This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

1. Bryce Clayton Newell (Oregon), 2020 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews
2. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Preview Of The 2022 U.S. News Law School Rankings: Admissions
3. U.S. News & World Report, 2021 Law School Peer Reputation Rankings (And Overall Rankings)
4. Law.com, 2021 Law School Rankings By Graduates In BigLaw Jobs
5. Law360, BigLaw Eschews Recruiting At Lower Ranked HBCU Law Schools Despite Pledge To Hire More Black Associates
6. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Two-Thirds Of The Way Through The Fall 2021 Law School Admissions Cycle: Applications Are Up At 97% Of Law Schools, With Biggest Increases Among The Highest LSAT Bands
7. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: No Second Bite In CDP For Rejected OIC
8. Press Release, Pepperdine Caruso Law Hosts Inaugural Belonging Awards
9. Donald Tobin (Dean, Maryland), The Tax Code Can Save The $15 Minimum Wage
10. Washington Post, The IRS Paid $3 Billion In Interest To Taxpayers Because It Failed To Get Refunds Out On Time

College And Law Students Under Age 25 To Get 3 Stimulus Checks Totaling $3,200; Experts Advise Them To Invest In A Roth-IRA

Lynnley Browning (Financial Planning), College Students May Score 3 COVID Stimulus Checks. Here's How.:

The pandemic stimulus package that’s muscling towards the finish line contains a powerful financial boost that can jumpstart wealth-building for young adults.

Under the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill passed by the House on Feb. 27, checks of up to $1,400 would flow to middle- and modest-income taxpayers. And unlike previous rounds of stimulus checks, the bill would also provide money for dependents aged 17 to 24.

That means millions of college students and other young adults are on track to get a nice chunk of change.

It gets even better: Some college students and other young adults may also be able to claim up to an additional $1,800 from the two prior stimulus programs. Among the eligible: those who graduated last year and are now in the workforce (or not) and filing their own tax returns, or those who turned 24 last year, can retroactively claim the two prior stimulus payments ($1,200 and $600) when they file their taxes this year. ...

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A Call To 'Detach' From The Strict Interpretation Of The Duberstein Standard

Harlee Havens (J.D. 2022, Kentucky), A Call to “Detach” from the Strict Interpretation of the Duberstein Standard, 109 Ky. L. J. Online (2021):

In order to try to aid in the determination of whether or not something is a gift for tax purposes, Kahn and Kahn suggest that the transferee’s role or actions should be considered as well because it acknowledges that certain circumstances depend more on the actions of the transferee than the intention of the donor [Douglas A. Kahn (Michigan) & Jeffrey H. Kahn (Florida State), “Gifts, Gafts, and Gefts” – The Income Tax Definition and Treatment of Private and Charitable “Gifts” and a Principled Policy Justification for the Exclusion of Gifts from Income, 78 Notre Dame L. Rev. 441, 478 (2003)].  By also looking to the acts of the transferee, courts would no longer have to rely solely on the donor’s intention, which as suggested, can be understood in a way that renders the exclusion useless.

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Katherine Magbanua May Be Retried In The Fall For Dan Markel's Murder

WCTV, Magbanua Retrial Likely This Fall:

Katherine Magbanua, one of three people accused in the murder of FSU Law Professor Dan Markel, could stand trial this fall.

Magbanua was originally scheduled to be retried in April 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed her case and thousands more.

Circuit Judge Robert Wheeler said in a hearing Thursday that he wants to set a tentative trial date. He proposed a two-week trial in July, but the defense requested a trial after Labor Day due to health concerns. ...

Judge Wheeler is planning to check his calendar and is aiming for a trial date in September or October. He set another case management hearing for May 6 in hopes of setting a realistic date then.

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Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Kleiman Reviews Sarkar's Capital Controls As Migrant Controls

This week, Ariel Jurow Kleiman (San Diego; moving to Loyola-L.A.; Google Scholar) reviews a new article by Shayak Sarkar (UC-Davis), Capital Controls as Migrant Controls, 109 Cal. L. Rev. ___ (2020).

Governments regulate migration in myriad ways. Via border policies, economic (dis)incentives, and inclusionary or exclusionary social and legal systems, governments seek to draw or repel migration into a domestic economy. As Shayak Sarkar argues in his most recent article, Capital Controls as Migrant Controls, they can also do so by regulating migrants’ financial activities. Building on his past scholarship on migrants’ financial habits and the legal infrastructure governing them (e.g., here and here), Sarkar describes and analyzes legal systems that constrain migrants’ financial activities in the U.S. He argues that this financial regulation not only controls migrants’ capital, but that it controls migrants as well.

Sarkar focuses on three examples of what he calls “capital controls”—although he notes that his use of the term is somewhat broader than its traditional meaning of restrictions on foreign capital inflows and outflows. He first discusses taxation of migrants’ remittances back to home countries (more on this momentarily). Second, he explores rules that restrict undocumented workers’ access to Social Security benefits and that require eligible noncitizens to leave the U.S. in order to collect payments. Third, he describes consumer-banking identification requirements, which often work to exclude undocumented workers from U.S. banking services. The article’s scope is broad, canvassing laws on immigration, taxation, financial regulation, and the social safety net. To make the current discussion more tractable, I will focus here on his analysis of remittance taxation.

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, Corporate Tax Chat: Tim McDonald, VP of Global Tax at P&G
• Bloomberg, Corporate Tax Proposal in Senate Stokes Economists’ Concern
• Bloomberg, IRS Stance on Crypto Spurs Confusion, Relief in Tax Profession
• Bloomberg, Is It Really Time For Another IRS Reorganization?
• Bloomberg, ‘Stars Aligned’ for Digital Tax Agreement, OECD Tax Chief Says

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA, Four Law Schools Are Back In Compliance With 75% Bar Passage Accreditation Requirement
• ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, Notice and Comment: Standards 303 and 508 and Rules 2 and 13
• AccessLex, Law School Scholarship Databank
• Vikram David Amar (Dean, Illinois), What Accounts for the Increase in Law School Applications This Year?
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), J. Goosby Smith Named Vice President For Community Belonging And Chief Diversity Officer At Pepperdine University

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Next Week's Virtual Tax Workshops

Tuesday, March 9: Steve Johnson (Florida State) will present Federal Tax Ethics Rules and State Malpractice Litigation virtually at Florida State as part of its Tax Workshop Speaker Series . If you would like to attend, please contact Jeffrey Kahn.

Wednesday, March 10: Jinyan Li (Osgoode Hall) will present The Legal Challenges of Creating a Global Tax Regime with the OECD Pillar One Blueprint virtually at Toronto as part of its James Hausman Tax Law and Policy Workshop Series. If you would like to attend, please contact Angeliki Zacharakis.

Thursday, March 11: Michael Simkovic (USC; Google Scholar) will present Income Taxes and Work Hours virtually at Duke as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series. If you would like to attend, please contact  Richard Schmalbeck or Lawrence Zelenak.

Friday, March 12: Michael Lennard (Chief of International Tax Cooperation and Trade in the Financing for Development Office of the United Nations) will present The Role of the United Nations in Tax Norm Shaping virtually at British Columbia as part of its Tax Law and Policy Workshop Speaker Series. If you would like to attend, please contact  Wei Cui.

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2021 Law School Rankings By Graduates In BigLaw Jobs

Law.com, The Top 50 Go-To Law Schools:

We have ranked the 50 law schools that sent the highest percentage of their 2020 juris doctor graduates into associate positions at the largest 100 law firms in the country [methodology].  Columbia Law School tops the list for the eighth straight year, with 65% of its recent graduate class now working in Big Law.

1. Columbia
2. Northwestern
3. Cornell
4. Pennsylvania
5. NYU
6. Duke
7. Chicago
8. Virginia
9. UC-Berkeley
10. Harvard
11. Georgetown
12. USC
13. Stanford
14. Michigan
15. UCLA
16. Yale
17. Fordham
18. Texas
19. Boston College
20. Boston University

Columbia Reigns Supreme in Big Law Hiring, But Northwestern, Cornell Came on Strong in 2020
Columbia Law School lands at the top of our 2021 Go-To Law Schools ranking of Big Law feeder schools, marking the eighth straight year the school tops the list.

Go-To Law Schools: All Schools Data
See hiring stats for every law school that sent a 2020 graduate to one of the largest 100 firms.

Go-To Law Schools: Search By School
Search our Go-To Law Schools data by school to see the firms where 2020 graduates found associate jobs.

Go-To Law Schools: Search By Firm
Search our Go-To Law Schools hiring data by firm to see the schools from which they hired new associates.

Explore the Data Behind The Go-To Law Schools
Our interactive database allows you to delve into all the Go-To Law Schools School associate hiring and alumni partner promotion data.

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Taite Presents Making Tax Policy Great Again Virtually Today At Florida

Phyllis Taite (Florida A&M) presents Making Tax Policy Great Again: America You’ve Been Trumped virtually at Florida today as part of its Tax Colloquium Series:

In December 2017, President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) claiming it as the largest tax cuts in history. While the proponents of the TCJA claim this legislation provides tax breaks that benefit everyone, there are economic consequences that disproportionately benefit the wealthy to the detriment of the masses. Tax policy should benefit the majority of Americans, not just the elite. If we truly want to make tax policy great again, then we should go back to the very beginning when the tax base was primarily the responsibility of the wealthiest Americans.

An effective way to facilitate this shift in tax responsibility is to eliminate the mortgage interest deduction for taxpayers with household incomes above $100,000 for a single household and $200,000 for a married household, indexed for inflation. Further, the estate system should eliminate I.R.C. § 1014 stepped-up basis provisions, reduce both estate and gift tax exemptions amounts and separate the estate and gift exemption amounts.

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Pepperdine Caruso Law Hosts Inaugural Belonging Awards

Pepperdine Caruso Law Hosts Inaugural Belonging Awards:

Pepperdine Caruso Law hosted its inaugural "Belonging Awards" on February 25. The evening virtual ceremony celebrated the diversity of Caruso Law's alumni, students, faculty, and staff. In the first of its kind event, members of the Caruso Law community shared their inspiring stories and how they are taking action to make diversity and belonging a priority in their studies, workplace, and life. Among the award recipients, Caruso Law honored several alumni who have made a significant impact on diversity and belonging in the legal community.

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McLaughlin: Amendment Clauses In Easements — Ensuring Protection In Perpetuity

Nancy A. McLaughlin (Utah), Amendment Clauses in Easements: Ensuring Protection in Perpetuity, 168 Tax Notes Fed. 819 (Aug. 3, 2020):

Internal Revenue Code § 170(h)(5)(A) requires that the conservation purpose of a deductible conservation easement be “protected in perpetuity.” This article explains how the protected-in-perpetuity requirement should limit the parties’ ability to reserve the right to make post-donation changes to the terms of a deductible easement.

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Wilking Presents Does It Matter Who Remits? Evidence From U.S. States’ Voluntary Collection Agreements Virtually Today At Duke

Eleanor Wilking (Cornell) presents Does It Matter Who Remits? Evidence from U.S. States’ Voluntary Collection Agreements (with Yeliz Kacamak (Boğaziçi University; Google Scholar) & Tejaswi Velayudhan (Ohio State; Google Scholar)) virtually at Duke today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Richard Schmalbeck & Lawrence Zelenak:

The South Dakota vs. Wayfair (2018) Supreme Court decision changed a long-standing difference in the way U.S. sales tax administrations treated online and brick-and-mortar commerce. Online retailers now have to remit sales taxes just like their brick-and-mortar counterparts in most states. Despite the attention this decision received, we know little about how shifting the responsibility to remit will affect the tax system.

Using states’ staggered adoption of Voluntary Collection Agreements (VCAs) which committed large online retailers to remit taxes prior to the Wayfair decision, we find that the increase in compliance resulting from these arrangements was almost fully passed-through to consumers via higher tax-inclusive prices. Consumers also reduced their online expenditures. However, we do not find strong evidence of an impact on the elasticity of the tax base.

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Avi-Yonah Presents A New Corporate Tax Virtually Today At Indiana

Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar) presents A New Corporate Tax, 168 Tax Notes Fed. 653 (July 27, 2020), virtually at Indiana today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series hosted by Leandra Lederman:

This article will argue that we should tax corporations for the same reason we originally adopted the corporate tax in 1909: to limit the power and regulate the behavior of our largest corporations, which are monopolies or quasi-monopolies that dominate their respective fields and drive their competitors out of business (the best example being Big Tech — that is, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft). But if that is the reason to have a corporate tax, it should have a different structure from the current flat corporate tax of 21 percent. Instead, the tax should be set at zero for normal returns by allowing the expensing of physical capital, but at a sharply progressive rate for supernormal returns (rents).

Conclusion
This article has sought to develop a new corporate tax that is appropriate for targeting rents earned by large, monopolistic, or quasimonopolistic enterprises like Big Tech. Its main recommendations are that normal corporate returns be functionally exempt by allowing permanent expensing for capital expenditures, but that supernormal returns be taxable progressively (up to 80 percent above $10 billion in profit) and on a broad base that (a) includes foreign subsidiaries, (b) disallows current R&D and interest deductions, and (c) limits deductions for stock-based compensation to value on date of grant.

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'A Year Like No Other': Top Law Schools Are Inundated With Strong Applicants

Following up on Monday's post, Two-Thirds Of The Way Through The Fall 2021 Law School Admissions Cycle: Applications Are Up At 97% Of Law Schools, With Biggest Increases Among The Highest LSAT Bands:  Karen Sloan (Law.com), 'A Year Like No Other': Top Law Schools Are Inundated With Strong Applicants:

A surge of applicants—particularly among those with high scores on the Law School Admission Test—has made this one of the most competitive admission cycles in decades, and law schools are scrambling to adjust to the influx of wannabe lawyers.

As of early March, 55,166 people had applied to law school for the 2021-22 academic year, which is an increase of more than 20% from this time a year ago. Should that increase hold steady through the remainder of the cycle, it would be the largest year-over-year growth in the past two decades.

The applicant increase this cycle is especially pronounced among high LSAT scorers. The number of applicants with LSAT scores of 165-169 was up nearly 27%; scores of 170-174 were up more than 53%; and the highest score band of 175-180 was up an astounding 99%. (LSAT scores range from a low of 120 to a high of 180.) The number of applicants is also up among every racial category tracked by the Law School Admission Council, noted the organization’s president Kellye Testy. Black applicants are up more than 24%, while Latinx applicants are up 20%. ...

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J. Goosby Smith Named Vice President For Community Belonging And Chief Diversity Officer At Pepperdine

J. Goosby Smith Named Vice President For Community Belonging And Chief Diversity Officer At Pepperdine University:

Pepperdine University announced today its long-anticipated selection of the University’s inaugural vice president for community belonging and chief diversity officer, Dr. J. Goosby Smith.

Smith will join Pepperdine on June 1, 2021, from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, where she currently serves as associate professor of leadership; associate professor of management; assistant provost for diversity, equity, and inclusion; and director of the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Center.

Smith received her BS in computer science from Spelman College and her MBA and PhD in organizational behavior from Case Western Reserve University. She anticipates earning her master of divinity from Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia, in December 2021.

“What an honor it is today to announce Dr. Smith is returning to the Pepperdine community,” said Pepperdine president Jim Gash. “I’m especially grateful to the Search Committee for identifying an amazing and experienced leader. I simply cannot wait to work alongside Dr. Smith as we chart a distinctively Pepperdine path forward addressing one of the great issues of our time. Our goal isn’t just to have a community of belonging but to train generations of graduates to create the same in their own communities.”

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Call For Proposals: Association For Mid-Career Tax Law Professors

The Association for Mid-Career Tax Law Professors (“AMT”) has issued a Call for Proposals:

The unvaccinated but optimistic 2021 AMT organizing committee—Jennifer Bird-Pollan, Emily Cauble, Brian Galle, Ben Leff, and Leigh Osofsky—welcomes proposals for our annual conference.

AMT is a recurring conference intended to bring together relatively recently tenured professors of tax law for frank and free-wheeling scholarly discussion. Our sixth (*: not counting last year’s summer Zoom series) annual meeting will be held virtually over two to three dates this summer: June 9, June 30, and July 21. We expect to convene for about 4 hours each day, not including the cocktail hours that Shu-Yi will inevitably organize. Presenters are asked to commit to attending at least 2/3 of the session hours; non-presenting guests (in addition to pets, inquisitive children, and in-home contractors) are welcome.

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The IRS Paid $3 Billion In Interest To Taxpayers Because It Failed To Get Refunds Out On Time

Washington Post, The IRS Paid $3 Billion in Interest to Taxpayers Because It Failed to Get Refunds Out on Time:

The IRS penalizes taxpayers who don’t pay their tax bills on time, but the agency’s own delays are costing taxpayers billions of dollars as well.

The IRS paid $3.03 billion — yes that’s with a “b” — in interest on delayed refunds to taxpayers for fiscal 2020 because it didn’t get the payments to them in time, according to a report released by the Government Accountability Office this week [Actions Needed to Address Processing Delays and Risks to the 2021 Filing Season (GAO-21-251) (Mar. 1, 2021)]. That’s almost a 50 percent increase compared with the $2.06 billion paid in interest on refunds in fiscal 2019.

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Academic Freedom Is Withering On College Campuses

Wall Street Journal op-ed:  Academic Freedom Is Withering, by Eric Kaufmann (Birkbeck College, University of London):

Academic freedom is in crisis on American campuses. Last year, the National Association of Scholars recorded 65 instances of professors being disciplined or fired for protected speech, a fivefold increase from the year before. Yet many of academia’s defenders brush aside worries about dismissal campaigns and the lack of ideological diversity as little more than a collection of anecdotes cherry-picked to feed a right-wing moral panic.

My new report for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology gives the lie to these claims. Based on eight comprehensive surveys of academic and graduate-student opinion across the U.S., Canada and Britain, it buttresses the findings of numerous studies to provide hard data on the absence of viewpoint diversity and presence of discrimination against conservative and gender-critical scholars. ...

Some 75% of American and British conservative academics in social sciences and humanities say their departments offer a hostile climate for their beliefs. Nearly 4 in 10 American centrist faculty concur.

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Tax Profs: Senator Warren's Wealth Tax Is Constitutional

Following up on Tuesday's post, Warren Revives Wealth Tax, Citing Pandemic Inequalities:  Letter To Senator Elizabeth Warren (Feb. 25, 2021):

Dear Senator Warren,
Your proposed wealth tax reform would impose a federal tax of 2% on taxpayers’ accumulation of net assets in excess of $50 million, and a 3% tax on net assets in excess of $1 billion. The 3% tax would increase to 6% if legislation establishing universal healthcare is in effect.

Article I Section 8 of the Constitution allows Congress to implement your proposed wealth tax reform as an exercise of the congressional taxing power. Some have suggested that a federal wealth tax would be a “direct tax” subject to the “apportionment rule” in Article I Section 2, which provides that “direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States … according to their respective Numbers.” A tax on an individual’s net wealth, however, is not a direct tax, and need not be apportioned among the states according to their population.

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Sanchirico Presents Why The Optimal Tax Rate On Capital Is Zero … Or Very High Virtually Today At Oxford

Chris Sanchirico (Pennsylvania; Google Scholar) presents Why the Optimal Long-Run Tax Rate on Capital is Zero…or Very High: The Missing Explanation virtually at Oxford's Centre for Business Taxation today:

Judd’s (1985) finding that the optimal long-run rate of tax on capital is zero—even if equity is an important social objective—has exerted substantial influence in academic and policy circles over the last quarter century [Redistributive Taxation in a Simple Perfect Foresight Model]. Only very recently has it become clear that Judd’s zero-tax result rests on an implicitly adopted assumption about how savings responds to taxation. Working within the very same model structure, Straub and Werning (2020) demonstrate that the optimal long-term tax rate is positive and potentially large under an alternative equally plausible assumption. This paper attempts to fill a remaining gap in the literature by providing a clear explanation of what is driving results in both variants of Judd’s original model [Positive Long Run Capital Taxation: Chamley-Judd Revisited]. 

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Hemel: Regulation And Redistribution With Lives In The Balance

Daniel J. Hemel (Chicago), Regulation and Redistribution with Lives in the Balance, 88 U. Chi. L. Rev. ___ (2021):

A central question in law and economics is whether non-tax legal rules should be designed solely to maximize efficiency or whether they also should account for concerns about the distribution of income. This question takes on particular importance in the context of cost-benefit analysis. Federal agencies apply cost-benefit analysis when writing regulations that generate multibillion dollar impacts on the US economy and profound effects on millions of Americans’ lives. In the past, agency cost-benefit analyses typically have ignored the income-distributive consequences of those regulations. That may soon change: On his first day in office, President Biden instructed his Office of Management and Budget to propose procedures for incorporating distributive considerations into cost-benefit analysis, thus bringing renewed relevance to a long-running law-and-economics debate.

This article explores what it might mean in practice for agencies to incorporate distributive considerations into cost-benefit analysis.

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Law School Rankings By Female Enrollment (2020)

Law School Rankings by Female Enrollment (2020):

Women outnumbered men in law school classrooms across the United States in 2020 for the 5th year in a row.

Here at Enjuris, we've spent 5 years tracking gender enrollment in law schools because studies show that female representation is important in the legal field.

With that in mind, let's take a closer look at the gender composition of law schools in 2020 based on the most recent data released by the American Bar Association (ABA), as well as how gender demographics have changed since we first started tracking the data and what the future might look like. ...

[W]omen have been making steady gains in top-ranked law schools. Thirteen of the top 20 law schools in 2020 increased the percentage of female attendees from 2019. What's more, 13 of the top 20 law schools had more female attendees than male attendees. ...

Overall law school rankings by female enrollment:

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AccessLex Law School Scholarship Databank: 800 Scholarships Totaling $3 Million

AccessLex Law School Scholarship Databank:

With rising tuition rates and student loan debt at an all-time high, about 73% of students now depend on scholarships to help cover the cost of law school. However, weeding through the hundreds of scholarships available and finding the right one for you, can be a difficult and overwhelming task.

Today, AccessLex, a non-profit dedicated to increasing access to legal education, has launched their Law School Scholarship Databank to help law students find the right scholarship for them. This interactive page will allow students to filter through nearly 800 incoming and returning student scholarships and writing competitions totaling almost $3 million in aid.

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Higher Ed’s Misguided Purging Of Trump Supporters

Chronicle of Higher Education op-ed:  Higher Ed’s Misguided Purging of Trump Supporters, by Jonathan Zimmerman (Pennsylvania):

In 1948, President Edmund Ezra Day of Cornell explained why his institution would never hire a Communist on its faculty. “It is a part of the established technique of Communistic activity to resort to deceit and treachery,” Day wrote. “A man who belongs to the Communist Party and who follows the party line, is thereby disqualified from participating in a free, honest inquiry after truth, and from belonging on a university faculty devoted to the search for truth.”

Plug in “Trump supporter” for “Communist,” and you get a pretty good sense of what’s happening on our campuses right now. Students and faculty are demanding that universities sever ties with anyone who worked in the Trump administration or backed President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And the rationale is the same one that was used against Communists and so-called fellow travelers during the Cold War: They don’t believe in democracy, so they don’t belong at a university devoted to it.

But that perverts the democratic ideal, all in the guise of preserving it. The real threat isn’t a horde of evil Trumpers clamoring at our gates. It’s our quest to root out the enemies of democracy, which never ends well for the university. ...

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Tax Prof Presentations At Next Week's Florida Tax Institute

Tax Prof presentations at next week's Florida Tax Institute (March 10-12):

Cassady V. Brewer (Georgia State) & Bruce A. McGovern (South Texas), Recent Developments in Federal Income Taxation:

This session will review the most significant statutory enactments, judicial decisions, IRS rulings, and Treasury regulations promulgated during the last twelve months that affect general domestic income taxation, corporate taxation, partnership taxation, and tax procedure.

Samuel A. Donaldson (Georgia State), Transfer Tax Update:

Stay up to date with this informative and entertaining recap of the important cases, rulings, regulations, and legislation from the past 12 months related to federal income, estate, and gift taxes.

Charlene Luke (Florida), Proposed Partnership Regulation Projects: Where Do They Stand? How Should They Be Handled?:

This presentation will provide an overview of the current state of U.S. Treasury partnership regulation projects and consider potential future approaches in light of a new tax administration.

Nancy A. McLaughlin (Utah), Trying Times: Conservation Easements and Federal Tax Law (207 pages):

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Crespi: Teaching A Class On Income And Wealth Inequality

Gregory S. Crespi (SMU), Teaching a Class on Income and Wealth Inequality:

I am offering a course on “Income and Wealth Inequality” for the first time during this spring, 2021 semester at the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University, and the course is going well. I am here discussing my choice of materials and providing my course syllabus and my weekly reading assignment list for use by anyone else who is considering offering such a course at the college or graduate or law school level.

Johnson: Taxing Meals And Civic Virtue

Calvin H. Johnson (Texas), Return to Civic Virtue: Tax Meals, 170 Tax Notes Fed. 1105 (Aug. 15, 2021):

Excluding meals from taxation, when other forms of compensation are taxed, inevitably causes a loss of value — a waste — that economists call deadweight loss. The exclusion for meals causes a shift from cash to meals, until in equilibrium, the loss of value from the meals is just short of the tax avoided. In equilibrium, the loss is a tax-caused destruction of resources — not physically, but by value. The recent Consolidated Appropriations Act decreased the tax on meals by allowing a 100 percent deduction for some business meals, repealing the prior law’s 50 percent deduction, which is the wrong direction to go. The end of the limited deduction was instigated by former President Trump himself and was a high priority for the Trump Treasury in its negotiations with Congress over the appropriations bill. Trump personally takes advantage of tax-exempt meals and has interests in restaurants selling meals. Thus, the change in law was narcissistic and a betrayal of civic virtue.

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Cauble Presents Questions The IRS Will Not Answer Virtually Today At Florida State

Emily Cauble (DePaul) presents Questions the IRS Will Not Answer virtually at Florida State today as part of its Tax Workshop Speaker Series hosted by Jeffrey Kahn:

When a taxpayer plans to undertake a transaction and its tax consequences are unclear, the taxpayer can request a letter ruling from the IRS. The IRS issues numerous letter rulings each year. In 2020, for instance, the IRS issued 777 letter rulings. The IRS refrains from issuing letter rulings on certain topics. At the beginning of each year, the IRS publishes an updated list of the topics on which it will not rule. Many of the topics on which it will not rule arise in areas of tax law governed by standards where the tax outcome depends heavily on each transaction’s specific facts. This pattern is consistent with the IRS’s stated position that it ordinarily does not rule in certain areas because of the factual nature of the matter involved.

This Article suggests that a policy against ruling on fact-specific topics sacrifices an opportunity to rule on many of the very topics for which a letter ruling could be particularly useful. Because the fact-specific nature of a topic makes it ill-suited for generally applicable guidance, such a topic is a particularly good candidate for a letter ruling.

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Cockfield: International Tax Transparency

Arthur J. Cockfield (Queen's University Faculty of Law), International Tax Transparency:

An imbalance exists between tax authorities and taxpayers when it comes to the latter’s financial information. Taxpayers have the information they need to calculate their tax liabilities and file their returns. Tax authorities, on the other hand, tend to have little beyond what is in the tax return. Thus it can be hard for tax authorities to detect non-compliance. The solution? Pass laws to force the taxpayer (or a third party) to provide more and better information to tax authorities. In other words, increase tax transparency.

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The Rise Of The Mega-University

Chronicle of Higher Education, The Rise of the Mega-University:

At a time when many colleges are struggling with shrinking enrollment and tighter budgets, Southern New Hampshire is thriving on a grand scale, and it’s not alone. Liberty, Grand Canyon, and Western Governors Universities, along with a few other nonprofit institutions, have built huge online enrollments and national brands in recent years by subverting many of traditional higher education’s hallmarks. Western Governors has 88,585 undergraduates, according to U.S. Education Department data, more than the top 14 universities in the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings combined.

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Inoculating Law Schools Against Bad Metrics

Kimberlee G. Weatherall (University of Sydney Law School; Google Scholar) & Rebecca Giblin (University of Melbourne Law School; Google Scholar), Inoculating Law Schools Against Bad Metrics:

Law schools and legal scholars are not immune to the expanding use of quantitative metrics to assess the research of universities and of scholars working within universities. Metrics include grant and research income, the number of articles produced in journals on ranked lists, and citations (by scholars, and perhaps courts). The use of metrics also threatens to expand to measure other kinds of desired activity, with various metrics suggested to measure the impact of research beyond scholarly circles, and even more amorphous qualities such as leadership and mentoring.

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ABA Seeks Comments On Proposed Changes To Accreditation Standards Relating To Professional Formation, Mental Health And Substance Abuse

ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, Notice and Comment: Standards 303 and 508 and Rules 2 and 13 (Mar. 1, 2021):

At its meeting held on February 18-19, 2021, the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar approved for Notice and Comment proposed revisions to Standards 303 and 508 and Rules 2 and 13 of the ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools.

We solicit and encourage written comments on all the proposals listed above. Due to COVID-19, there will not be an open hearing, only a written comment period. Please address all written comments on the proposals to Scott Bales, Council Chair. Please send comments to Fernando Mariduena by March 31, 2021. Written comments received after March 31, 2021, may not be included in the materials considered by the Council at its May 2021 meeting.

PROPOSED CHANGES TO STANDARDS 303 AND 508 AND RULES 2 AND 13
Explanation of Changes

Standard 303: Development of professional identity was added to this Standard since activities that help in the development of professional identity must take place at multiple points over the course of a student’s time in law school, including as part of the law school curriculum. Interpretation 303-5 allows flexibility so that law schools can incorporate opportunities for student professional identity development into the curriculum, co-curricular activities, and professional development activities in meeting this part of the Standard while also defining “professional identity.”

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Lazerow: Income Tax Planning For Visual Artists, Their Dealers, Investors, And Collectors

Herbert I. Lazerow (San Diego), Income Tax Planning for Visual Artists, Their Dealers, Investors, and Collectors, 170 Tax Notes Fed. 923 (Feb. 8, 2021):

The tax issues of visual artists, art dealers, art investors, and art collectors all revolve around the same type of property: artwork. Be it a painting, drawing, print, sculpture, photograph, fabric, or glass art, that property raises tax issues for which advance planning can be useful. Some tax problems are shared by artists, dealers, investors, and collectors alike, such as the necessity to prove a profit motive in order to deduct expenses. However, those four categories of taxpayers face different tax results for the same activity in some cases, such as when artwork is sold or donated. This report explores those similarities and differences and suggests steps advisers can take to maximize tax benefits for their clients. It occasionally questions whether the similarities and differences — or the rules applied by the IRS — make sense.

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Legislation Would Force Iowa Universities To Hold In-Person Graduation

The Gazette, Republican Bill Would Force Iowa Universities to Hold In-Person Graduation:

Although the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa already announced their upcoming commencement ceremonies will be virtual — and are well into planning them — a Republican lawmaker is sponsoring a bill requiring Iowa’s public universities to hold in-person spring graduations.

House Study Bill 246, proposed this week by Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, would force the regent universities to hold traditional in-person spring commencement ceremonies during the regularly scheduled times in May and June — two and three months from now.

The bill requires the campuses allow at least two guests per graduate — which could mean many thousands at some of the larger ceremonies, like for undergraduates of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. ...

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NY Times: Warren Revives Wealth Tax, Citing Pandemic Inequalities

New York Times, Warren Revives Wealth Tax, Citing Pandemic Inequalities:

A tax on the net worth of America’s wealthiest individuals remains popular with voters, but has yet to be embraced by President Biden.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, introduced legislation on Monday that would tax the net worth of the wealthiest people in America, a proposal aimed at persuading President Biden and other Democrats to fund sweeping new federal spending programs by taxing the richest Americans.

Ms. Warren’s wealth tax would apply a 2 percent tax to individual net worth — including the value of stocks, houses, boats and anything else a person owns, after subtracting out any debts — above $50 million. It would add an additional 1 percent surcharge for net worth above $1 billion. ..,

The latest version, which would begin to apply in 2023 to net worth as calculated in 2022, would raise $3 trillion, Mr. Saez and Mr. Zucman calculate. Other economists, including Natasha Sarin of the University of Pennsylvania and Lawrence H. Summers of Harvard, estimate the tax would raise significantly less.

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Liscow: Redistribution For Realists

Zachary D. Liscow (Yale; Google Scholar), Redistribution for Realists:

Inequality is a defining issue of our time. Nevertheless, the longstanding economic orthodoxy for addressing inequality is that we should redistribute solely through tax and transfer policies because those are the most efficient means for doing so.

While the orthodoxy holds in theory, it fails in practice because of the public’s psychology about redistribution. New evidence shows that individuals silo their policy views: many are reluctant to redistribute through taxes and transfers but are willing to do so in other policy domains, like provision of necessities such as transportation, food, and housing. The orthodoxy thus restricts redistribution efforts to a policy domain where the public resists redistribution while neglecting the many policy domains where the public embraces redistributive policies. The current orthodoxy may be more efficient, but it is also a prescription for widespread inequality.

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Cotropia: Law’s Ability To Further The 'Menstrual Movement'

Christopher Anthony Cotropia (Richmond; Google Scholar), Law’s Ability to Further the 'Menstrual Movement', 41 Colum. J. Gender & L. __ (2021):

The current menstrual movement calls for overcoming the cultural stigma associated with menstruation and achieving “menstrual equity” and “period poverty”. The movement seeks to increase awareness of menstruation by rectifying and removing discrimination against those who menstruate and providing greater access to menstrual hygiene products (“MHPs”), particularly for the homeless and those with lower incomes. To achieve these goals, the movement is advocating for the elimination of the “tampon tax” and requiring schools provide MHPs to students for free. There are also lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the tampon tax. Advocates view these legal changes as instrumental in furthering the goals of equity and access to MHPs underlying the movement. This essay discussions whether these legal changes achieve the movement’s goals and also explores their expressive effects.

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'Old Codgers' Mark Tushnet & Louis Seidman Reflect On Their 50 Years In Legal Education

Paul Horwitz (Alabama) flagged this "charming, useful, and insightful" dialogue between Mark Tushnet (Harvard) & Louis Michael Seidman (Georgetown), On Being Old Codgers: A Conversation about a Half Century in Legal Education: 

The conversation that follows, conducted over three evenings, captures some of our thoughts about the last half century of legal education as both of us near retirement. We have edited the conversations so as to eliminate verbal stumbles and present our ideas more coherently, slightly reorganized a small part of the conversation, and added a few explanatory footnotes. However, we have attempted to keep the informal tone of our discussions. ...

Seidman: ... I reject the idea that only students at elite institutions would benefit from this tension — the unique tension — stemming from the fact that law schools are situated between practice and theory, between academic institutions and the real world. That is what makes law schools on the one hand different from philosophy departments and on the other hand different from vocational training. It is a unique and important role. As you say, the boom years demonstrated that nonelite institutions could serve their students in that way also.

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The Bob Morse Milestone: 45 Years At U.S. News

U.S. News & World Report, The Bob Morse Milestone: 45 Years at U.S. News:

The average American high school student probably doesn't know who Bob Morse is, what he does or the outsize impact he has had on the lives of countless college-bound teenagers. On the flip side, Morse is a familiar figure to college and university leaders across the U.S., known for his work on the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings since 1987.

Morse joined U.S. News & World Report in 1976 as a member of the now-defunct economic unit. Morse, who remembers being the youngest member of his team then, conducted research that helped inform weekly features for the print magazine. In the years since, he experienced the company's shift online and has helmed various rankings franchises for decades.

Morse recently marked his 45th anniversary with U.S. News and spoke about his time at the company and the evolution of the rankings. Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

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Lesson From The Tax Court: No Second Bite In CDP For Rejected OIC

One overarching theme of my Tax Procedure course is that tax collection is a process, not an event.  Many events occur during the time between assessment of a liability and the collection of that liability, and it is easy to fixate on them in isolation, forgetting their place in the process.  One important event can be a Collection Due Process hearing and subsequent appeal to Tax Court.  Since I started writing these posts (back in September 2017) we’ve learned a lot of lessons from the Tax Court about the shape and scope of CDP.  In Craig L. Galloway v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2021-24 (Feb. 24, 2021) (Judge Urda), we learn that what a taxpayer can do in a CDP hearing may be limited by earlier events in the collection process.  Details below the fold.

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Two-Thirds Of The Way Through The Fall 2021 Law School Admissions Cycle: Applications Are Up At 97% Of Law Schools, With Biggest Increases Among The Highest LSAT Bands

We are now two-thirds of the way through Fall 2021 law school admissions season. The number of law school applicants reported by LSAC is up 20.9% compared to last year at this time.

193 of the 200 law schools are experiencing an increase in applications. Applications are up 50% or more at 23 law schools, and 30% or more at 89 law schools:

Applicants are up the most in New England (28.6%), Mountain West (24.2%), and Northwest (23.6%); and up the least in the Great Lakes (16.6%), South Central (18.3%), and Other (19.1%):

Applicants' LSAT scores are up 63.4% in the 170-180 band, 26.0% in the 160-169 band, 9.7% in the 150-159 band, and 4.7% in the 120-149 band:

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ABA: Four Law Schools Are Back In Compliance With 75% Bar Passage Accreditation Requirement

Following up on my previous post, ABA: Ten Law Schools Are Out Of Compliance With 75% Bar Passage Accreditation Requirement (May 29, 2020):

Decision of the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, Notice of Law School Demonstrating Compliance With Standard 316:

• Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School (Feb. 2021)
• Charleston School of Law (Feb. 2021)
• Florida A&M University College of Law (Feb. 2021)
• University of South Dakota School of Law (Feb. 2021)

Update:

• ABA Journal, 4 More Law Schools Found to be in Compliance With ABA's New Bar Passage Standard
• Law360, ABA Clears 4 Law Schools That Had Low Bar Passage Rates
• Law.com, ABA Clears 4 Law Schools Flagged for Low Bar Pass Rates

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• California Joins Seven Other Jurisdictions (Thus Far) In Holding Online July 2021 Bar Exam
• Tobin: The Tax Code Can Save The $15 Minimum Wage
• The Pandemic Threatens Summer Associate Programs—Again

Sunday:

• BigLaw Eschews Recruiting At Lower Ranked HBCU Law Schools Despite Pledge To Hire More Black Associates
• First Circuit Dismisses Former Miami Law Student's Libel Claim Against Above The Law For Unflattering Blog Post
• The Seven Deadly Sins And Lawyer Misconduct
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

BigLaw Eschews Recruiting At Lower Ranked HBCU Law Schools Despite Pledge To Hire More Black Associates

Law360, BigLaw Eyes HBCUs, But Rankings Mindset Still Prevails:

Last year's widespread cries for racial justice in the U.S. resulted in an outpouring of commitment from law firms both to the advancement of racial justice and to their own, internal diversity and inclusion efforts.

That appears to have translated into more BigLaw recruiting activities at some of the nation's six law schools [District of Columbia, Florida A&M, Howard, North Carolina Central, Southern, Texas Southern] within historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. But the interest appears to have been limited, and increased recruiting activity did not always translate into jobs.

Experts say most BigLaw firms are missing out as they eschew the HBCUs — with the exception of Howard University School of Law, the highest ranked among them — in favor of the handful of top-ranked law schools where they have historically recruited.

Jean Lee, president and CEO of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, says she has long publicly lamented large law firms' preoccupation with recruiting at only a dozen or so top-ranked schools.

"All of the talented Black lawyers do not reside in the top 5% of law schools," Lee said. "It's a missed opportunity."

According to Carmia Caesar, Howard Law School assistant dean of career services, most large law firms, including 48 of the 50 largest in the U.S. by revenue, regularly recruit at her school.

Nonexhaustive law firm-reported data collected by the National Association for Law Placement, primarily capturing large firms, showed that 88 firms reported recruiting at Howard during the most recent on-campus season, while no more than four reported recruiting at each of the remaining five HBCU law schools. ...

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First Circuit Dismisses Former Miami Law Student's Libel Claim Against Above The Law For Unflattering Blog Post

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on Friday affirmed a district court's dismissal [433 F.Supp.3d 102 (2020)] of former University of Miami law student's libel claim against Above the Law. See coverage by Eugene Volokh (UCLA):

• Above The Law Post Not Libelous or "Unlawful Discrimination," Notwithstanding Its Supposed "Homophobic" Insults (Jan. 8, 2020)

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The Seven Deadly Sins And Lawyer Misconduct

Tory L. Lucas (Liberty), Greed and the Seven Deadly Sins: Treacherous for the Soul and Legal Ethics, 34 Regent U. L. Rev. 113 (2020):

As religious, philosophical, and cultural ideas, the Seven Deadly Sins occupy a common understanding of the worst behaviors that plague human relationships. Pride. Greed. Lust. Envy. Gluttony. Wrath. Sloth. Not exactly the traits that you seek in mutually beneficial relationships! Striving for universal appeal, this novel Article presents the Seven Deadly Sins as a useful construct to explain why lawyers commit major ethical violations. The underlying premise is that one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins lies behind every major ethical violation.

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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. The #1 paper is #303 among 15,769 tax papers in all-time downloads:

1. [1,229 Downloads]  The Impact of Public Perceptions on General Consumption Taxes, by Rita de la Feria (University of Leeds; Google Scholar) & Michael Walpole (University of New South Wales; Google Scholar)
2. [466 Downloads]  A Critical Assessment of the Originalist Case Against Administrative Regulatory Power: New Evidence from the Federal Tax on Private Real Estate in the 1790s, by Nicholas Parrillo (Yale)
3. [462 Downloads]  Tax Complexity and Transfer Pricing Blueprints, Guidelines, and Manuals, by Jean-Edouard Colliard (HEC Paris; Google Scholar), Lorraine Eden (Texas A&M; Google Scholar) & Co-Pierre Georg (University of Cape Town; Google Scholar)
4. [364 Downloads]  Estate Planning for Retirement Benefits after the SECURE Act, by Richard Kaplan (Illinois; Google Scholar)
5. [240 Downloads]  Inter-Nation Equity Revisited, by Ivan Ozai (McGill; Google Scholar) (reviewed by David Elkins (Netanya) here)