How An Autistic Man With Cerebral Palsy Found His Faith

Wall Street Journal op-ed:  The Faith of an Autistic Man, by Jory Fleming (Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University; Author, How to Be Human: An Autistic Man’s Guide to Life (2021)):

It was an unlikely connection. A literal, logical person, challenged by basic verbal communication, and an unseen spirit, who communicates through the Word. Yet I reached out to God, and he reached out to me. We both answered the other’s call.

As an autistic person, I struggle to make connections. I did not communicate much as a young child and only barely as an adolescent. Even now, my thoughts exist independent of language. My mind undergoes a vast translation process, back and forth, to relate to the human world.

Yet the Christian faith spoke to me through one word: love. I often feel as if, by relying on only a single word, God designed this message for people like me. There is no complicated work to interpret that message. You are loved by your Creator. You are commanded to love others and also to love yourself.

It frequently surprises people that my faith is based entirely on logic and reason. It has no emotional base. Many may wonder how that squares with the message of love. But to me, it comes down to the principle of mutual recognition: If you believe in a Creator, then you believe that the Creator knows his own handiwork. You believe that each of us has a place, has equal value, and fully belongs in this world. There is not one correct path to life or to God. Mine may be unusual, but it can still be strong.

I first contemplated the Christian faith when I was in high school and began engaging more with the outside world. Beyond autism, I have a metabolic condition and cerebral palsy. The limits placed on me by my disabilities were a daily reminder of my own brokenness. The only part of my body that was not negatively impacted was my mind. And I used it to come to a fuller understanding of God. ...

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IRS Denies Tax-Exempt Status To Organization That Encourages Christians To 'Pray, Vote, Engage' Because '[B]ible Teachings Are Typically Affiliated With The [Republican] Party'

• Christians Engaged IRS Determination Letter (May 18, 2021)
• Christians Engaged IRS Appeal Letter (June 16, 2021)

Newsweek, First Liberty Appeals Denial of Tax Exemption for Group Alleged to Have Republican Ties:

Christian legal organization First Liberty Institute is appealing the recent denial by the IRS to grant tax exemption status to a Texas Christian group that the federal agency alleges supports the Republican Party.

In May the IRS denied 501(c)(3) status to the Texas-based prayer group Christians Engaged because it encourages its members to vote for state and national leaders. The federal agency specifically noted in its rejection that the group supports Republican candidates.

In its letter, IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Stephen A. Martin concluded the group does not qualify as an organization described in IRS Section 501(c)(3) because it is not operated exclusively for religious and educational purposes. Specifically Martin noted, "You are engaged in prohibited political campaign invention" and "You are also not operated exclusively for one or more exempt purposes...because you operate for a substantial non-exempt private purpose and for the private interest of the 'D party.'" The "D party" is a reference to the Republican Party, according to a "legend" provided at the top of Martin's letter to the religious group.

Press Release, IRS Denies Religious Group Tax Exempt Status; States “Bible Teachings” Are “Affiliated With the Republican Party”:

Today, First Liberty Institute appealed an IRS determination denying tax exempt status to Christians Engaged, a nonprofit organization that exists to educate and empower Christians to pray for our nation and elected officials, vote, and be civically engaged. In a letter issued in May, the IRS argued that Christians Engaged was not eligible for 501(c)(3) status in part because “[B]ible teachings are typically affiliated with the [Republican] party and candidates.” ...

“The IRS states in an official letter that Biblical values are exclusively Republican.  That might be news to President Biden, who is often described as basing his political ideology on his religious beliefs,” said Lea Patterson, Counsel for First Liberty Institute. “Only a politicized IRS could see Americans who pray for their nation, vote in every election, and work to engage others in the political process as a threat. The IRS violated its own regulations in denying tax exempt status because Christians Engaged teaches biblical values.”

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Getting To Know 0Ls

My wife Courtney and I just completed hosting our fifth annual round of meetings with Pepperdine Caruso Law's incoming 1L students. Last year, due to the pandemic, we replaced our usual Dinner With The Dean in our home with a virtual Coffee With The Carons.  This year, as California emerges from the pandemic, we offered both formats and hosted eight outdoor dinners in our yard for vaccinated students and six virtual coffees for unvaccinated and out-of-state students. 

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

There is quite a bit of movement in this week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads, with a new #1 paper and a new paper debuting on the list at #5:

1. [490 Downloads]  International Effective Minimum Taxation — Analysis of GloBE (Pillar Two), by Joachim Englisch (University of Muenster)
2. [304 Downloads]  International Tax Law and its Influence on National Tax Systems, by Craig Elliffe (University of Auckland; Google Scholar)
3. [292 Downloads]  Can Blockchain Revolutionize Tax Administration?, by Orly Mazur (SMU; Google Scholar) (reviewed by Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholar) here)
4. [287 Downloads]  The Allocation of Taxing Rights under Pillar One of the OECD Proposal, by Aitor Navarro (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; Google Scholar)
5. [256 Downloads]  Winners and Losers: U.S. Country and Industry Estimates of Pillar One Amount A, by Lorraine Eden (Texas A&M; Google Scholar)

This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

1. Wall Street Journal op-ed (R.R. Reno), Why I Stopped Hiring Ivy League Graduates
2. New York Post, Kim Kardashian Fails California Baby Bar Exam For A Second Time; Her Score Dropped From 474 To 463 (560 Is Passing)
3. Nightbirde, It's Okay: God Is On The Bathroom Floor
4. Bloomberg Law, White Male Prof Sues Denver Law School For Gender Bias
5. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: Accounting For Attorney Malpractice Settlements
6. Miami Herald, Miami Searches For Interim Dean After Controversial Firing Of Tony Varona, Who Sought To Reduce Overhead Tax Law School Pays To University
7. U.S. News & World Report, The Ten Most Expensive Law Schools
8. New York Times, Law Schools Scramble To Get Incoming 1Ls To Defer; Columbia Offers $30k, Duke Offers $5K
9. New York Times, Washington & Lee University Board Votes 22-6 To Keep Lee’s Name (Faculty Had Voted 188-51 To Remove It)
10. Victor Thuronyi (Former Lead Tax Counsel, IMF), The Internal Revenue Code Should Be Be Redrafted

Deo: Investigating Pandemic Effects On Legal Academia

The University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law hosts a free online program on Pandemic Effects on Legal Academia: A Discussion With Law School Faculty on Wednesday. June 23 at noon - 3:00 P.M. MDT: 

The session will begin with a presentation by Meera E. Deo on her new national empirical study of law faculty, Pandemic Effects on Legal Academia (PELA) followed by a panel of deans responding with their own personal and institutional experiences. Participants will then have the opportunity to break out into working groups organized around specific topics to brainstorm challenges and potential solutions to the obstacles presented by the earlier presentations.

Preliminary analyses of the PELA study reveal troubling patterns of how the effects of COVID-19 exacerbate previously existing raceXgender barriers documented in Southwestern Law School Professor Meera Deo’s book, Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia. Challenges—which are felt most acutely by mothers and other caregivers, junior scholars, untenured faculty, and women of color—include a lack of time and bandwidth to produce scholarship, the blending of home life with work life, an inability to prioritize one’s own well-being, and significant negative mental health effects. This session provides an opportunity for faculty to learn from the data and brainstorm solutions.

Meera E. Deo (Southwestern), Investigating Pandemic Effects on Legal Academia, 89 Fordham L. Rev. 2467 (2021):

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Monroe: Improvisation And Forgotten Taxpayers In Partnership Tax

Andrea Monroe (Temple), Making Tax Law Work: Improvisation and Forgotten Taxpayers in Partnership Tax, 54 U. Mich. J.L. Reform  ___ (2021):

The most troublesome provisions of partnership tax are also its most fundamental, namely the allocation rules that regulate how partners share a partnership’s taxable items.

Complexity is a universal problem faced by partnerships at all levels of wealth, status and sophistication, and the vast majority of taxpayers respond with improvisational tax compliance. In remarkably diverse contexts, improvisation has replaced technical compliance as the norm in partnership allocations. Wealthy partnerships make a strategic choice to improvise, using “target allocations,” while poorer partnerships improvise because they have no other choice, routinely following “intuitive” tax law and hoping for the best.

Reframing this complexity problem as a shared experience of all partnerships exposes the technical and cultural fractures of partnership tax in a new and different light.

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Gender And Institutional Bias In The Publication Process

Fulya Y. Ersoy (Loyola Marymount) & Jennifer Pate (Loyola Marymount), Invisible Hurdles: Gender and Institutional Bias in the Publication Process in Economics:

Tenure decisions in economics are strongly tied to the quantity and quality of publications in peer-reviewed journals. We examine whether female economists and economists at lower- ranked institutions face discrimination in the publication process. To do so, we conduct an experiment with the editors of top 100 journals in economics. Editors were tasked with evaluating the quality of abstracts for various solo-authored papers. The papers vary along the dimensions of gender and institution rank of the author. The experimental variation is whether editors observe name and/or institution of the author. We find that there is positive institutional bias for economists in the top institutions. However, once the name of the author is visible in addition to the institution information, this positive institutional bias only applies to male authors. Hence, institution serves as a signal for quality of work for men, but not for women.

Inside Higher Ed, Gender, Institutions and Bias:

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Layser Reviews Woodcock's Antimonopolism As A Symptom Of American Political Dysfunction

This week, Michelle Layser (Illinois; Google Scholar) reviews Ramsi A. Woodcock (Kentucky; Google Scholar), Antimonopolism as a Symptom of American Political Dysfunction.

One of the biggest news stories of the year has focused on antitrust cases and bills targeting tech giants Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Outside the academy, liberal progressives increasingly point to monopoly power held by BigTech as a source of growing income and wealth inequality (see here, here, and here).  Newly appointed chair of the Federal Trade Commission and Columbia Law Professor Lina Khan made a splash in 2016 with her Yale student note, which made a legal case for breaking up Amazon, inspiring a “‘hipster antitrust’ movement among young scholars who want to expand existing antitrust law to better target issues like corporate concentration and income inequality” (Vox).

But is antitrust law really a promising tool for redistributing income and wealth? Professor Ramsi A.Woodcock doesn’t think so.

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, Dreams of Working From a Beach Risk Turning Into a Tax Nightmare
• Neil Buchanan (Florida), "True Tax Rates" Are Real and True, and They Are Now a Thing 
• Neil Buchanan (Florida), How the Ultra-Wealthy Get Away With It (Paying Ultra-Low Taxes): In Part, Because It Is Truly Complicated 
• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, State Taxes on Capital Gains
• Chuck Collins, Dynasty Trusts: A Tool for Billionaire Tax Avoidance
• Chuck Collins, The Rich Got Richer While Millions Lost Their Livelihoods. It's Time For a Wealth Tax

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• AccessLex & Gallup, Law School in a Pandemic: Student Perspectives on Distance Learning and Lessons for the Future
• Bloomberg Law, White Male Prof Sues Denver Law School For Gender Bias
• Gregory Camilli (LSAC), Kimberly Dustman (LSAC), & Ann Gallagher (LSAC), LSAT Takers and Khan Academy Preparation
• Adam Chilton (Chicago), Justin Driver (Yale), Jonathan Masur (Chicago) & Kyle Rozema (Washington University), Assessing Affirmative Action's Diversity Rationale
• Michael Thomas Colatrella Jr. (Pacific), What I Learned About Teaching Law By Being An Art Student
• Jon M. Garon (Nova), Law Professor’s Desk Reference: A Handbook for Work and Life in the Legal Academy (2021)

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Next Week's Virtual Tax Workshops

Monday, June 21: David Hasen (Florida; Google Scholar) will present Forget (Arguing About) Redistribution virtually at Florida as part of its Summer Virtual Workshop Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Charlene Luke.

Friday, June 18: Stefan Hammerl (Graz) & Lily Zechner (Graz) will present Taxing Profit and Consumption in Market Jurisdictions: Equity and Administrability in the Digital Era virtually as part of the Indiana|Leeds Summer Zoom Tax Workshop Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Leandra Lederman or Leopoldo Parada.

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Liscow Presents The Psychology Of Taxing Capital Income Today At The Indiana|Leeds Summer Zoom Tax Workshop Series

Zachary Liscow (Yale; Google Scholar) presents The Psychology of Taxing Capital Income: Evidence from a Survey Experiment on the Realization Rule) (with Edward Fox (Michigan; Google Scholar)) (reviewed by David Elkins (Netanya) here) virtually today as part of the Indiana|Leeds Summer Zoom Tax Workshop Series hosted by Leandra Lederman (Indiana) and Leopoldo Parada (Leeds):

How to tax capital income is a critical issue today. The realization rule—requiring that property usually must be sold before gains are taxed—is central to taxing capital income, but often decreases the efficiency, equity, and simplicity of the tax system. Estimates suggest that the realization rule costs the government over $2 trillion over 10 years. Given these problems, it is unclear why the rule exists for assets that are easy to value and sell. Scholars have long speculated about the role of the public’s views here, but little is known empirically about them. We conduct the first survey experiment to understand the psychology of the realization rule, which has broad implications for the taxation of capital income. We have three main findings.

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White Male Prof Sues Denver Law School For Gender Bias

Bloomberg Law, Male Law School Trial Advocacy Director Sues Alleging Bias:

The director of the Center for Advocacy at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law says in a new suit in federal court that, because of his gender, debunked allegations of sex discrimination were wrongly used against him to delay consideration of the renewal of his teaching contract.

David Schott says the sex discrimination ensued after Viva Moffat, the associate dean of Academic Affairs, told him in 2016 that she didn’t “want to see white men teaching anymore in the Center for Advocacy,” a comment he immediately reported to Bruce Smith, the dean of the law school.

Schott, who is White, says “he felt pressure not to hire white men to teach” at the center, even when they were the most qualified applicants.

He was also soon “the target of a steady barrage of adverse actions and false statements that have damaged his reputation and violated the terms of his employment contract” that were “largely orchestrated by Moffat, but with at least the tacit support of Smith,” the suit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado alleges.

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What I Learned About Teaching Law By Being An Art Student

Michael Thomas Colatrella Jr. (Pacific), What I Learned about Teaching Law by Being an Art Student:

This article relates lessons that I learned about teaching law from my time as an art student in an atelier system that are supported by science-based pedagogical best practices. 

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Getting Down To Brass Tax: Why Courts Should Use Equitable Tolling To Help Taxpayer-Petitioners Impacted By COVID-19

Hannah Fisher (J.D. 2021, Chicago), Getting Down to Brass Tax: Why Courts Should Use Equitable Tolling to Help Taxpayer-Petitioners Impacted by COVID-19, 2021 U. Chi. Legal F. ___:

The COVID-19 pandemic caused some of the sharpest rises in American unemployment and poverty seen in a generation. This left people with less money in their pockets, but also less time and access to resources to diligently pursue their legal rights and remedies. Congress responded by providing some financial aid via stimulus packages. But without accompanying procedural relief from various filing deadlines, many will face financial liabilities to the government they otherwise might not, particularly in the tax context. This Comment advocates for greater flexibility when taxpayer-petitioners miss filing deadlines due to COVID-19-related hardships.

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