Abraham Lincoln’s Use Of The Bible In His Second Inaugural Address

The National Museum of American Religion has released this wonderful 40-minute documentary, Abraham Lincoln’s Use of the Bible in His Second Inaugural Address.  It features fascinating commentary on Lincoln's faith from Pepperdine's Pulitizer-Prize winning legal historian Ed Larson (for Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion), as well as Derek Hicks (Wake Forest), Condoleezza Rice (Stanford), Rosetta Ross (Spelman), Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh (Stanford), and Ron White (Trinity Forum; Author, Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural).

For more on the role of faith in Lincoln’s second inaugural address, see:

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Do Christians Have A Moral Duty To Tweet?

Christianity Today Op-Ed:  Don’t Quit Twitter Yet. You Might Have a Moral Duty to Stay. 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)):

HAs leaders, how do we avoid the faults of online life without shirking our public responsibility?

Caitlin Flanagan argued in The Atlantic that we really need to quit Twitter. She joins a long line of people who’ve sworn off the medium (at least for a time). ...

In her essay, Flanagan examines how Twitter destroyed her “ability for private thought” and enjoyment of reading. She even admits to being a Twitter addict.

I am too. I have committed a thousand times to take a break from social media, just to find myself sneaking a look, consumed by shame, as if I huffed some glue real quick between work and picking up the kids. There are nights when I’m up too late, reddened eyes locked onto a screen, finally shaking myself out of my stupor with a cry: “Why am I doing this?”

We’ve all heard the studies. Social media decreases our ability to think critically, increases rates of depression, and fuels anxiety and distraction. Facebook and Twitter often make our conversations more combative. And online advocacy often usurps the more enduring (and more boring) work of governance and institutional change.

Nevertheless, most public discourse is now online. So even if social media is a cesspool, we still have to ask the question: Do some Christians have a moral responsibility to wade into the mire to voice opposition to bad legislation, promote good work, or amplify the concerns of the marginalized? ...

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ProPublica: Family Research Council Is Now A Church In The Eyes Of The IRS

ProPublica, Right-Wing Think Tank Family Research Council Is Now a Church in Eyes of the IRS:

The FRC, a staunch opponent of abortion and LGBTQ rights, joins a growing list of activist groups seeking church status, which allows organizations to shield themselves from financial scrutiny.

The Family Research Council’s multimillion-dollar headquarters sit on G Street in Washington, D.C., just steps from the U.S. Capitol and the White House, a spot ideally situated for its work as a right-wing policy think tank and political pressure group.

From its perch at the heart of the nation’s capital, the FRC has pushed for legislation banning gender-affirming surgery; filed amicus briefs supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade; and advocated for religious exemptions to civil rights laws. Its longtime head, a former state lawmaker and ordained minister named Tony Perkins, claims credit for pushing the Republican platform rightward over the past two decades.

What is the FRC? Its website sums up the answer to this question in 63 words: “A nonprofit research and educational organization dedicated to articulating and advancing a family-centered philosophy of public life. In addition to providing policy research and analysis for the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government, FRC seeks to inform the news media, the academic community, business leaders, and the general public about family issues that affect the nation from a biblical worldview.”

In the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service, though, it is also a church, with Perkins as its religious leader.

According to documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act and given to ProPublica, the FRC filed an application to change its status to an “association of churches,” a designation commonly used by groups with member churches like the Southern Baptist Convention, in March 2020. The agency approved the change a few months later.

The FRC is one of a growing list of activist groups to seek church status, a designation that comes with the ability for an organization to shield itself from financial scrutiny. Once the IRS blessed it as an association of churches, the FRC was no longer required to file a public tax return, known as a Form 990, revealing key staffer salaries, the names of board members and related organizations, large payments to independent contractors and grants the organization has made. Unlike with other charities, IRS investigators can’t initiate an audit on a church unless a high-level Treasury Department official has approved the investigation.

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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 paper returning to the list at #5:

1. [598 Downloads]  Tax Administration and Technology: From Enhanced to No-Cooperation?, by João Félix Pinto Nogueira (Catholic University Portugal & IBFD; Google Scholar)
2. [461 Downloads]  Tax Neutrality Regimes and GloBE, by Leopoldo Parada (Leeds; Google Scholar)
3. [306 Downloads]  Congress Takes Its War On Cash To Digital Assets: Understanding Tax Code Section 6050I, by Abraham Sutherland (Virginia; Google Scholar)
4. [289 Downloads]  The Treatment of Tax Incentives under Pillar Two, by Belisa Ferreira Liotti (Google Scholar), Joy Waruguru Ndubai, Ruth Wamuyu, Ivan Lazarov (Google Scholar) & Jeffrey Owens (all of Vienna University of Economics and Business)
5. [250 Downloads]  Preventing Unacceptable Tax Treaty Overrides, by Craig Elliffe (Auckland; Google Scholar)

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

1. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: TP Did Not File Return By Giving Copy To IRS Employee
2. Washington Times, U.S. District Court Orders Law School To Rescind No-Contact Orders Issued Against Christian Legal Society Faculty Advisor And Students Who Shared Their Religious Views With Another Student
3. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Michigan Law School Hires SIXTEEN New Faculty
4. New York Times, Big 4 Accounting Auditors Sign Off On Dubious Tax Strategies Designed By Their Firm
5. QS, 2022 World Law School Rankings
6. Robert Morse (Chief Data Strategist, U.S. News) & Eric Brooks (Principal Data Analyst, U.S. News), U.S. News Kicks Columbia Out Of The 2022 College Rankings After Math Professor Questioned Its #2 Ranking
7. Anne Lamott (New York Times Op-Ed), I Pray. But I Don’t Want To See A High School Football Coach Praying At The 50-Yard Line.
8. Vault, 2023 Law Firm Tax Rankings: Skadden Is #1 For 13th Year In A Row
9. ABA Journal, 11% Of Law Students Had Suicidal Thoughts In 2021. What Can Law Schools Do?
10. ProPublica, Before Moving To Florida, Citadel Billionaire Founder|CEO Spent $54M To Defeat Illinois Tax Hike That Would Have Cost Him $51M/Year

Eric Talley's Commencement Address To The Columbia Law School Class Of 2022: Peerless

Eric L. Talley (Columbia), Peerless:

Commencement Address to the Columbia Law School Class of 2022, on Receipt of the 2022 Willis L.M. Reese Award.

I want to thank — and express my profound admiration for — this amazing, resilient, and freakishly battle-tested Class of 2022. I have been a professor for over a quarter century, and I’d be hard pressed to recall any other class whose path has careened more unpredictably than yours, courtesy of several national and world events. And yet, here you are! For that reason, I feel especially humbled and honored to receive this recognition from this group. For everything you have gone through, Class of 2022, you stand alone.

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Today's Law, Society, And Taxation Panels

Today's Law, Society, and Taxation panels at the virtual 2022 Law & Society Association Annual Meeting:

Session #18:  Teaching Taxation: A Pittsburgh Tax Review Symposium (Diane Klein (Southern), Chair/Discussantl Author, Teaching Critical Tax: What, Why, & How, 19 Pitt. Tax Rev. 143 (2022)):
In its Spring 2022 issue, the Pittsburgh Tax Review published a symposium issue dedicated to teaching taxation. The idea behind the special issue is to collect in one place the insights of leading tax teachers as a service for all who are interested in and devoted to educating current law students and future tax lawyers. This roundtable session includes several of the contributors to this special issue who will describe their contributions and lead a discussion regarding tax teaching in an interactive format with the audience. The contributions featured here include using a VITA program to put a face on tax policy, incorporating critical perspectives in the tax classroom, teaching tax through film, and lessons from teaching tax during the pandemic.

• Alice Abreu (Temple), Tax on the Ground: How a VITA Course Enhances the Law School Curriculum, 19 Pitt. Tax Rev. 101 (2022)
• Katherine Pratt (Loyola-L.A.), Reflections on Law Teaching at the Post-Pandemic Crossroads, 19 Pitt. Tax Rev. 217 (2022)
• Margaret Ryznar (Indiana-McKinney), Lessons from Teaching Tax Online, 19 Pitt. Tax Rev. 295 (2022)
• Stephanie McMahon (Cincinnati), Teaching Tax Through Film: It’s Not as Crazy as it Sounds, 19 Pitt. Tax Rev. 183 (2022)

Session #14:  Directions and Strategies for Future Tax Reforms (in Europe) (Yvette Lind (Copenhagen; Google Scholar), Chair/Discussant & Patrik Emblad (Gothenburg), Discussant):

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Doing Law School Wrong: Case Teaching And An Integrated Legal Practice Method

Gregory Marsden (Monterrey Law School) & Soledad Atienza (IE Law School), Doing Law School Wrong: Case Teaching and an Integrated Legal Practice Method, 66 St. Louis U. L.J. (2022):

Since its inception, the Langdellian case method has been used to teach legal analysis and reasoning to generations of U.S. law students. For nearly as long, business school faculty have used their own version of the case method to teach management decision-making. In law school, a “case” is an appellate court decision, which students must analyze in preparation for Socratic questioning. To business students, a “case” is a narrative problem they must solve before debating and defending their solutions in a moderated classroom discussion.

This Article asserts that neither of these two methods are optimal to prepare students for bar admission and the practice of law.

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Eyal-Cohen Reviews Shaviro's Stanley Surrey And The Public Intellectual Practice Of Tax Policy

This week, Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama; Google Scholar) reviews Daniel Shaviro (NYU; Google Scholar), ‘Moralist’ Versus ‘Scientist’: Stanley Surrey and the Public Intellectual Practice of Tax Policy (July 2022).

The dichotomy of tax—as pure scientific neutral field versus encompassing a moral and social agenda—received much attention with recent years’ renewed spotlight on critical tax theory. In an interview in 1974 Firing Line TV Dialog, Stanley Surrey was confronted with this dichotomy when host William Buckley blamed Surrey that although he asserts relying on scientific observations, he is truly a tax moralist who aims to improve the world based on his own personal value principles. Following A Half-Century with the Internal Revenue Code: The Memoirs of Stanley S. Surrey (Lawrence Zelenak (Duke) & Ajay Mehrotra (Northwestern; Google Scholar) eds. Carolina Academic Press 2022), in this Essay, Shaviro explores Surrey’s tax moralism as it is self-professed in this autobiographical collection and evaluates the effect it has on the tax expenditure analysis.

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• AALS, Journal Of Legal Education Publishes New Issue
• ABA Journal, 11% Of Law Students Had Suicidal Thoughts In 2021. What Can Law Schools Do?
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Michigan Law School Hires SIXTEEN New Faculty
• Stephen Carter (Yale; Bloomberg Law Op-Ed), RIP to the LSAT? Let’s Kill the Bar Exam, Too
• Danielle Conway (Penn State-Dickinson), A Black Woman Law Dean Speaks About The Precarity of Leadership
• Meera Deo (Southwestern), Progress and Backlash in our Unequal Profession
• David Frakt (The Faculty Lounge), An Inauspicious Start for America's Newest Law School
• Laura Padilla (California Western), The Black–White Paradigm’s Continuing Erasure Of Latinas: See Women Law Deans Of Color

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, The Global Tax Revolution for Tech Giants Is Delayed to 2024
• Bloomberg, SALT’s Absence in Manchin, Schumer Talks Signals New Hurdles
• Bloomberg, The Sting That Snagged the Tax Lawyer to a Pair of Billionaires
• Bloomberg Op-Ed (Chris William Sanchirico (Penn Law)), Global Minimum Taxes: US Should Just Raise the Rate and Go Home
• Business Insider, Billionaires Are Exerting Ever-Greater Influence on Elections While Biden Contemplates Taxing America's Most Wealthy

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11% Of Law Students Had Suicidal Thoughts In 2021. What Can Law Schools Do?

Following up on last week's post, The 2021 Survey Of Law Student Well-Being:  ABA Journal, 11% of Law Students Had Suicidal Thoughts in the Past Year, Survey Finds; What Can Law Schools Do?:

More law students are reporting a need for help with emotional or mental health problems, and more are reporting a past diagnosis of depression or anxiety, according to a survey of law students in 39 law schools.

“What is clear is that our law students need help,” the professors who oversaw the 2021 survey write in an article to be published in the University of Louisville Law Review ['It Is Okay To Not Be Okay': The 2021 Survey Of Law Student Well-Being]. “This is a particularly propitious time for various administrators and faculty and staff at law schools to invest more energy and creativity and resources in supporting law student well-being.”

Perhaps most startling is this data point, the article says: Nearly 70% of the law students thought they needed help in the last year for emotional or mental health problems. That figure is a big jump from the last time the survey was administered in 2014, when 42% reported thinking they needed help. ...

Eleven percent of the law students had thought seriously about suicide in the past year, compared to 6% in 2014. Nearly 33% of the students reported they had thought about attempting suicide in their lifetime, up from 21% in 2014.

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Today's Law, Society, And Taxation Panels

Today's Law, Society, and Taxation panels at the 2022 Law & Society Association Annual Meeting:

Session #9:  Tax History (Manoj Viswanathan (UC-Hastings; Google Scholar), Chair/Discussant):
While there is no imposition of tax at the supranational level, the imposition of tax at the national level within a country's own borders introduces complexity at the international level that affects issues of tax policy and tax design. The papers on this panel consider many of these complex concerns, with special attention paid, in some of the papers to the way the United States has addressed matters of international taxation.

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Penn-Wharton Hosts Virtual Discussion Today On Minimum Corporate Income Taxes

Penn-Wharton hosts a virtual discussion on Minimum Corporate Income Taxes today at 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. EDT (registration):

Minimum corporate income taxes are currently being debated as a way to generate tax revenue while preventing highly profitable companies from using tax loopholes to reduce their tax bills. In particular, a minimum tax based on income that corporations report on financial statements has been included in both the House and Senate versions of Build Back Better. Minimum taxes, such as a minimum tax on multinational corporations, are also being considered as part of tax changes codified in international agreements. Questions that will be addressed in this webinar include: Are minimum corporate income taxes efficient in general? What are the challenges with different approaches to imposing a minimum tax, both domestically and internationally? What are potential minimum tax alternatives that do not use financial statement income but can raise similar levels of revenue?

Panelists:

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Buchanan Reviews Taxation And Law And Political Economy By Bearer-Friend, Glogower, Kleiman & Wallace

Neil Buchanan (George Washington), Bringing Law and Policy Back From the Efficiency-Based Analysis: Another Important Step Toward Refocusing on Justice (JOTWELL) (reviewing Jeremy Bearer-Friend (George Washington), Ari Glogower (Ohio State), Ariel Jurow Kleiman (Loyola-L.A.) & Clint Wallace (South Carolina), Taxation and Law and Political Economy, 83 Ohio St. L.J. 471 (2022) (reviewed by Hayes Holderness (Richmond) here)):

Do the goals of fairness, equity, social justice, or other explicitly normative approaches to analyzing law and policy have any place at all in modern scholarship? Some scholars, especially those who approach the world from an orthodox economic viewpoint, have tended to reject categorically the very idea that such concepts should supplant their purportedly hard-headed analysis–an analysis that they hold out as being superior to supposedly “soft,” “sentimental,” “moralistic,” or “subjective” anti-orthodox approaches. Increasingly, however, equity-based analysis has at least been permitted as a component of most legal scholarly discussions. That itself is progress.

Even so, there continues to be a presumed distinction between self-styled “objective” approaches and the approaches of those who focus on inequality, domination, and other such fundamental questions of social justice. The familiar “equity-efficiency tradeoff” encapsulates this tension, the notion being that there are two distinct analytical categories that are not merely separate but in opposition to each other–-that is, the tradeoff says that we must sacrifice some efficiency if we desire greater equity, or instead that we must agree to doom more people to poverty if we seek to maximize efficiency. But is there a better approach? Happily yes, as Taxation and Law and Political Economy, by Professors Bearer-Friend, Glogower, Jurow Kleiman, and Wallace, clearly suggests. ...

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A Black Woman Law Dean Speaks About The Precarity Of Leadership

Danielle M. Conway (Penn State-Dickinson), A Black Woman Law Dean Speaks About The Precarity of Leadership, 51 Sw. L. Rev. 240 (2022):

I was honored to write an essay as a contribution to the Southwestern Law Review Symposium dedicated to amplifying the Professor Meera Deo's groundbreaking book, titled Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia (Stanford University Press, 2019). Unequal Profession is a triumphant work in large part because of its data-driven analysis about the pervasiveness of raceXgender bias and discrimination within the legal academy, but also it is in great measure because of its timing.

In this most recent era of racial reckoning, we are confronting law and the legal academy’s complicity in scaffolding systemic inequity around what should be strong democratic structures. The manner in which the legal academy has perpetuated a status quo that feeds for its existence off of raceXgender subordination is clearly demonstrated in Unequal Profession as both a real and pervasive phenomenon, weakening the legal academy as a democratic institution.

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Mason & Knoll: The Dormant Foreign Commerce Clause After Steiner

Ruth Mason (Virginia; Google Scholar) & Michael S. Knoll (Pennsylvania) have published two abbreviated versions of their article in Volume 39, No. 3 of the Virginia Tax Review, The Dormant Foreign Commerce Clause After Wynne, 39 Va. Tax Rev. 357 (2020):

Why the Supreme Court Should Grant Certiorari in Steiner v. Utah, 95 Tax Notes State 377 (Feb. 3, 2020):

In this article, the authors urge the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in Steiner v. Utah to clarify the scope of the dormant foreign commerce clause and the role of the internal consistency test as a doctrinal tool for identifying commerce clause violations by the states.

Steiner v. Utah: Designing a Constitutional Remedy, 95 Tax Notes St. 845 (Mar. 9, 2020):

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Michigan Law School Hires SIXTEEN New Faculty

Entry-level hires:

• Noah Kazis (local government, land use, housing law)
• Rachel Rothschild (environmental, climate change, administrative law)
• Steven Schaus (torts, law & philosophy, remedies)
• Salome Viljoen (law & tech, privacy, contracts)
• Jeffery Zhang (financial institutions, legislation, contracts)

Lateral hires:

• Michelle Adams (civil rights, constitutional law, law & race) from Cardozo
• Julian Arato (international law, international trade) from Brooklyn 
• Karima Bennoune (international law, international human rights) from UC-Davis
• Kristin Collins (immigration law, family law, federal courts, legal history) from Boston University
• Sam Erman (legal history, constitutional law, citizenship & nationality) from USC
• Matthew L.M. Fletcher (federal indian law) from Michigan State 
• Alexandra Klass (energy law, environmental law) from Minnesota 
• Sanjukta Paul (antitrust, labor law) from Wayne State 
• Aaron Perzanowski (intellectual property) from Case Western 

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Today's Law, Society, And Taxation Panels

Today's Law, Society, and Taxation panels at the 2022 Law & Society Association Annual Meeting:

Session #4:  International Tax I (Lotta Björklund Larsen (Exeter; Google Scholar), Chair/Discussant):
While there is no imposition of tax at the supranational level, the imposition of tax at the national level within a country's own borders introduces complexity at the international level that affects issues of tax policy and tax design. The papers on this panel consider many of these complex concerns, with special attention paid, in some of the papers to the way the United States has addressed matters of international taxation.

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Institute For Policy Studies Launches Tax The Ultra-Rich Now (TURN) Campaign And Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute

The Institute for Policy Studies hosts a launch event today on the Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute and (TURN) Campaign at 2:00 p.m. EDT (registration):

The nation’s 740 billionaires now control more wealth than the 65 million households that make up the bottom half of our economy. They use that wealth to buy politicians and rig the system in their favor while paying lower tax rates than firefighters, teachers, or nurses.

That’s why we’re banding together with some of the top tax fairness fighters—Americans for Tax Fairness, Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute, Health Care for America Now, The Other 98%, Working Families Party, and more—for a new campaign to Tax the Ultra-Rich Now (TURN)!

On Thursday, July 14th, join us for the launch of the TURN campaign and the Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute. We’ll hear from experts and activists alike about why now is the time to tax the ultra-rich, and how you can get involved.

Featuring:

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Parsons: The Shifting Economic Allegiance Of Capital Gains

Amanda Parsons (Colorado), The Shifting Economic Allegiance of Capital Gains:

Technological advances and the digitalization of the global economy have created an economic environment beyond the imagination of the original designers of the international tax system. Much scholarly attention has been paid to the question of how these economic transformations should affect which country is able to tax a multinational company’s income. But which country should be able to tax capital gains income from the sale of that company’s shares is an important and overlooked question.

This Article answers this question. It concludes that taxing authority over capital gains income must be reallocated to the countries in which companies conduct business. In our modern, digitalized economy, this reallocation is necessary to align international sourcing rules with international tax law’s underlying principles.

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The Black–White Paradigm’s Continuing Erasure Of Latinas: See Women Law Deans Of Color

Laura Padilla (California Western), The Black–White Paradigm’s Continuing Erasure of Latinas: See Women Law Deans of Color, 99 Denver L. Rev. __ (2022):

This Essay describes the Black–White paradigm and how it erases communities of color that do not fit within it, thus further marginalizing already sidelined communities. The Essay focuses on Latinas, elaborating on how the Black–White binary places them in an impossible position, making it difficult to discuss race beyond Black and White and to consider and resolve other communities’ discrete, race related issues.

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2023 Vault Law Firm Tax Rankings: Skadden Is #1 For 13th Year In A Row

Vault has released its annual ranking of the Top 100 Law Firms, based on prestige as voted on by associates (methodology here). The Top Tax Practices are:

Rank	Firm	Home City	% Vote
1	Skadden	New York	36.09%
2	Davis Polk	New York	22.39%
3	Kirkland & Ellis	Chicago	19.35%
4	Cravath	New York	17.17%
5	Wachtell	New York	16.74%
6	Baker McKenzie	Chicago	15.44%
7	Latham & Watkins	New York	15.22%
8	McDermott, Will & Emery	Chicago	14.78%
9	Weil	New York	9.57%
10	Paul Weiss	New York	8.48%
11	Simpson Thacher	New York	8.04%
11	Sullivan & Cromwell	New York	8.04%
13	Cleary Gottlieb	New York	7.83%
14	Caplin & Drysdale	D.C.	6.47%
15	Morgan Lewis	Philadelphia	5.00%
16	DLA Piper	New York	4.57%
16	Miller & Chevalier	D.C.	4.57%
18	Eversheds Sutherland	D.C.	4.35%
18	Ropes & Gray	Boston	4.35%
20	Mayer Brown	Chicago	3.91%

For the thirteenth year in a row, Skadden is #1. The city rankings are:

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Deo: Progress And Backlash In Our Unequal Profession — Race And Gender In Legal Academia

Meera E. Deo (Southwestern), Progress and Backlash in our Unequal Profession, 52 Sw. U. L. Rev. 310 (2022):

Over the past two years, we have collectively suffered through a global pandemic, ongoing attacks on Black Americans (despite protests supporting Black Lives Matter), challenges to American democracy, increasing anti-Asian hate crimes, ongoing family separation at the border, and other forms of trauma. My book, Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia, was published in February 2019. It has lived through interesting times. In tandem with the aforementioned ordeals, there has also been progress on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. A growing body of scholarship now draws attention to inequities and offers solutions; law schools have organized conferences and initiated campus-wide efforts to facilitate greater inclusion. Yet, accompanying this headway has been backlash that pushes against the very values steeped within my book: Critical Race Theory (CRT) and anti-racism, the scientific method, and support for women. As we celebrate our successes and continue moving toward improved outcomes in legal education, we must also attentively guard against negative responses that threaten to erode our progress and push us further from equity.

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Today's Law, Society, And Taxation Panels

Today's Law, Society, and Taxation panels at the 2022 Law & Society Association Annual Meeting:

Session #1:  Critical Tax Theory  (Alice Abreu (Temple), Chair/Discussant):
The nominal application of tax rules to the taxpayers affected by them is often at odds with the affects of those rules in practice. In addition, the priorities and experiences of the actors participating in the drafting, interpreting, and enforcing of tax rules can impact the way those rules are created or operate. The papers on this panel employ a variety of approaches to think about the tax law in the real world, both in the lived experiences of those subject to the rules, and in the intentions of those who create and enforce the rules.

Nyamagaga Gondwe (Wisconsin), American Taxation and The Empty Promise of Black Capitalism:

The federal income tax system is more permissive in how it provides financial assistance to property owners than it is in its method of giving financial assistance to those who principally rely on labor income. Historically, the federal government has participated in expanding rights in property ownership to different historically excluded groups. Expanding those entitlements allows the government to tout individualist virtues of capitalism over collective social spending. But Professors Mehrsa Baradaran and Keeanga Yamatta-Taylor present the theories of “counterfeit capitalism” and “predatory inclusion” to show that systemic failures to regulate market racism against Black Americans have made historically significant tools for building wealth (e.g., stock ownership and homeownership) empty entitlements that drain Black resources instead. Baradaran and Yamatta-Taylor’s accounts are significant from the perspective of the tax distinction between capital and ordinary income because for the balance of American history Black American economic life has been confined to low-wage labor and low-value housing.

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Taylor: Law School Admissions Shouldn't Hinge On Test Scores

Law360 Op-Ed:  Law School Admissions Shouldn't Hinge On Test Scores, by Aaron Taylor (AccessLex):

People of color comprise 40% of the country's population, but 33% of law students. The two largest underrepresented groups — Black students and Latino students — comprise 32% of the population and just 21% of law students.

Racial and ethnic disparities in admissions rates foster these enrollment disparities. In 2019, I found that it took 1,960 Black law school applicants to yield 1,000 offers of admission, compared to only 1,204 among white applicants and 1,333 overall.

These trends can be attributed in large part to how racial and ethnic LSAT score disparities interact with the outsized weight that law schools place on the test. Black applicants have the lowest average LSAT score and the lowest law school admission rate. Latino applicants have the second-lowest average score and the second-lowest admission rate.

Average scores are highest among white and Asian American applicants, and they enjoy the highest admission rates. These trends are not random, and they extend to scholarships as well. Higher LSAT scores are tied to both higher chances of receiving a scholarship and higher award amounts. ...

The ABA is the only professional school accreditor that imposes an admissions test requirement on schools. Moreover, a review of standards for the six regional agencies that accredit entire universities found no encouragement of the use of admissions tests or any other specific tools for evaluating applicants.

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One-Year Delay Could Sink Global Tax Deal As U.S., Other Countries May Back Out

New York Times, A Global Deal to Tax Large Corporations Is Delayed a Year:

The most ambitious tax overhaul in a century faced a new setback on Monday when the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is overseeing the global negotiations, said that proposed rules for how the world’s largest companies would be taxed would not be unveiled until the middle of next year.

The delay is expected to push enactment of the agreement, which had been intended by next year, to at least 2024. That will give negotiators more time to hash out a thicket of complicated details surrounding how to rewrite international tax treaties and enact a global minimum tax of 15 percent in more than 130 countries.

But it could also give governments more time to contemplate backing out of the pact as fears over inflation and a global recession intensify and as many countries, including the United States, undergo elections. ...

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2022 World Law School Rankings

Quacquarelli Symonds has released the 2022 World Law School Rankings as part of its World University Rankings. The methodology is 50% academic reputation, 30% employer reputation, 7.5% h-index per faculty member, 7.5% citations per paper, and 5% International Research Network (IRN) Index.  The rankings consist of 342 law schools, 54 in the United States.  Here are the U.S. law schools, along with each school's position in the latest SSRN Top 750 Law School Faculty Rankings — Total Downloads):

QS Ranking	School	SSRN Ranking
1	Harvard	1
4	Yale	6
5	Stanford	2
6	NYU	3
8	Columbia	5
9	UC-Berkeley	4
10	Chicago	7
21	Georgetown	9
25	UCLA	16
27	Penn	12
28	Duke	29
35	Michigan	13
36	Cornell	30
50	Virginia	11
54	Northwestern	15
76	George Washington	8
78	Texas	34
101-150	American	52
101-150	Boston University	31
101-150	UC-Irvine	33
101-150	Washington	73
151-200	Fordham	17
151-200	Illinois	40
151-200	Michigan State	87
151-200	Notre Dame	49
151-200	Penn State (Univ. Park)	106
151-200	UC-Davis	36
151-200	USC	27
151-200	Washington Univ.	41
151-200	Wisconsin	92
201-250	Arizona	54
201-250	Arizona State	62
201-250	Emory	61
201-250	Indiana (Maurer)	46
201-250	Minnesota	32
201-250	Vanderbilt	19
251-300	Boston College	85
251-300	Cincinnati	204
251-300	CUNY	183
251-300	Florida	64
251-300	Florida State	63
251-300	George Mason	28
251-300	Loyola-Chicago	58
251-300	Miami	71
251-300	North Carolina	69
251-300	Ohio State	43
251-300	Tulane	198
251-300	Illinois-Chicago	467
301-340	Colorado	70
301-340	Houston	99
301-340	Missouri-Columbia	138
301-340	Northeastern	105
301-340	San Diego	44
301-340	William & Mary	100

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Chicago-Kent Seeks To Hire An Entry Level Or Lateral Tax Prof

Chicago-Kent College of Law:

Chicago-Kent College of Law expects to hire multiple faculty members to join our vibrant and nationally recognized intellectual community.  We have hiring needs in a variety of areas, including but not limited to:

• Corporate/Securities Law;
• Intellectual Property Law;
• Other Upper-Level Subjects, particularly Race and the Law, Commercial Law, International Law, and Tax Law
• Experience or interest in teaching Civil Procedure, Torts, and/or Property, particularly combined with expertise in one of the above areas.

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Carter: Let's Kill The LSAT And The Bar Exam

Bloomberg Opinion:  RIP to the LSAT? Let’s Kill the Bar Exam, Too, by Stephen L. Carter (Yale):

Should law school applicants still have to take the LSAT? A proposal by a committee of the American Bar Association would eliminate the longstanding rule that accredited law schools must require prospective students to take a “valid and reliable test” as part of the application process. If the LSAT is axed, maybe the bar exam should be next.

The recommendation to eliminate the admissions testing requirement comes amidst cascading charges that reliance on the Law School Admission Test hurts minority applicants. The proposition is sharply contested by many friends of diversity.  Some find it stigmatizing to be told they can’t do as well on the test as White applicants. But given that the case against the test appears to have persuaded the wordily named Council of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, let’s assume for the sake of argument that the LSAT does indeed represent an unfair barrier to entry to the legal profession.

Why doesn’t the same argument apply to the bar examination?

I’m serious.

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WSJ: Vanguard To Pay $6 Million To Investors Hit With Big Tax Bills

Following up on my previous posts:

• Wall Street Journal, The Huge Tax Bills That Came Out Of Nowhere At Vanguard
• New York Times, Holders Of Vanguard Target Funds File Class Action Over Massive Capital Gain Tax Bills

Wall Street Journal, Vanguard to Pay $6 Million to Investors Hit With Big Tax Bills:

A Vanguard Group subsidiary will pay about $6 million to Massachusetts investors who were whacked last year with unexpectedly painful tax bills.

Massachusetts securities regulators on Wednesday reached a $6.25 million settlement with Vanguard Marketing Corp., a subsidiary of Vanguard, following an investigation launched this year into changes the Malvern, Pa.-based financial giant made to its target-date funds.

Such funds are bundles of stocks, bonds and cash that automatically become more conservative as investors approach retirement. In January, The Wall Street Journal reported that big institutional clients abandoned some of Vanguard’s target funds in droves after the firm created an incentive for them to move their money to a different set of funds.

That forced the target funds to sell securities, generating capital gains, which by law must be distributed to the remaining holders. That didn’t affect small investors who held the target funds in retirement accounts, where gains aren’t currently taxed. But retail clients in taxable accounts were slammed with big tax bills. ...

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American University Clears Law Student Charged With Harassing A Conservative Christian Classmate Over His Pro-Life Views

Following up on my previous posts:

• American Launches Title IX Investigation Of 8 Law Students Who Criticized A Student's Pro-Dobbs Views In Group Chat (June 27, 2022)
• Free Speech And Cancel Culture: A Tale Of Two Law Schools (June 30, 2022)

Reuters, Law Student Didn't Harass Classmate in Abortion Discussion, Probe Finds:

American University has cleared a law student of allegations that he harassed a classmate over his religious and conservative beliefs during a heated online discussion about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn the nationwide right to abortion.

In a July 7 letter, the university said it did not find evidence to support the unnamed classmate'scomplaint that law student Daniel Brezina violated harassment policies "based on political affiliation or religious belief.” ...

Brezina was among eight students investigated following the May 2 discussion. ... Brezina said Monday that he does not know whether the other seven students were also cleared, but that the university’s letter suggests they were. The university said in a statement Monday that the process is confidential and the “matter is now concluded.”

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Pittsburgh Tax Review Publishes New Issue

The Pittsburgh Tax Review has published Vol. 19, No. 2 (2022):

• Alice G. Abreu (Temple), Tax on the Ground: How a VITA Course Enhances the Law School Curriculum, 19 Pitt. Tax Rev. 101 (2022)
• Diane Kemker (Southern), Teaching Critical Tax: What, Why, & How, 19 Pitt. Tax Rev. 143 (2022)
• Stephanie McMahon (Cincinnati), Teaching Tax Through Film: It’s Not as Crazy as it Sounds, 19 Pitt. Tax Rev. 183 (2022)
• Victor Thuronyi (IMF (Retired)), Teaching Tax Law: A Comparative Law Perspective, 19 Pitt. Tax Rev. 211 (2022)
• Katherine Pratt (Loyola-L.A.), Reflections on Law Teaching at the Post-Pandemic Crossroads, 19 Pitt. Tax Rev. 217 (2022)
• Heather M. Field (UC-Hastings; Google Scholar), How the Pandemic Flipped My Perspective on Flipping the Tax Law Classroom, 19 Pitt. Tax Rev. 267 (2022)
• Margaret Ryznar (Indiana-McKinney), Lessons from Teaching Tax Online, 19 Pitt. Tax Rev. 295 (2022)

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• Above the Law, Bar Exam Blues: What Happens If You Can't Stop Thinking About Failing?
• Algemeiner, Why CUNY Law School Is Heading Towards a New McCarthyism
• Law.com, NCCU Appoints Interim Dean Following Browne Lewis' Death
• Law.com, Not Just 'Yelling Bumper Stickers': Law Schools Mull How to Address 'Dobbs,' a Changing SCOTUS in the Classroom
• Law.com, 'Realizing the Dark Path This Country Has Gone Down': Law Students on Why They're Pursuing Legal Careers
• Law.com, SIU Law, Governors State University Join Forces to Create New Diversity-Minded Pathway to JD Degree
• The Legal Intelligencer, Five Key Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Clerkship
• News4JAX, Florida Coastal School of Law Students Can Apply to Get Loans Forgiven

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Marquette Seeks To Hire An Entry Level Or Lateral Tax Prof

Marquette University, Assistant/Associate/Full Professor (Tenured or Tenure Track) — Law:

Marquette University Law School invites applications for potential openings for tenure-track or tenured faculty members who would join us beginning in the 2023-2024 academic year. We welcome candidates from all teaching and research areas, and are particularly interested in candidates whose interests include, in addition to doctrinal first-year courses, alternative dispute resolution, commercial law, health law, sports law, and tax. Candidates should have distinguished records of academic and professional achievement as well as the commitment to, and potential for, excellence in teaching and research.

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Journal Of Legal Education Publishes New Issue

The Journal of Legal Education has published Vol. 70, No. 1 (Fall 2020):

From the Editors

• Robert Dinerstein (American) & Ezra Rosser (American; Google Scholar), From the Editors, 70 J. Legal Educ. 1 (2020)

Articles

• Ezra Ross (UC-Irvine), Reframing Faculty Pro Bono, 70 J. Legal Educ. 3 (2020)
• Jonathan R. Siegel (George Washington; Google Scholar), A Law Professor’s Guide to Parliamentary Procedure, 70 J. Legal Educ. 26 (2020)
• Mark Kelman (Stanford), Of Moore, Players and Owners, and Consequentialist Pedagogy: Can the Center Hold?, 70 J. Legal Educ. 65 (2020)
• Ben Perdue (Street Law) & Amy Wallace (New York Law School), Preparing Lawyers for Practice: Developing Cultural Competency, Communication Skills, and Content Knowledge through Street Law Programs, 70 J. Legal Educ. 95 (2020)
• Michael Frisby (Michigan; Google Scholar), Sam Erman (USC) & Victor D. Quintanilla (Indiana; Google Scholar), Safeguard or Barrier: An Empirical Examination of Bar Exam Cut Scores, 70 J. Legal Educ. 125 (2020)

At the Lectern

• Orin Kerr (UC-Berkeley; Google Scholar), Line-Drawing, 70 J. Legal Educ. 162 (2020)

Book Reviews

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Lesson From The Tax Court: TP Did Not File Return By Giving Copy To IRS Employee

Figuring out when or whether a taxpayer has filed a return is important for many reasons.  On the one hand, proper filing limits the time for the IRS to assess.  Thus taxpayers generally want the courts to find they have filed.  On the other hand, filing a frivolous or fraudulent return can lead to penalties.  In those situations, taxpayers want the courts to find they have not filed! 

Sometimes a taxpayer will give an IRS employee a copy of a return they claim was previously filed.  Does that constitute the filing of a return?  Well, it depends. Just like last week, I think it useful to compare the Tax Court and Circuit Court cases.

In a logic-challenged opinion, the Ninth Circuit recently decided giving a copy did constitute filing a return ... for for statute of limitations purposes.  See Seaview Trading, LLC v. Commissioner, 447 F.3d 706 (9th Cir. 2022), rev’g T.C. Memo. 2019-122. While I agree with the dissenting judge that “the majority's analysis and conclusions are logically absurd and should not be the holding of this court,” there is no denying the decision was good news for taxpayers.

Now comes the Tax Court and in Chule Rain Walker v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2022-63 (June 15, 2022), Judge Nega decides that giving an IRS employee a copy of a frivolous return does not constitute filing a return ... for frivolous penalty purposes!

Win-win for taxpayers?  As usual, the devil is in the details, which you can find below the fold. 

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Turley: What George Washington Law School's Clarence Thomas Cancel Campaign Teaches Us About College Campus Intolerance

Following up on my previous posts:

• The Hatchet, George Washington Refuses To Fire Justice Thomas, Who Has Co-Taught A Course For A Decade; His Views 'Do Not Represent Those Of The University Or Its Law School' (June 29, 2022)
• David Lat, Free Speech And Cancel Culture: A Tale Of Two Law Schools (June 30, 2022)
• Washington Post, Students, Alumni Push Back Against George Washington's Refusal To Cancel Justice Thomas's Con Law Seminar (July 2, 2022)

New York Post Op-Ed:  What GWU’s Clarence Thomas Cancel Campaign Teaches Us About College Campus Intolerance, by Jonathan Turley (George Washington; Google Scholar):

The GW petition reflects a growing intolerance and orthodoxy sweeping universities. When I began teaching 30 years ago, universities were bastions of free speech where a wide array of views and values were steadfastly defended. Any attack on one was an attack on all.

Today, a palpable level of fear and intimidation exists among many faculty members that they could be the next target of one of these campaigns. Most professors are not protected by tenure, and universities can cite other reasons for not renewing their contracts.

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• NY Times: Big 4 Accounting Auditors Sign Off On Dubious Tax Strategies Designed By Their Firm
• U.S. News Kicks Columbia Out Of The 2022 College Rankings After Math Professor Questioned Its #2 Ranking
• ProPublica: Before Moving To Florida, Citadel Billionaire Founder|CEO Spent $54M To Defeat Illinois Tax Hike That Would Have Cost Him $51M/Year

Sunday:

• U.S. District Court Orders Law School To Rescind No-Contact Orders Issued Against Christian Legal Society Faculty Advisor And Students Who Shared Their Religious Views With Another Student
• NY Times Op-Ed:  I Pray. But I Don’t Want To See A High School Football Coach Praying At The 50-Yard Line.
• Does Religious Freedom Protect A Right To An Abortion? One Rabbi’s Mission To Find Out.
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

U.S. District Court Orders Law School To Rescind No-Contact Orders Issued Against Christian Legal Society Faculty Advisor And Students Who Shared Their Religious Views With Another Student

Washington Times, Christian Law Students, Professor Win Injunction Against U. of Idaho ‘No Contact’ Orders:

A federal judge has ordered the University of Idaho to rescind no-contact orders issued against three evangelical Christian law students who shared their religious views with another student [Perlot v. Green, No. 3:22-cv-00183 (D. Idaho June 30, 2022)].

Peter Perlot, Mark Miller and Ryan Alexander — members of the law school’s Christian Legal Society chapter — are “free to speak in a manner consistent with their religious beliefs” as a lawsuit against university President C. Scott Green and three other school officials progresses, an announcement from the Alliance Defending Freedom stated.

The public-interest law firm represents the three students, who sued the University of Idaho administrators in April after the no-contact orders were issued against them and subsequently against law professor Richard Seamon, faculty adviser to the school’s Christian Legal Society chapter.

The dustup at the university’s law school stems from an April 1 “moment of community” where students, faculty and staff gathered in front of the Moscow, Idaho, campus after an anti-LGBTQ+ slur was found on a whiteboard at the university’s Boise campus. The Christian Legal Society members were present and prayed “in a showing of support,” the order from federal Chief District Judge David C. Nye says.

After the prayer, “Jane Doe,” identified in the opinion as “a queer female and a law student at the University of Idaho School of Law,” approached the society members and asked why the group requires its officers to affirm marriage as being between one man and one woman.

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NY Times Op-Ed: I Pray. But I Don’t Want To See A High School Football Coach Praying At The 50-Yard Line.

Following up on my previous posts:

• New Pepperdine Religious Liberty Clinic Asks Supreme Court To Rule For High School Coach Fired For Praying On Football Field After Games
• After The SCOTUS School Prayer Decision, What Comes Next For American Jews?

New York Times Op-Ed:  I Don’t Want to See a High School Football Coach Praying at the 50-Yard Line, by Anne Lamott:

Many of us who believe in a reality beyond the visible realms, who believe in a soul that survives death, and who are hoping for seats in heaven near the dessert table, also recoil from the image of a high school football coach praying at the 50-yard line.

It offends me to see sanctimonious public prayer in any circumstance — but a coach holding his players hostage while an audience watches his piety makes my skin crawl. ...

Prayer means talking to God, or to the great universal spirit, a.k.a. Gus, or to Not Me. Prayer connects us umbilically to a spirit both outside and within us, who hears and answers. Is it like the comedian Flip Wilson saying, “I’m gonna pray now; anyone want anything?”

Kind of.

I do not understand much about string theory, but I do know we are vibrations, all the time. Between the tiny strings is space in which change can happen. The strings are infinitesimal; the space between nearly limitless. Prayer says to that space, I am tiny, helpless, needy, worried, but there’s nothing I can do except send my love into that which is so much bigger than me.

How do people like me who believe entirely in science and reason also believe that prayer can heal and restore? Well, I’ve seen it happen a thousand times in my own inconsequential life. God seems like a total showoff to me, if perhaps unnecessarily cryptic.

When I pray for all the places where we see Christ crucified — Ukraine, India, the refugee camps — I see in my heart and in the newspaper that goodness draws near, through UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, volunteers, through motley old us.

I wake up praying. I say a prayer some sober people told me to pray 36 years ago, because when all else fails, follow instructions. It helps me to not fixate on who I am, but on whose. I am God’s adorable, aging, self-centered, spaced-out beloved. One man in early sobriety told me that he had come into recovery as a hotshot but that other sober men helped him work his way up to servant. I pray to be a good servant because I’ve learned that this is the path of happiness. I pray for my family and all my sick friends that they have days of grace and healing, and I end my prayers, “Make me ever mindful of the needs of the poor.” ...

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Does Religious Freedom Protect A Right To An Abortion? One Rabbi’s Mission To Find Out.

Time, Does Religious Freedom Protect a Right to an Abortion? One Rabbi’s Mission to Find Out:

When Florida passed a law this spring that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, Rabbi Barry Silver was furious. And when it looked like the Supreme Court was likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, which would allow such bans to take effect, he decided he needed to act. Silver’s progressive synagogue, Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor in Palm Beach County, sued the state of Florida in June, arguing that the anti-abortion law infringes on religious liberty.

Judaism has viewed abortion as morally acceptable—and even required in some circumstances—for thousands of years. In contrast to some Christian beliefs that say life begins at conception, Jewish law says that life begins at birth, and that the fetus is part of the pregnant person’s body. This is widely understood to mean that the pregnant person’s rights take precedence, and that if the fetus endangers the pregnant person’s life or health, Jewish law would require them to have an abortion.

“The First Amendment, which is the first one that they enacted, upon which all other freedoms are based, was designed to prevent the exact type of thing that we see now: the merger of a radical fundamentalist type of Christianity with the state,” Silver, who is also a civil rights lawyer and a former Democratic Florida state legislator, tells TIME. “This law criminalizes the practice of Judaism.”

It’s unclear if Silver’s lawsuit will prevail, though some legal experts say it raises legitimate points. “There’s a strong argument that [courts] would also have to grant a religious exemption given the requirements of Jewish law,” says Michael Helfand, a professor of religion and ethics at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law.

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

This week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads is the same as last week's list:

1. [579 Downloads]  Tax Administration and Technology: From Enhanced to No-Cooperation?, by João Félix Pinto Nogueira (Catholic University Portugal & IBFD; Google Scholar)
2. [459 Downloads]  Tax Neutrality Regimes and GloBE, by Leopoldo Parada (Leeds; Google Scholar)
3. [322 Downloads]  Tax Harmony: The Promise and Pitfalls of the Global Minimum Tax, by Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo; Google Scholar)
4. [298 Downloads]  Congress Takes Its War On Cash To Digital Assets: Understanding Tax Code Section 6050I, by Abraham Sutherland (Virginia; Google Scholar)
5. [277 Downloads]  The Treatment of Tax Incentives under Pillar Two, by Belisa Ferreira Liotti (Google Scholar), Joy Waruguru Ndubai, Ruth Wamuyu, Ivan Lazarov (Google Scholar) & Jeffrey Owens (all of Vienna University of Economics and Business)

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

1. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: No §163 Deduction From Foreclosure Proceeds
2. Wall Street Journal, Comey|McCabe IRS Audits AND ProPublica Tax Leak Should Be Investigated
3. New York Times, Comey And McCabe, Who Infuriated Trump, Both Faced Intensive IRS Audits
4. Paul Horwitz (Alabama), Should Undergraduate Degrees In Law Lead To Shortening Law School To Two Years By Separating Academic Study Of Law From Practical Training To Be Lawyers?
5. New York Times, The IRS Is The Gatekeeper For Charities, But Approves 99.96% Of All Applications; Form 1023EZ = EZ Fraud
6. Scott Devito (Ave Maria), Kelsey Hample (Furman) & Erin Lain (Drake), An Empirical Analysis Of Racial Bias In The UBE: A Law School’s First-Time Bar Pass Rate Decreases As Its Percentage Of Students Of Color Increases
7. Vivia Chen (Bloomberg Law), Killing The LSAT In The Name Of Diversity Won’t Cure The Problem
8. Inside Higher Ed, How Religious Colleges View The Dobbs Abortion Decision: Celebration (Liberty), Neutrality (Notre Dame), Condemnation (Emory)
9. Danielle Conway (Dean, Penn State-Dickinson), Antiracist Lawyering in Practice Begins with the Practice of Teaching and Learning Antiracism in Law School
10. Washington Post, Students, Alumni Push Back Against George Washington's Refusal To Cancel Justice Thomas's Con Law Seminar

NY Times: Big 4 Accounting Auditors Sign Off On Dubious Tax Strategies Designed By Their Firm

New York Times, Officials Balked at a Drug Company’s Tax Shelter. Auditors Approved It Anyway.:

Court documents show the potential conflicts of interest when accounting firms simultaneously help clients avoid taxes and audit their finances.

The drug company Perrigo had a problem.

Consultants at the giant advisory firm EY had devised an elaborate arrangement that would allow Perrigo, one of the country’s leading makers of nonprescription drugs, to avoid more than $100 million in federal taxes. But the company’s outside auditors, at the accounting firm BDO, were questioning the setup’s propriety.

Perrigo soon replaced BDO with EY as its auditor. At least one EY official, too, expressed concern that the tax shelter his colleagues had designed was overly aggressive.

Even so, auditors at EY, also known as Ernst & Young, eventually blessed the transactions, which federal authorities now claim were shams, according to previously unreported documents made public in a court case last year.

Accountants have a reputation as bean counters. In reality, their audits are a linchpin of global capitalism: Investors need to be able to trust that companies’ numbers are reliable and have been reviewed by credible outsiders. Having a reputable auditing firm sign off on your financial statements is therefore a prerequisite to being listed on a major stock exchange and attracting significant investments.

To avoid suspicions that auditors are overlooking problems in order to please big clients, accounting firms are supposed to keep an arms-length relationship with the companies they oversee.

But in the two decades since a series of corporate accounting scandals spotlighted the lack of independence between auditing firms and their leading clients, the problem remains. Today, the Big 4 accounting firms all offer giant companies a wide array of consulting and tax-planning services — at the same time they are serving as ostensibly independent outside auditors.

Internal EY emails and memos — made public last year in a court case in which the I.R.S. is challenging Perrigo’s tax arrangements and accusing EY of constructing “an abusive tax dodge” — provide a rare inside look at the potential conflicts of interest that arise as a single firm constructs tax shelters and simultaneously audits its own work. ...

Nowhere is the tension over accounting firms’ multifaceted roles more pronounced than in the lucrative business of advising companies on how to slice their tax bills.

The Big 4 accounting firms — EY, KPMG, PwC and Deloitte — have emerged as perhaps the most powerful private-sector force in U.S. tax policy. They lobby federal officials to tweak tax rules to help their clients. A steady stream of lawyers from the firms rotate in and out of senior tax positions in the Treasury Department, where they write rules favorable to their former clients.

At the same time, the Big 4 firms help companies move profits out of the reach of the U.S. government. Then the companies’ auditors — often a different group of employees from the same firm that created the structures in the first place — have to sign off on the setups. In assessing their legitimacy and the effect on the client’s financial results, the auditors frequently consult with the colleagues who devised the tax strategies.

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U.S. News Kicks Columbia Out Of The 2022 College Rankings After Math Professor Questioned Its #2 Ranking

Following up on my previous posts:

• Michael Thaddeus (Professor of Mathematics, Columbia), An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia’s U.S. News Ranking (Mar. 8, 2022)
• New York Times, U.S. News Ranked Columbia No. 2, But A Math Professor Has His Doubts (Mar. 21, 2022)
• Wall Street Journal, Columbia Will Not Submit Data To U.S. News This Year After Math Professor Questioned Its #2 Ranking (July 1, 2022)

Robert Morse (Chief Data Strategist, U.S. News) & Eric Brooks (Principal Data Analyst, U.S. News), U.S. News Unranks Columbia University in 2022 Best Colleges Rankings:

U.S. News & World Report has unranked Columbia University from a number of rankings in the 2022 edition of Best Colleges (first published September 2021) after Columbia failed to respond to multiple U.S. News requests that the university substantiate certain data it previously submitted to U.S. News.

After learning about questions relating to Columbia’s submission, U.S. News Chief Data Strategist Robert Morse first contacted Columbia in March 2022 requesting Columbia substantiate data reported in its 2021 U.S. News statistical surveys on its counts of instructional full-time and part-time faculty, count of full-time faculty with a terminal degree, student-faculty ratio, undergraduate class size data, and educational expenditures data for the 2022 Best Colleges rankings. To date, Columbia has been unable to provide satisfactory responses to the information U.S. News requested. Therefore, today U.S. News moved the university to being "Unranked" in National Universities, meaning it no longer has a numerical rank in the 2022 National Universities, 2022 Best Value Schools, and 2022 Top Performers on Social Mobility because those rankings used data from the university’s statistical surveys.

Robert Morse, U.S. News Rankings Updates: Find Out About the [57] Schools That Misreported Data to U.S. News:

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ProPublica: Before Moving To Florida, Citadel Billionaire Founder|CEO Spent $54M To Defeat Illinois Tax Hike That Would Have Cost Him $51M/Year

ProPublica, Ken Griffin Spent $54 Million Fighting a Tax Increase for the Rich. Secret IRS Data Shows It Paid Off for Him.:

For billionaire Ken Griffin, it was well worth spending $54 million to ensure he and other rich Illinoisans wouldn’t have to pay more tax.

By the time Illinois voters streamed into voting booths on Election Day in 2020, Griffin, then Illinois’ wealthiest resident, had made sure they’d heard plenty about why they should not vote to raise taxes on him and the state’s other rich people. His tens of millions paid for an unrelenting stream of ads and flyers against an initiative on that year’s ballot, which would have allowed Illinois lawmakers to join 32 other states in setting higher tax rates for the wealthy than for everyone else.

In the end, Griffin spent about $18 for every one of the 3.1 million votes against the initiative. After initial optimism about its prospects, the measure came up hundreds of thousands of votes short and went down to defeat.

Rarely does the public get a clear view of the payoff for wealthy Americans who put their money down to achieve a political outcome. But in this case, ProPublica’s trove of IRS data can provide crucial context for the ballot fight. For Griffin and many of his fellow ultrawealthy Illinoisans, spending even such a vast amount was well worth it when compared with what a tax hike might have cost them.

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• Vivia Chen (Bloomberg Law), Killing the LSAT in the Name of Diversity Won’t Cure the Problem
• Danielle Conway (Dean, Penn State-Dickinson), Antiracist Lawyering in Practice Begins with the Practice of Teaching and Learning Antiracism in Law School
• Scott Devito (Ave Maria), Kelsey Hample (Furman) & Erin Lain (Drake), Examining the Bar Exam: An Empirical Analysis of Racial Bias in the Uniform Bar Examination
• Paul Horwitz (Alabama), An Important Step ... Sideways ... in Legal Education
• David Jaffe (American), Katherine Bender (Bridgewater State) & Jerome Organ (St. Thomas-MN), 'It is Okay to Not Be Okay': The 2021 Survey of Law Student Well-Being
• Law.com, 'This Is a Life Decision': Will Abortion Bans Affect Law School Applications?

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Common Future, The Racial Wealth Gap Is A Legacy Of Slavery — But We Have The Power To Build a Better Future
• Forbes, Pillar 1 Tax Reform: Will The EU Go It Alone?
• Forbes, Six States With The Lowest Overall Tax Burden
• Just Taxes, No Reason to Water Down the Tax Reforms in the Build Back Better Act
• Law360, The Top Federal Tax Cases Of 2022: Midyear Report
• Jim Maule (Villanova), Tax Law, Like All Law, Is Everywhere 
• New York Times, Democrats Propose Raising Taxes on Some High Earners to Bolster Medicare

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WSJ: Comey|McCabe IRS Audits AND ProPublica Tax Leak Should Be Investigated

New York Times, I.R.S. Asks Inspector General to Review Audits of Comey and McCabe:

The agency said its commissioner asked the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration to look into the audits after The Times raised questions about them.

Wall Street Journal, Comey, McCabe and IRS Audits:

The press corps is aflutter at the New York Times report this week that former FBI officials James Comey and Andrew McCabe faced burdensome tax audits under a Trump appointee. We’re glad to see the new attention to the Internal Revenue Service, and welcome to the cause if you mean it.

Messrs. Comey and McCabe were rotten public servants, but any abuse of the IRS for political purposes has to be punished and deterred.

But some Democrats aren’t waiting to jump to Trumpian conclusions. “Trump has no respect for the rule of law,” said Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden in a statement. “If he tried to subject his political enemies to additional IRS scrutiny that would surprise no one.” Mr. Trump says he knew nothing about the audits.

Too bad Mr. Wyden has shown little interest in the rule of law concerning other IRS abuses. One example is last year’s leak of tax records to the progressive website ProPublica. The site published the detailed records of such billionaires as Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos in June 2021, the same time Democrats were making the case for a wealth tax. The leak was a federal crime, and ProPublica hasn’t disclosed its source or how the files were obtained.

A year later the IRS still hasn’t offered information about the leak to Congress. Not that Mr. Wyden’s committee or Democrats on House Ways and Means seem eager to know.

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