Fall 2023 Law School Admissions Cycle: Applicants Are Down -14%, With Biggest Decline (-25%) Among The Top 160-180 LSAT Band:  Law.com, 2022-23 Law School Admission Cycle Starts Out With a Whisper:

Last year’s law school admission cycle started out with a bang but petered out to a whimper by the end. So far, this cycle is starting with a whisper. ...

It’s approximately 15% into the fall 2023 admission cycle, so it’s a bit early to be making too many predictions.

It’s so early, in fact, that the LSAC posts a “warning” on its website: “It is too early in the 2023 admission cycle to reach conclusions about applicant volume. Early volumes can be highly volatile, and thus are not always reflective of application cycle trends.”

So far, numbers in most categories are down with 142 of the 197 law schools experiencing a decrease in applications with some being down 30% or more at 43 law schools, Paul Caron wrote in his Oct. 10 TaxProf blog.

There are 41,910 applications (a 17.5% decrease compared with a year ago and a 5.3% decrease compared with two years ago) submitted by 8,472 applicants (a 12.1% decrease from a year ago and a 3.2% decreased compared with two years ago), according to Oct. 12 LSAC’s U.S. volume comparison data. ...

Caron pointed out that the biggest declines are seen among the top 160-180 LSAT band, which is down 25%. ... 

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Ruth Mason Named Director Of Virginia Center For Tax Law

School of Law News, New Directors Lead Academic Centers, Programs:

Professor Ruth Mason, whose most recent work considers multilateral efforts to reform corporate taxation, leads the Virginia Center for Tax Law, following the directorship of Professor Andrew Hayashi. Mason is the Edwin S. Cohen Distinguished Professor of Law and Taxation, and the Class of 1941 Research Professor of Law. She is also a faculty adviser to student teams participating in the annual International and European Tax Moot Court competition.

She said in addition to hosting tax conferences at the Law School that attract leading scholars, the center will sponsor new webinars in the Oxford-Virginia Legal Dialogs online series with the University of Oxford Faculty of Law, with the next event planned for Oct. 21.

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Law School Shredding Of Notes To Be Shared With Jury In Law Prof's Discrimination Lawsuit

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  Bloomberg Law, Law School Shredding of Bias Probe Notes to be Shared With Jury:

A federal jury will be told that the University of Idaho School of Law failed to preserve interview notes from an internal investigation of alleged race and sex discrimination against faculty and staff members and that it may presume the notes support a professor’s bias claims.

The jury will receive that instruction during the trial of Shaakirrah Sanders’ 2019 lawsuit, the US District Court for the District of Idaho said, granting her motion for sanctions. Sanders alleges that she was subjected to a pattern of disparate job terms and conditions because she is Black and a woman. The trial is set to begin Tuesday, according to the court docket.

The interview notes were destroyed approximately one week after being turned over to the university’s human resources director following the completion of a written investigative report, the court said. The “climate & culture review” had been ordered by the provost after multiple complaints were received about the negative impact bias—especially by law school dean Mark Adams—was having on female faculty and staff, the court said.

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Sarkar Reviews Gondwe's The Tax-Invisible Labor Problem: Care, Work, Kinship, And Income Security Programs

This week, Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis; Google Scholar) reviews Nyamagaga Gondwe (Wisconsin; Google Scholar), The Tax-Invisible Labor Problem: Care, Work, Kinship, and Income Security Programs in the IRC, 102 B.U. L. Rev. ___ (2022)

We must all care for others. Yet for the millions of women who do the yeoman’s share of American care work, the ways they are compensated, if at all, raise questions for tax law and implications for us all.  It is to the phenomenon of nonmarket care work that Professor Nyamagaga Gondwe turns in her forthcoming Article, The Tax-Invisible Labor Program: Care, Work, Kinship, and Income Security Programs in the IRC. Gondwe advocates for greater recognition of nonmarket care work, in tax law and beyond.

The Article lies at the intersection of at least two literatures: on one hand, tax scholarship focused on the lives of those deemed poor and different (and often both) and on the other, scholarship on domestic workers that tries to understand how we value those who work intimately with humanity. Both literatures center household formation, household labor, gender, and race, all of which animate Gondwe’s Article.

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• Scott Altman (USC), Using Cancel Culture’s Tools to Dismantle Cancel Culture?
• David Bernstein (George Mason), Berkeley Law's "Jew-Free Zone" Controversy
• David Bernstein (George Mason), Some Berkeley Law "Jew Free Zone" Updates
• Bloomberg Law, Tweedy Law School Deans Break Out Calculators
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), 14% Of The Way Through The Fall 2023 Law School Admissions Cycle: Applicants Are Down -14%, With Biggest Decline (-25%) Among The Top 160-180 LSAT Band
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Pepperdine Caruso Law School And Tuskegee University Launch 3+3 Accelerated BA|BS-JD Degree Program

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Barron's, Beneficiaries of Inherited Retirement Accounts Dodge a Tax Bullet
• Bloomberg, Electric Car Investment Envy Spawns a ‘Tax Break Industrial Complex’
• Bloomberg, EU Officials to ‘Never Give Up’ on Stalled Global Tax Deal
• Bloomberg, Transparency Group Sees Conflict in OECD Tax Chief’s New Job
• Lynnley Browning (Financial Planning), Recent Heirs to Retirement Plans Win a Surprise Tax Reprieve from the IRS
• CBS News, CVS Cuts Cost of Menstrual Products in 12 States With "Tampon Tax"

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Next Week’s Tax Workshops

Monday, October 17: Mitchell Kane (NYU) & Adam Kern (Covington & Burling, Washington, D.C.) will present The Use and Abuse of Location-Specific Rents as part of the Loyola-L.A. Tax Policy Colloquium. If you would like to attend, please RSVP here. 

Friday, October 21: Timothy Endicott (Oxford; Google Scholar) will present The Value of Vagueness from Vagueness in Normative Terms (Bhatia, et al., eds 2005) as part of the Oxford-Virginia Legal Dialogs. If you would like to attend, please RSVP here. 

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Cauble Presents Taxpayers' Use Of Hindsight Today At Florida

Emily Cauble (Wisconsin; Google Scholar) presents Taxpayers' Use of Hindsight at Florida today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium hosted by Charlene Luke:

After undertaking a transaction, a taxpayer might later discover that it was ill-advised. Perhaps the taxpayer engages in the transaction without considering its tax consequences. Later, in the course of obtaining tax filing guidance, the taxpayer learns that an alternative transactional form would have produced more favorable tax results. Alternatively, the taxpayer may adopt a transactional form that produces favorable tax consequences if the transaction’s non-tax outcome is what the taxpayer predicts. When the taxpayer discovers that the transaction’s non-tax outcome is not what the taxpayer predicted, the taxpayer wishes they had used an alternative transactional form. Along similar lines and for similar reasons, a taxpayer who files (or fails to file) an election that dictates their tax treatment might later feel regret.

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Washington & Lee Seeks To Hire A Clinical Tax Professor

Washington & Lee Faculty Posting:

Washington and Lee University School of Law seeks to hire a Visiting Director of the Tax Clinic, commencing January 1, 2023. The individual will also hold the title of Professor of Practice.

The Tax Clinic at Washington & Lee University (W&L) School of Law brings important services to the Shenandoah Valley region. The W&L Tax Clinic has the dual goal of helping student attorneys develop the skills, values, and knowledge necessary to succeed in the practice of law, and providing free legal representation to low-income taxpayers who have post-filing controversies with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Such controversies might include audit representation, appeals, collection issues, innocent spouse relief, and representation before the U.S. Tax Court. The Tax Clinic does not handle transactional tax matters or routine tax return preparation. In addition to this legal representation, the students also engage in educational outreach to taxpayers about their rights and responsibilities as U.S. taxpayers. 

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Kim: Blockchain Initiatives For Tax Administration

Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo; Google Scholar), Blockchain Initiatives for Tax Administration, 69 UCLA L. Rev. 240 (2022):

A thriving body of literature discusses various legal issues related to blockchain, but often it mixes the discussion about blockchain with cryptocurrency. However, blockchain is not the same as cryptocurrency. Defined as a decentralized, immutable, peer-to-leer ledger technology, blockchain is a newly emerging data management system. The private sector—including the financial industry and supply chains—and the public sector—property records, public health, voting, and compliance, have all begun to utilize blockchain. Since more data is processed remotely, and thus digitally, the evolution of blockchain is gaining stronger momentum.

While scholarship on blockchain is growing, none of the scholarship has considered the impact of blockchain on the tax sector. This Article extends the study of blockchain to tax administration, evaluates the feasibility of incorporating blockchain within existing tax administrations, and provides policymakers with criteria to consider and some recommended designs for blockchain.

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Avi-Yonah: The Interaction Between Unilateralism And Multilateralism In International Tax

Reuven S. Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar), The Interaction Between Unilateralism and Multilateralism in International Tax:

From its inception, the international tax regime was heavily influenced by the United States. The regime is traditionally traced back to the work of the four economists for the League of Nations in 1923, who came up with the original compromise underlying the tax treaty network, i.e., that passive income should be taxed primarily at residence and active income primarily at source (the “benefits principle”). Arguably, this compromise between the claims of residence and source countries was made possible by the US unilateral adoption of the foreign tax credit in 1918, because the US (already the world’s largest capital exporter) was (unlike the UK) willing to cede taxing jurisdiction to the source by allowing a dollar for dollar credit (originally without limitation). Edwin Seligman, the US representative to the four economists, may have used the credit to persuade them to adopt the benefits principle. In addition, because the US rejected exemption to alleviate double taxation, it laid the groundwork for the single tax principle, first embodied in the original League of Nations model treaty of 1927 (e.g., imposing withholding tax on interest unless it was taxed at residence).

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Federal Tax Procedure (2022 Practitioner Edition)

John A. Townsend (Houston), Federal Tax Procedure (2022 Practitioner Ed.) (1,061 pages):

Federal Tax Procedure is a book originally prepared for a course on Tax Procedure taught by Adjunct Professor Townsend at the University of Houston School of Law (through the Fall of 2015). The book is updated annually in August. The book and related materials contain text discussion, relevant Code Section citations, and certain cases designed to encourage students to think about the Tax Procedure process. The book is in electronic format (Adobe Acrobat PDF format) and is in two versions – (1) a Student Edition (no footnotes); and (2) a Practitioner Edition (same as Student Edition but including footnotes). This is the 2022 Practitioner Edition with footnotes. Both versions are available on Mr. Townsend's SSRN web page.

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Yale Law Dean Trumpets Free Speech Stance Amid Federal Judges' Clerk Boycott

Update: Brian Leiter (Chicago), Yale Law Dean Gerken Shares "Message to Alumni" on Free Expression at the Law School:

This seems a victory for Judge Ho, despite the controversy about his threatened boycott.

Heather Gerken (Dean, Yale), A Message to Our Alumni on Free Speech at Yale Law School:

Dear members of our alumni community:
Yale Law School is dedicated to building a vibrant intellectual environment where ideas flourish. To foster free speech and engagement, we emphasize the core values of professionalism, integrity, and respect. These foundational values guide everything we do.

Over the last six months, we have taken a number of concrete steps to reaffirm our enduring commitment to the free and unfettered exchange of ideas. These actions are well known to our faculty, students, and staff, but I want to share some of them with you as well.

• Last March, the Law School made unequivocally clear that attempts to disrupt events on campus are unacceptable and violate the norms of the School, the profession, and our community.
• The faculty revised our disciplinary code and adopted a policy prohibiting surreptitious recordings that mirrors policies that the University of Chicago and other peer institutions have put in place to encourage the free expression of ideas.
• We developed an online resource outlining our free speech policies and redesigned Orientation to center around discussions of free expression and the importance of respectful engagement. Virtually every member of the faculty spoke to their students about these values on the first day of class.
• We replaced our digital listserv with what alumni fondly remember as “the Wall” to encourage students to take time to reflect and resolve their differences face-to-face.
• We welcomed a new Dean of Students who is focused on ensuring students learn to resolve disagreements among themselves whenever possible rather than reflexively looking to the institution to serve as a referee.

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SSRN Tax Professor Rankings

SSRN has updated its monthly ranking of 750 American and international law school faculties and 3,000 law professors by (among other things) the number of paper downloads from the SSRN database.  Here is the new list (through October 1, 2022) of the Top 25 U.S. Tax Professors in two of the SSRN categories: all-time downloads and recent downloads (within the past 12 months):

		All-Time			Recent
1	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	213,542	1	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	10,619
2	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	127,160	2	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	5,173
3	Dan Shaviro (NYU)	125,502	3	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	4,185
4	Lily Batchelder (NYU)	125,017	4	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	2,829
5	David Gamage (Indiana-Bloom.)	122,296	5	Zachary Liscow (Yale)	2,795
6	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	115,260	6	D. Dharmapala (Chicago)	2,643
7	David Kamin (NYU)	112,469	7	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	2,580
8	Cliff Fleming (BYU)	107,221	8	David Gamage (Indiana-Bloom.)	2,441
9	Manoj Viswanathan (UC-Hastings)	104,051	9	Kim Clausing (UCLA)	2,408
10	Rebecca Kysar (Fordham)	103,163	10	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	2,377
11	Ari Glogower (Northwestern)	102,981	11	Richard Ainsworth (Boston Univ.)	2,343
12	D. Dharmapala (Chicago)	48,159	12	Kyle Rozema (Washington University)	2,343
13	Michael Simkovic (USC)	46,650	13	Lily Batchelder (NYU)	2,220
14	Paul Caron (Pepperdine)	39,947	14	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	1,982
15	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	37,712	15	David Kamin (NYU)	1,914
16	Richard Ainsworth (Boston Univ.)	35,752	16	Dan Shaviro (NYU)	1,878
17	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	33,283	17	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	1,758
18	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	29,981	18	Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo)	1,757
19	Vic Fleischer (UC-Irvine)	29,069	19	Michael Doran (Virginia)	1,753
20	Ed Kleinbard (USC)	28,751	20	Margaret Ryznar (Indiana-Indy)	1,602
21	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	28,695	21	Francine Lipman (UNLV)	1,571
22	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	27,144	22	Edward McCaffery (USC)	1,448
23	Jim Hines (Michigan)	26,873	23	Jeremy Bearer-Friend (George Washington)	1,408
24	Ted Seto (Loyola-L.A.)	25,738	24	Hugh Ault (Boston College)	1,376
25	Katie Pratt (Loyola-L.A.)	25,671	25	Victoria Haneman (Creighton)	1,369

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Zoom School Of Law?

Kathryn Hobbis (J.D. 2022, Georgetown), Note, Zoom School of Law?, 34 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 1025 (2021):

Conclusion
The Coronavirus pandemic has exposed the inconsistencies in the ABA standards for law school accreditation. Currently J.D. students are not able to earn their degree through fully virtual classes. Students can earn some credits through distance education, but not enough to complete their degree. There has been a push to reopen primary and secondary schools closed due to the pandemic because of the benefits in person schooling provides to those students. Those benefits do not translate to the law school context because the services do not exist for law students. Engagement and attendance gaps and the digital divide are creating a situation where not all virtual primary and secondary schools are the same. High income students are receiving a better education and low-income students are falling even further behind. These concerns do not translate well to law schools because students are choosing to attend law school and would be engaged and could use student loans to bridge the digital divide. The current ABA policy is in direct conflict with other ABA standards that allow for virtual education for LL.M students and Continuing Legal Education credits. Due to the pandemic, law schools have been to grant more credits for distance education credits suggesting that the ABA believes that they are a viable way for students to learn. This double standard should be changed to create uniformity among ABA guidelines. 

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Hemel Presents Valuing Future Lives Today At NYU

Daniel Hemel (NYU; Google Scholar) presents Valuing Future Lives (with Jonathan Masur (Chicago; Google Scholar)) at NYU today as part of its Law & Economics Workshop hosted by Jennifer Arlen:

Federal regulation often involves a tradeoff between monetary costs in the present and life-saving benefits in the future. A central question in regulatory cost-benefit analysis is how to assign a present dollar value to future lives. Current practice across federal agencies reflects two competing intuitions. On the one hand, the “value of a statistical life”—the amount that society is willing to pay to prevent one premature death—will likely rise over time as per-capita income increases. On the other hand, the social value of a dollar will likely be lower in the future than it is today—even after adjusting for inflation—because people in the future will likely be richer than people today and thus will derive less utility from each additional dollar. In theory, these two competing effects—the upward adjustment in the value of a statistical life to reflect income growth and the downward pressure from discounting future dollars—could offset precisely, with regulators assigning the same weight to lives in the future and lives today. In practice, however, agencies adjust the value of a statistical life upward for income growth at a significantly slower rate than they discount future dollars. The mismatch between these two rates results in the dramatic devaluation of lives saved in the future. At some agencies, the value of a life saved in 30 years is—for purposes of cost-benefit analysis—less than half the value of a life saved today.

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Wellness And Law: Reforming Legal Education To Support Student Wellness

Janet Thompson Jackson (Washburn), Wellness and Law: Reforming Legal Education to Support Student Wellness, 65 How. L. J. 45 (2021):

No one goes to law school with the expectation that their mental health and overall well-being will be significantly compromised during those three years. But, for a substantial number of law students, it is. It does not have to be this way.

This is not a typical law review article. It cannot afford to be. Most law students begin law school as reasonably happy and well-adjusted people. We must ask, what is it about law school that contributes to the disproportionate decline in student wellness? The answer to that question is complex because many of the very factors that make good lawyers also contribute to their mental health challenges.

This paper contains a blueprint, borne out of experience, of how to reimagine legal education with a focus on wellness. This goes beyond a general call to action, but rather presents concrete actions that faculty, law administrators, and students themselves can take to effectively manage the stresses inherent in law school and the legal profession. These changes will be long-term and will profoundly impact the well-being of not only legal practitioners, but the very practice of law itself. There will be resistance, but making this transition is crucial. We know that when law students first enter law school their psychological profile is similar to that of the general public, but their depression rates increase drastically across three years of legal education. Lawyers have the dubious distinction of being the most frequently depressed professionals in the U.S., and the legal profession ranks among the highest in incidence of suicide by occupation.

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Bearer-Friend Presents Poll Taxes, Revisited Today At The Max Planck Institute

Jeremy Bearer-Friend (George Washington; Google Scholar) presents Poll Taxes, Revisited at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance today as part of his Hugh Ault Fellowship:

In the United States, the term “poll tax” conjures a very specific historical episode: the use of tax policy to prevent voting by Black citizens. While “poll tax” is an accurate descriptor of these taxes, poll taxes have a much more expansive history within the twentieth century.

Following in the rich tradition of comparative tax scholarship that looks at multiple jurisdictions to arrive at broader tax policy conclusions, this Article examines four distinct poll taxes applied by Anglophone governments in the twentieth century. After introducing the statutory text, design features, and democratic context of each of these twentieth century poll taxes, the Article makes three original claims about poll taxes.

First, my comparative research on twentieth century poll taxes reveals how universal language in tax statutes is used to effectively target political enemies. By contrasting two poll taxes where race, ethnicity, or ancestry are explicitly mentioned in the law with two poll taxes where there is no mention of race, ethnicity, or ancestry, I uncover that the poll taxes that do not mention specific political targets can be equally effective—if not more effective—at achieving discriminatory goals than poll taxes that specify their targets. These tax policy lessons about the use of universal language for the purpose of political targeting are generalizable to other forms of taxation other than poll taxes.

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Tweedy Law School Deans Break Out Calculator

Bloomberg Law, Tweedy Law School Deans Break Out Calculators:

Law school dean once was a dream job for attorneys who prefer the ivory tower to the daily grind of billable hours. These days, the position is more like being chief executive of a sprawling business than a tweed-clad dispenser of constitutional wisdom.

“My job has radically changed,” said Marc Miller, who has served as the University of Arizona’s law school dean for nearly a decade.

The school—ranked in the top 50 by U.S. News—is among those that in recent years have expanded beyond the traditional juris doctor education program for college grads. It now also offers an undergraduate law degree, both on campus and online, as well dual JD/PhD and JD/MBA programs, legal training for foreign diplomats and education for alternative legal service providers.

The growing offerings from the University of Arizona and other law schools are aimed at bolstering bottom lines after a dip in enrollment and amid uncertainty posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Those factors have also changed the role of law school dean, increasingly to focus on making sure cash continues to flow in. ...

After he took over as Pepperdine University’s law dean, Paul Caron said his top job duty became finding ways to fill the enrollment gap. First-year enrollment at the school dropped in the mid-2000s from about 210 students to 160 students annually, he said.

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U.S. Tax Court's Tax Trailblazers: Alice Abreu

U.S. Tax Court's Diversity & Inclusion Series, Tax Trailblazers: Mentoring the Next Generation:

Please join the United States Tax Court as its Tax Trailblazers series continues for Hispanic Heritage Month and features Temple Professor Alice Abreu today at 7:00 - 8:15 PM EST (register here).

Alice G. Abreu is the Honorable Nelson A. Diaz Professor of Law at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, where she regularly teaches courses in Taxation, Corporate Taxation, International Taxation, and Low Income Taxpayer Policy/Practice; she is also the inaugural Director of Temple’s Center for Tax Law and Public Policy. Professor Abreu is a magna cum laude graduate of both Cornell University and its Law School, where she served as an editor of the Cornell Law Review. Before joining the Temple faculty in 1985, she clerked for Judge Edward N. Cahn (EDPA) and practiced tax law with Dechert, LLP, in Philadelphia.

Professor Abreu has published numerous articles in scholarly and professional journals, been an editor of a casebook on Taxation, is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences, and has appeared in various media discussing issues of taxation. She is a Regent of the American College of Tax Counsel, a Trustee of the American Tax Policy Institute, a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Taxpayer Rights founded by Nina Olson, a member of the American Law Institute, and an Associate Member of the European Association of Tax Law Professors.

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